The weakness that makes us love.

In my dream you had a skeleton figure. Fragile, so destructible, completely unprotected. I watched you as you lay in the empty room and I needed to protect you, an instinct stronger than anything else. The isolated crib in the centre of the room, where you could be watched by them, where they could pity you because they didn't love you. I tried pulling you away from them, as the word 'anorexia' slipped from their lips, and in that moment, I loved you more than ever. You weren't the boy I fell in love with while awake, your personality, your strength, they were different; but inside, I could still feel you, I knew that under the shell it was you, exactly the way I knew you. So love didn't change.

(An odd phrase, "by heart," he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream.)

Possessions (Byatt)

You got inside my head. You got me terrified.

The way I love you, that is art.

I want.

Everything you want to happen will happen, if you decide you want it enough.

Fight.

I'm going to write something that I won't be proud of. (I'll try, but not really.) My stomach is filled with things it does not deserve, the lack of hunger makes me feel guilty, and I want to turn back time. I starved myself for days before, I promised myself that it was worth it, I gave myself nicotine in exchange for the strength and kept going for just one more day. The days I gave in I punished myself by making myself throw it all up. Bulimia has become a very personal subject to me. But I am not bulimic. I'm just like an amateur who tries something new and gets hooked for a while. I sat by the toilet and told myself I didn't deserve better, I told myself words of hate, and then I promised myself a cigarette once my body would be empty again. The cigarette became the light at the end of a dark tunnel. (I can never give up smoking.) Thing's are different today, a good different, but to me, everything is dark. Because I kept my promise, it really was worth it in the end. The end may not justify the means but for me it certainly did. It made me more beautiful, not on the inside (my insides are torn), but on the outside. There's something odd about all of this, I wonder if that's the real reason people hold on. It makes me feel special, like I have some sort of secret in my pocket and no one else can own it, it's mine, and it gives me a purpose, it makes me feel important.

Today I'm sat by this computer and my stomach is filled with cookie, cookies I never deserved. (Cookies I will never deserve.) I go back in time and wonder why I had them. It wasn't hunger or a craving, or anything in particular. I may not be bulimic, but I definitely have a disturbed take on food. I'm going to promise you something now, and I'll try not be proud of it. (A promise is only a hope.) I'm going to be beautiful one day, and by one day I mean one day very soon. I'm going to close my mouth and start viewing food as my enemy, because it is. My body is big and it can't be much longer. I'm going to make a promise now, as of right now, as for forever. On the most ordinary evening, with nothing to make it remarkable, I am going to declare war. I am fighting this as of this very second, and I promise you, it will be so worth it. So I stretch my hand towards the drawer, and pick up the half empty pack of cookies, and I send them flying to the bin. Goodbye everything that isn't a step towards perfection. I make an oath to make this my biggest fight yet.

A letter to dad.

Dear dad, I cannot tell you how long I thought about you. Probably my entire adult life I have spent talking myself into and out of writing to you. A part of me feels that I love you more than I love anyone else. And a part of me hates you, for leaving me, and for not even caring that you did. And what I hate most is, that whatever you do now, all those years that I lost, I will never get them back. I cannot express enough how much I wish you had stayed. We could have helped each other, dad. I know you don't know this but I'm you. All those questions that circle your mind endlessly, the ones that made you leave, they somehow found a way into my head too. And I can't help but feel that when you walked out on me, I lost the only person who could have ever helped me understand myself. I don't mean to sound selfish, you took that privilege away from me with you, all I mean is that you and I are the same, and you don't even know it, because you don't know me. You never stayed to raise the child that needed you most, and what you never learnt, is that I would have raised you too. I struggled for years, arguing with myself, convincing myself, refuting everything I had concluded and starting from the beginning, and when I finally reached a resolution, I felt calm. Nine years of slowly destroying myself came to an end. You are not a good person, I told myself, and you will never bring me anything other than doubt and anxiety. The way you have controlled my life over the past nine years without ever even being there is unbelievable. For the first time I got a voice. I stopped letting other people tell me what I should do. I wanted to listen, how can you not when people tell you he's your father, write to him, but I knew that they didn't know him, and they didn't realize that I transform my life into my everything. And now that you're gone, for good, for real, now that I've accepted what I've done, it's all coming back to me. The calm shore meets the storm again. He's a good man, she says, and I feel like I've been fooled. Because a good man wouldn't destroy the woman he loves, because a good father wouldn't leave his six year old child, because a good person wouldn't obliterate all the good in his life. For years I heard stories about you, nightmares, and I tried to make excuses for you, because that's what a good child does, she protects, and I needed you to still be my father, and not just a monster. And when I ran out of reasons to hold on, and finally walked away, I hear this, that you're a good man, and that you have a kind heart, despite all of your actions. They played me, and it's nothing but a cruel joke. I love you and I hate you, and that's as simple and as complicated as it gets. Hate is easy, it only had one layer, but love is endless, and that's the worst of it. If you love someone, however little, life is no longer black and white.

For you

Every time someone raises a glass I drink for you.

(I love you)

Love

I walk around the empty hallways and you're everywhere. The room is filled with you, your face stares at me from the picture frames, your scent whispers from every corner of every space. The silence is overbearing as it stares me in the face and there is no way to defy it. I pick up an album from your shelf and take a picture, Peter Pan, your beautiful face, your staggering soul which has complete control over my every action. I hold it and take it with me, I'll find you some place safe, I'll carry you right near my heart, as I carry your voice, your eyes, your everything, every day inside it. I feel you Peter, your every move speaks to me, every silence has its perfect meaning and I never lose it. To the edge of everything, that is the promise I made, that is the distance I'll go for nobody but you. You are my exception, the only one I'll ever make. I read you, I read you like the most life changing novel, filled with beautiful phrases that revolutionize my world. You are love to me, you define the feeling and give the word its meaning. I love you just, no reason, no purpose, absolutely no agenda. My feelings are just there, the most honest cry I have ever uttered. I don't pray for you to love me back, I don't ask or beg, or even expect. I just love, and love is the most real feeling I have ever experienced. I heard a myth. It said that if the emotional pain is real enough, it translates into physical pain, and all the symptoms are right on the outside. Now I know it's not a myth. My whole body aches and I become a walking cliche. I don't ask for anything Peter, I ask for nothing in return for what I feel. What I want most is for you to be okay. I need you to be safe, and happy, and loved, and in love, and inspired, and never alone. I want to protect you, but there is a whole ocean between us, restless waves separating what I want to do from what I can, so I pray that you have a guardian angel to protect you for me. You made me selfless, and I miss you every single day, and it never gets easier. To tell you the truth I'm terrified, because I know that life isn't perfect, and that the world can be cold, and that too many hearts are never healed, and that heartbreak sometimes becomes a lifestyle. Yes Peter, I'll wait forever if I have to, but I am so scared, because despite living with my heart, I see the truth, and sometimes the only ending someone gets is an inevitable crash.

I feel you like I have never felt anyone else, and I know that the way I feel for you, that is exactly the way to love.

Perfect

I washed away something essential, and by turning my body into a self destructive machine, I won. I reached out and grabbed perfection by the arm. She told me it takes more than that, she said that the price to pay for its possession is high, almost unthinkable, and that only the strongest, only the weakest, are willing; but that the surrender grants salvation. I paid that price; I went half way and watched my life transform itself. Now I am more beautiful, and with great beauty leaves great responsibility, but there is yet miles to go and the stakes keep getting higher. Perfection demands more, she grips at me and gives me a taste of an alternative future, but the future is never granted to us on a silver plate. We have to play and play dirty to taste its juice. She calls to me in a serpent like manner, merciless, ghostly, never satisfied. She pulls at me, and the voices take over. I find myself torn, I know the strength is there, I know the limitless weakness that breaks the wall is right inside of me, and all it takes is one single 'no' to make the deal. I understand the implications completely, and my sick body reminds me of the hardships to endure, the betrayal I am committing by being loyal to the wrong queen. But what scares us most is what we call to, tragedy enchants me and I reach out to grab it. The promise of tomorrow is interlinked with tragedy, one will not come without the other, and as I feel the pain near my heart, in my stomach, in my head, I surrender. Perfection, you are now my queen, and I serve to you as your most loyal soldier.

Dear Peter Pan,