Concrete Abstractions
Memory ???
11:53pm
Sometimes it feels like… nothings real?
It feels like nothing has been real for a long time. Like a part of me has just gone dormant
This is so fucking corny, but like... a life without love in it feels so empty. And I don't feel loved by anyone. And I don't know why.
I don't know what's wrong with me
It's more than not feeling love though. I don't feel... connected to anyone
Like. When I spend all day in this temperature regulated room, not feeling any nature or wind or the feeling of walking somewhere with friends or a handshake or a hug... everything feels not real. Like I'm dreaming
And when I have those moments where I go somewhere new or talk to somebody new or feel something new, it's like I wake up for a second
And then I chastise myself for wishing I could always be awake because... I'm not the kind of person that gets to feel that way, I guess
Memory 9
Funny how change works.
Wanda spent a lot of her time wishing for it. That things could be different.
The repetition of school felt like being caught in pouring concrete. Hundreds of gallons of thick liquid, sucking her down as she struggled, pulling her in quicker the more she fought. She was up to her waist, beginning to imagine what it would feel like when it gets in her eyes, ears, nose, mouth, lungs, stomach. Filling her up and encapsulating her entire being.
She wished the constant pour of school assignments and expectations and demands would stop. The pour of her classmates’ stares that weren’t directed at her, but through her. As if she was nothing - no, less than nothing. Like she wasn’t even there at all.
In a way, life gave her what she had asked for. But like a mischievous fae in a cruel fairy tale, it wasn’t what she really wanted.
The pour of the concrete stopped.
Wanda was left there, lower half solidly encased, unable to move, escape. But it had stopped. And once the panic of whether or not she’d live faded away, of fearing whether drowning would be painful, quick or slow. She could finally look around her.
She didn’t know change could happen so fast.
One moment, pouring concrete. She’s in school, wrapped up in her assignments, the rush from class to class to club to sports, the anxiety of homework assignments and responsibilities filling every space of breath in-between. And there was also Victor, her little pet project, her extra lap around the track, conquest waiting to be conquered. He changed her life quite the same, just like the movies say - slowly, then all at once.
Wanda didn’t know change worked in reverse as well.
The next moment, deafening silence. The concrete stopped. School had given way to winter break. No more rush, no more expectations. Just sitting at home, alone, hours every day. At first, she thought it nice. To not be afraid of dying anymore. But then Wanda saw it for what it really was. It wasn’t that this change was necessarily good - it was just less of a negative. Mathematically speaking, that should be the same as a positive, right?
But it wasn’t.
Wanda just sat there in the remaining negativity. The remaining concrete. What remained of her life once Victor abruptly left it.
She doesn’t remember much of the rest of winter break. She’s pretty sure she cried in the beginning. A lot. Wanda’s always been a crier, but she’d never let anyone see it. Always crying alone in the familiar emptiness of her bedroom. Doors closed, lights off, suffocating her sobs under layers and layers of blankets.
Then school started again. She remembers that first day back. Entering the chemistry class to see Victor’s head at the front, staring forward at the chalkboard. Not turning to look behind him, not even for a minute, a second.
Wanda sits in the back and stares at him. Begging him to turn around. To look at her. Look at her. Please, God, look. See her. Please.
Victor turns around in his chair, talking to a classmate behind him. And it happens. They lock eyes. Wanda looks back, searching, pleading.
A sparkle of recognition in his eyes flashes for a second. But then the corners of his mouth turn down. Clouds dull his blue eyes to the forlorn gray of January afternoons where it’s too cold to rain; not enough water in the clouds to cry.
Victor looks through her.
The pour of her classmates’ stares that weren’t directed at her, but through her. As if she was nothing - no, less than nothing. Like she wasn’t even there at all.
As if her existence was more of a mistake than something purposeful.
A ripping, searing pain bolts down her left forearm, and Wanda’s stomach flips upside down. Her face pales, head slightly dizzy, and she presses her abdomen against her desk, rooting herself to consciousness. Her right hand snakes out from the sweater paw of her oversized school hoodie, tightly gripping her left forearm under her desk, squeezing right below the elbow, hoping to cut off the feeling.
Another pulse travels down her forearm and she shivers from the pain, suppressing a groan with clenched teeth, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. Sweat begins to form on her clammy brow. Deep breath in through her nose, out through the mouth. Relax your face, Wanda.
A raised hand and quiet request to use the restroom later, and Wanda’s sitting on the floor of the largest stall, forehead pressed to her knees, loud breaths in and out her mouth echoing in the empty, black-tiled room. With a shaky hand, she rolls up her left sleeve, whimpering slightly at the throb of pain from the friction.
A large, rectangular band-aid covers the swath of cuts she’d given herself the day before.
It was self-punishment. A swat of a ruler against the knuckles, a slap to the back of the head, a disappointed look from her teachers, her parents. It was her fault Victor left. If she wasn’t depressed, if she hadn’t told him she was depressed, he would still be here. Still talk to her, look at her, not through her. See her.
It was a cry for help. Even though her sleeves were rolled down, Wanda vainly hoped someone would notice something was wrong. That someone would notice she never wore her sleeves all the way down, always rolling them up because she got hot too easily and it was more comfortable that way. That someone would notice how quiet she’d become, her loud, overbearing voice reduced to a tiny whisper. That someone would see what she’d done, gather her up in their arms, and tell her it would all be okay.
It was self-punishment. It was selfish and stupid of her to expect someone to notice such small things. It was stupid of Wanda to want people to see through a barrier she was actively working to maintain. It was selfish of her to want someone else to be her hero, to fix her, when she knew damn well no one was ever going to come. She had no right to be angry with the world for not saving her when she knew, deep down, she was supposed to save herself.
But Wanda didn’t want to save herself.
A hiss sizzled out of bared teeth as white hot pain streaked down her arm again. Rotating it under the sterile white light, she examined her wound under the translucent band aid, replaying how she’d done it.
She tore open one of her box-cartridge razors, carefully removing one of the blades. She’d used a new one, of course - her adoptive mother was a doctor, and Wanda wasn’t stupid. She didn’t want an infection, didn’t want to invite more problems than she already had.
With trembling hands and tears stinging her eyes rubbed raw from hours of crying, Wanda cleansed the blade with hand soap and water in her bathroom sink. A small box of band aids rested on the counter, ready to apply when she was done, along with a bottle of Bactine to spray on and let dry before that. And that’s only after she’s rinsed under ice cold water and gently patted dry, of course.
The injuries were minor, not anywhere near deep enough to scar, let alone threaten her life. Wanda had done everything right - had sanitized her tools, properly disinfected and treated the wound.
So what the hell was wrong with her? What the hell was this searing, throbbing pain?
Her forearm spasmed in response to her thoughts. As if an old injury was reopening deep within her, a lesion that had stretched down to her tendons and veins. The pain was like the ache of a hacked off limb on a rainy day, the bad weather, the bad memories, reminding the nerves of the traumatic event, causing them to contract and throb and ache as if reliving the moment. As if a seething wildfire with a will of its own had awakened in her arm, her rushing blood fueling the flames. Except there was no traumatic event, no hacked off limb, no catastrophic injury, hell, not even a scar. She couldn’t uncover the point of entry for the enraged fire revenant nesting in the tangled arteries and capillaries of her arm.
So why the hell did it hurt so fucking much?
It made her angry. Her arm had no right to hurt the way it did. It was just a few scratches, for fuck’s sake. Her own cat had cut her deeper before. This was pathetic.
It made her scared. What if she had done something wrong? What if she really had cut something important?
It made her sad. It had been over fifteen minutes. Class was over, lunch was starting. No one had come searching for her.
Another ten minutes go by. She cries a bit. While she hates crying, she needs what comes after.
The numb.
The pulsing pain and echoes of a rampaging fire revenant die down and eventually stop. Wanda eventually stops crying as well. The screams in her head stop. The pouring of the concrete stops. Everything stops.
She rinses the tears off her face with cold water in the bathroom sink. Her face is slack and blank in the mirror. Eyes empty, lifeless. No redness, no swelling - as if nothing had ever happened.
Numb.
Wanda doesn’t fight it; she welcomes it.
She doesn’t go to the study room anymore. She has no reason to go there. At first, Wanda sits in the library, smiling sardonically to herself at the irony of it all. She now sat where Victor used to sit. To be alone, isolated.
Then one day, she glanced up and saw him. Victor. In a study room. With other people she didn’t recognize. An expression of laughter on his face, preserved in the glass walls of the room.
Wanda spends her lunches and free time in empty classrooms instead after that day.
Wanda becomes a ghost. With no friends, no one to talk to, nothing to say, she goes days, maybe even weeks without a word leaving her lips on school property. She goes to her classes, sits alone, does her work, then leaves.
In some classes, ones where her professors and teachers have some semblance of a heart, she presumes, they notice the change. The outspoken, loud, confident, vibrant flame of a girl turned into simmering ashes on the edge of the room, in the seat farthest away from everyone else. Occasionally, they corner her, attempting to get her to speak, to make friends, to open up to them. She figures it's more polite concern, professional liability to intervene, than anything else. So she refuses.
Her obnoxious laughter and heavy footsteps down the hall as she found acquaintances to hang around between classes are replaced with a misty silence. Light and dewy, enveloping Wanda in an aura meant to shroud her from the consciousness and recognition of the world. Following her wherever she went. Or maybe guiding her footsteps to her next destination.
Shimmering, emerald eyes, luscious and full like new leaves looking up into the summer sun deepened and bled into a darker shade, like years of moss amassed at the floor of a murky pond. Now always looking down at her feet, the metronome pattern of left foot, right foot. She looked to know that her steps were correct, that she was moving at all and not simply imagining it. Wanda couldn’t feel the ground through her soles anymore, as if she were floating.
Ghosts are light. No mass to press them into the earth, into reality. They’re misty, surrounded by condensation that prickles the skin of passerby, obfuscating any solid form underneath, like opening your eyes underwater, refracting the light of any attentive eyes, bending and warping it away.
But most importantly, ghosts are nothing. Less than nothing. No mass, no shape, no volume - even nothingness takes up space. But ghosts do not. They are the silhouette of a thought briefly happened upon and just as quickly forgotten. Not even fully formed or acknowledged; gone before it ever truly existed.
A memory through glass.