By Anonymous
*trigger warning for suicide & self-harm — heavy content*
...................................................................................
I.
Rip it out of your chest.
No God lives here. Your ribcage is not a temple for someone else, your bones not a home. Think of it like an exorcism. In the first breath He is heavy, breathing, here. You are mortal and He crushes you with that reminder. In the second breath you exhale. Gasping, giving, gone. It is like throwing your head above water for the first time. Finally you can spit out all that salt.
II.
Destroy its sacrifices.
For a God to live, another must die. You are tired of kneeling on the altar. How much have you given Him? How many hours, how many tears? When you lie alone in bed because it is the only thing you know how to do, you think of yourself as a lamb offering itself to the slaughter. You wait for the knife but it never comes, and your throat throbs with disappointment. You cry by yourself afterwards, alone on your floor, hurting and tired and hurting. You don’t really feel anything but you cry anyway. Every sob that tears out of your chest is like a breath you can hardly give. You think it is Him, claiming your offering out of your lungs.
Perhaps you have given Him too many things. You should know better than to give to a God that keeps taking. But you give him to Him because it is easy. He comes everywhere – when you are in class, struggling to pay attention, when you pick at the food you don’t think you deserve to eat, when you are surrounded by people but feeling more alone than you ever have in your entire life. When He is there, you give. It makes you feel worth something.
When you force yourself to sit through class, eat your food, and talk to people, you don’t feel better but you don’t feel worse. You want to rest but you know it is because your body is recovering, trying to reclaim what has been lost. When this happens, He is meek. You know He is hungry, but god fucking damn it, aren’t you? To hell with starving to feed someone else.
III.
Stop its rituals.
You wake up in the hospital and think, Oh. You feel everything, but mostly nothing, and mostly surprise. You don’t think you belong there. Everyone tells you you do, though, so you listen to them, even though you don’t really want to. Being here is acceptance. It means accepting that something is wrong with you, that something has happened that you can’t handle on your own. You don’t mind thinking that something is wrong with you. But when you are in the hospital, it means everyone else is thinking it, too.
The doctors ask you to walk them through the last few days. They are nice people, kind people, good people, too good for the likes of you. They look at you and await your confession.
You tell them the truth, but not all of it. You leave out the crying fits that leave you shaking and sobbing, holding your heart that betrays you by beating. You cry until you can’t breathe. Maybe this time your lungs will give up on you, too. You leave out the pain you can’t name that grips you from the inside out, crippling your voice. You leave out how whenever someone asks you “what’s wrong?”, you can never say. You don’t know. You don’t know. You don’t know. It just hurts. It hurts. You leave out your appointment where the doctor looks you in the eye and says, “Don’t suffer alone,” and you think, What else can I do? What else do I know how to do? Suffering is alone. You don’t need to share your pain. It has a home in you after all.
You don’t cry once in the hospital. But when you get back to your room, you see the shrine you have built for Him. Your uncleaned room. Your unwashed dishes. Your unsorted laundry. Your unread readings. To some you are messy. To Him, you are faithful.
Maybe it is time to clean your room after all.
IV.
Sometimes you crawl into bed unshowered, unbrushed. You feel like a man stranded on an island, hacking his way through brush. But there is more brush. There always is more brush. You know He looks at your messy hair and the clothes you have been wearing for a week and is pleased. He lives in those clothes with you. Their warmth and weight are His. Maybe that is why you feel like you are drowning.
And when you pull the blanket over your shoulders and head, you feel Him curl around your body in bed. You imagine that He is always cold. His hands snake around your waist. His hands find your neck. His fingers feel your pulse. He holds your heartbeat. This, he is saying, he is promising. I will take this.
Most days, you want to let him. You want, so badly, to let him.
V.
You pray to keep Him alive. You pray to keep Him alive, because it is easier than trying to keep yourself alive. The words come to your lips in passing moments. You clutch your headphones in your fist like a rosary:
1). You ignore the elevator for the stairs. As you walk, making your way down from the 4th floor to the first, you look over the rail. You look down. It goes down, down, down, until your eyes find the concrete floor at the bottom. You imagine how hard it must be, what it must feel like to let yourself fall. You are so jealous your mouth begins to water, and;
2). Your head throbs. The part of you that can still think makes you reach for the Ibuprofen and your mind asks you what other pain your bottle of 500 pills can end, and;
3). It is night and you are running, and your lungs hurt and your legs ache and you tell yourself that is the reason why you stop in the middle of the road for just a moment, hoping, praying, and;
4). You buy the pills you rip open the package you aren’t counting just hoping and crying and God fucking damnit, why can’t you take them? Why aren’t you taking them? Why are you crying? Don’t you want this? Didn’t you want this?
VI.
Disobey it.
He stays with you because you are obedient. When he tells you that class isn’t worth it, you sleep in. When he tells you you deserve to be alone, you don’t answer your phone or your door. When he asks you for your time you give it willingly, sitting upright in your bed for hours.
You see your own reflection in your mirror on the door across from you. Your blood runs cold but you’re too tired to do anything about it. Stupid girl. Is this who you wanted to be?
(No, but He is all you really know about yourself, and while that might be partially sad it is entirely, completely true.)
So don’t let this be you. Go to your class. Chase after your friends. People are extending lifelines – take them. Leave your room and make the world yours. The quiet, secluded spots in the library you have scavenged, the trail you like running, the way campus goes gold when the sun is about to set – all of those things have been waiting for you. Let them stop waiting. Remember what it is like to feel alive. Imagine what it must be like to look in the mirror and see your eyes, not His, to feel your heart, not His, to wake up and think– to wake up and know: I am here. I am alive. I am here. I am alive.
He tells you you are wrong. Tell Him to shut the fuck up, because while He might be all you really know about yourself, you came to Duke to learn the rest.
VII.
1). You take the stairs again because they are faster, only you are going up this time, climbing 4 flights until your thighs are throbbing and your lungs are pumping out every breath. This time, you breathe slowly, ignoring the weird looks people give you as you stop at the top of the stairs. You breathe like your breath is fragile, precious, like it is something you have fought to keep. After all, it is, and;
2). You throw out the Ibuprofen, not because you’re scared you won’t be able to stop yourself otherwise, but because you want to prove to yourself that you can. And you can. It takes three flushes for the last of it to disappear, but as you watch the water swirl down you imagine that you see yourself. You imagine she is smiling, and;
3). You run at night again, not because you are terrified of what else you will do to yourself, but because every time your sneakers slam into the dirt you take Him with you, and;
4). You don’t want this, but;
5). You don’t know what you want.
VIII.
6) Lucky for you, most people don’t.
IX.
I am LOVED.
I MATTER.
I will be HAPPY.
I want to LIVE.
You write this so many times your hand hurts. You write it in pen, highlighter, Sharpie, green, blue, red, black, pink, orange. You write it to make your muscle remember, in hopes that it will make your heart believe.
X.
Take your time.
He is a God because he is everywhere. It will be months – years, even – before you stop seeing Him or hearing Him. Faith cannot be exorcised, only unlearned. You know every night will be a battle against Him. You know that sometimes, He’ll win.
You cannot kill Him in twelve steps. The medicine takes six weeks. The therapy takes longer. You haven’t even signed up for other treatment yet.
He is the most powerful thing that you have ever known, and it scares you. Thinking about living without Him, even, scares you. He has consumed you for so long that turning you back on Him feels like turning your back on a part of yourself, no matter how ugly, no matter how painful. You can’t even imagine what your life will be like without Him, or what you’ll be like without Him. It feels traitorous (deceitful, even) to let yourself think that far ahead.
You want to fight against Him. You are tired of feeling Him in your veins against poison. You want to fight, but you are afraid that you’ll lose. Maybe you will. But maybe, just maybe, you won’t.
XI.
Stop believing in him.
It is Friday night and you are alone. You have done your homework and picked at dinner, so now you sit at your laptop, scrolling through pointless videos. It’s like the visual equivalent of white noise – something to occupy yourself with before you fall asleep. These are the times when He is strongest, when it is just you and Him in your room. He slithers by your medicine, coaxes you to the shards of glass on your desk. Even with all that white noise, you are hurting. He tells you He can make it stop.
Can He? For six years, you’ve listened to Him. For six years, you’ve tended to Him, fed Him, worshipped him. For six years you’ve kept Him alive and you nearly ended up dead. He cannot make it stop. But maybe you can.
It is Friday night. It is a Friday night, really, one of many. You have surrendered many Friday nights before this to Him. And you suspect that you will surrender more, still. This one Friday, though, matters. It matters because you need to start somewhere to end somewhere. It matters because you are hurting, goddamnit, you are hurting and you need His blood to heal.
You pick up the phone.
XII.
Start believing in yourself.
You open the door at the first knock. Your friend leans in the doorway, lighting up when he sees you. As bright as he is, you recognize the eyebags, the cautious way he holds his arms to his chest. This hasn’t only been hard for you.
“Hey,” he says, an offering. He extends his arms out to you – another offering. You take both. “You said you wanted to hang out?”
You fix your shirt after hugging him. You’ve even bothered to put makeup on today. “Yeah,” you say, looking back at your room. “I’ve been in here for a while and I’m pretty tired of it.”
“Kinda sucks being in the dorm all day.”
“Yeah,” you say again. “I just want to see something different for once.”
“Then let’s go?”
You are already stepping out the door as he asks. As you stand there in the hallway, already you feel more vulnerable, like the overly-white lights and pale floors have stripped you bare. It feels like being reborn. You swallow out of instinct and taste the faintest bit of salt.
He heads down the hallway towards the stairwell, turning back to you with a tilt of his head.
You close the door, and you lock it.
Critique Thanks so much for your submission! I’m going to start with some general critiques before I get into some more nitpicky stuff. Of course, this is 100% your work and anything I say is simply a suggestion; feel free to take or leave what you want!
First off, I really like the format! The step-by-step layout ties the title in with the content and gives the piece a real sense of structure. The second-person perspective is also a great choice; it makes an already personal piece really reach out to the reader. This is a beautifully written story and has a strong, authentic emotional punch. Thank you for sharing it.
One overall thing I noticed: your capitalization of Him vs. him varies. I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but it did confuse me a little.
Here’s some small edits I’d suggest:
1. “You cry by yourself afterwards, alone on your floor, hurting and tired and hurting. You don’t really feel anything but you cry anyway.” This is, to me, contradictory: you say “hurting” but think you say “you don’t feel anything” right after. Just wanted to bring that to your attention.
2. (Same paragraph): “But you give him to Him…” I think you meant “give in to Him”?
3. Your mention of Duke kind of throws me out of the flow of the story. Even though you never came out and said it, I could tell by your sense of place that you were on a college campus. I like the idea of this piece transcending Duke and existing in some unnamed college. It makes the second-person perspective more applicable.
4. Your lists within the list (about the stairs, the Ibuprofen, etc.) are masterful. I love the contradiction between the two; it says a lot about the development of the story.
5. Under XI: “It’s like the visual equivalent of white noise – something to occupy yourself with before you fall asleep.” This is tiny, but I’d remove “with” after “occupy yourself”. It takes away from the flow of the sentence.
As I’m sure you already know, you’re a fantastic writer. You build up small details to establish a setting and a character without wasting time listing qualities outright. I didn’t notice anything huge I would change! Great work and thank you again for your submission!