Tuesday

Megan Baffoe

1:43 AM

I am pretending that my left hand is not my left hand, but a left hand. This works, but does not help; because now, I have somebody else’s left hand lying atop my mattress for some reason, and it’s screaming bloody murder. Why do you hurt so much? I ask it. 

It just screams. I suppose it’s unfair to ask a hand what a doctor can’t diagnose.

It even hurt to change into my pyjamas; pulling them up hurt my fingers. Why? Again, we don’t know. And the hand has an arm, now; the arm is developing a shoulder. Growth, growth, growth, until my body is lying in bed with me. I close my eyes so I can’t see it, but that doesn’t do much when things aren’t really there.

It seems rude to push it out.

It’s late, so I shouldn’t turn the light on. I need my sleep. But I want to check for bruises. I often wish for bruises. There’s comfort in a bruise – it tells you where, what the hurt is. It’s temporary: you know that the blossom will fade to stem will wilt to nothing. Nothing extended, nothing invisible.

Why? I ask, again. The hand, just crying, doesn’t respond, but the arm blames the shoulder, and the shoulder blames my back. My back, of course, leads me to my spine. Spines, I know, are complex things, but mine delights in being one simple scar of incredible agony. All the pain is pressure; when I’m scared that something in my torso is going to actually break, I turn on my side. That calms down my back, but now my legs are touching, the pain sparking like fire at every crossing point.

I can deal with it, I tell the body. It stops screaming to laugh.

Fifteen minutes later, I’m getting up, turning on the light. I want to avoid the mirror as I go, but I don’t; of course I don’t; can you be addicted to your own reflection? Without my glasses I look like an alien, abnormally thin limbs and a swollen head; I spend five minutes watching myself move strangely, jerkily, holding my limbs awkwardly and tilting my head to the side like a horror-film doll, and then another three wondering if there’s something wrong with me. 

My hand reminds me that there is.

I get the Ibuprofen gel, and then another blanket. Pulling up the duvet to get inside hurts my arm. Using the blanket to cushion them helps my legs, which seem incapable of touching one another without quarrelling. It's normal for siblings to fight, I suppose.

My last thought is that it’s late. I hate it when it’s late. It’s always worse the next day if I don’t sleep properly, which is perhaps the most unfair term on this contract I never signed.

9:12 AM

When I wake up, the pain has settled itself in my legs and neck. My back only pulls when I walk, a child wanting attention, but it’s enough of a yank for me to limit any actual journeys to the kitchen. Today, my body tells me – from its position still lounging in my bed, propped up on the pillow – we will be staying inside. 

I don’t argue. You can do plenty in a room. I’m an expert in it, by now. I begin reading Wollstonecraft’s Maria. I trim the dead leaves from my peonies. I twirl in a butter-yellow slip until my legs give out. 

Then, I’m in bed again.

14:32 PM

The afternoon, thus far, is not nearly as bad as an afternoon can be. I wrote a poem. I bought a dress. I managed to make lunch at the right time. (Guessing wrong, you guessed it, hurts). Currently, I’m brushing my hair. It’s a very pretty picture, even if it doesn’t quite feel like a reflection – dark, frothy curls and a princess’ shell-pink comb – until my arm starts hurting.

I look at the picture again, and wish the painter had drawn the elbows differently.

Something immediately reprimands me – and yes, yes, I know, we are supposed to be nice to our bodies, but it’s hard to be nice to something that isn’t nice to you. The siren in the mirror starts singing. I wish I could whittle away my chin. The thought drops, rain in the water, and now I can imagine the squeak of the filed bone. Take the meat from my thighs; scrape, replace, redeem the skin on my back. What to do about my nose? I wonder. I had a knife in my hand, and now it’s a bomb, and now I’m thinking about my face all cratered through the middle, and I am alarmed by how unalarmed I am.

I need a shower, I decide. Days like this call for a shower. So I have a shower, and my body hurts more but my mind hurts less.

19:32 PM

I’ve eaten dinner. I even had dessert afterwards, and then I licked the guilt all off the spoon. I’m still floating, a little bit, but my stomach always feels part of me. How could it not? It’s anchored; I try and squirm, just to see what will happen, and discover that there are a thousand nails pinning it down. 

It’s probably good that I stayed inside. Had I had lunch outside today, I would have had to see the calories capering down the menus. But even in my box of a room there’s no escape. I tell Google every week that I’m not interested in weight loss; someone else will tell me about their new diet on the phone, soon.

It's that thought that makes me finish the cake. I might be mad, but I’m also angry. 

23:24 PM

Tonight, I take the other blanket into bed with me pre-emptively. The hum of pain in my arm sounds vaguely apologetic. If it doesn’t escalate, I might just be asleep before midnight. 

My body suggests, why don’t we have dinner together tomorrow?

Why not? I say. You cancelled all my other plans.