Mother Moon

January 30

The stars are out tonight.

I’m looking at them now. So small, so dim, so frail, but there are so many of them. I can see them through the inky silhouettes of the nearby trees. They peek out like they’re playing hide-and-seek, like if they pop out and back enough times, they’ll make me smile.

My head hurts. A numb kind of pain. Not sure why, but I think I’m dehydrated. Yeah, that’s probably it. I’d give anything for a cup of cold water right now. A clear, frosty glass of water, topped off with ice? I can feel it now, wet in my palms, cold on my tongue. Somehow writing about it makes it worse.

I’m stuck. I’m stuck and I can’t move and I hate it.

I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it.

February 2

No stars tonight, but I can see two moons. One in the sky, where she belongs, and one on the surface of the lake outside.

The moon is bright. She illuminates the smudges on the window like sun through frost, and here I sit, staring up at her, admiring her beauty. If I’m trapped, at least I have this small comfort, that the moon is here with me.

Oh, shit. Blood on the paper. Ignore it, won’t you? I hope I don’t get it on my blanket.

Shit. I did.

But that reminds me. Today, in math, I was doing this worksheet Ms. Kinney handed out. I hate math more than anything else in this world, so I didn’t think things could get any worse after she gave me a paper full of equations, but then as I was trying to work them out, one of the cracks on my knuckles split and before I knew it there were spots of blood dotting my stupid little math problems.

So I started doing exactly what I’m doing right now. Raising my hand up to my mouth every now and again to suck the blood from my dry skin, like some kind of dyscalculic vampire. The boy across from me, Harry, kept looking my way, and the whole time I tried to hide the red splatters under my elbow while simultaneously sucking at my finger.

Safe to say it wasn’t the best day.

But I’m home now, safe, warm, here in bed, looking up at the moon while she looks down here at me, in my soft cage of blankets and pillows.

February 15

No moon, no stars. Sorry it’s been so long. Bad couple weeks.

I meant to write but I couldn’t, because this journal fell on the floor. And I know it’s stupid, I know it’s asinine, but I couldn’t bring myself to pick it up until earlier today. And I Cloroxed the hell out of it so now the cover is clean as all get out, but even now I’m feeling anxious as I write.

After all, I can’t Clorox the pages. They’ll stain, and wrinkle, and rip. But they might’ve touched the floor too.

I don’t know. I don’t know.

My hands hurt so bad. I reapply lotion every night but even by morning, the cracks in my skin haven’t fully closed. They’re still open, raw from the washing. And then the hell cycle begins all over again.

I’d get up now to go wash my hands but I can’t, I just can’t, because they’re stinging and it would be wasting lotion to wash it all off now.

But I can’t stop thinking about this book on the floor.

The same floor I walk on all day long. The same floor my dog walks on all day long. The germs. The sickness. The bacteria clogging up under my nails, which are hardly even nails at this point because I’ve chewed and clipped them so short. I can almost feel the illnesses. They’re crawling, they’re in my nose, my mouth.

And they’re going to kill me. I can feel it now, the stabbing pain in my gut, the vomit as it burns my throat. The fiery fever burning up my brain as I beg my mother to take me to the hospital.

She’ll refuse.

She’ll say I’m crazy, that I’m not even sick, that I need to get a grip.

That’s it, I’m washing my hands.

February 20

I’m back, reporting live from–you guessed it–my beautiful bed. And the stars are pouring light through the curtains, and I’m not really worried about the paper anymore because by now the germs have probably died. Good times.

February 21

Mom saw my math sheet today.

She was rummaging through my backpack (looking for a calculator, my brother needed one for his homework) and the first thing she saw, apparently, was my blood-stained paper of equations.

She knows about my hands. Heck, anyone can see there’s something wrong with them. They practically glow neon red. I could probably direct a landing plane using only these raw paws and a runway.

But she’s never said anything about them.

I’ve wanted her to, sometimes. To look into my eyes and really see what awful thoughts have been churning behind them. To take my fingers gently in her own, to look at the wounds she would have hurried to bind up if I was a little girl again. To pull me into an embrace even if I fought at first, even as thoughts of all the handles she’d touched and doorknobs she’d opened flashed through my brain.

And then I could hug her. Hold her tight. And she could caress my hair, tell me I’m beautiful even with my raw hands and hair thin from my endless anxious tugging.

She could save me.

But that’s not what she did, when she saw that blood.

“Kimberly Ann.” Her tone was sharp. “You need to get this under control.” She waved the paper in the air before tossing it into the trash can behind her. “People are going to think I’m slapping you silly.”

And that was the first time she’s ever really acknowledged my problem.

So I put on some band-aids tonight. Maybe at least I won’t get blood on my pillow.

You know, it’s not half as bad during the summer, when the air isn’t so dry. That’s when my skin can really catch a break, even with the scrubbing I have to do. I can’t wait for the warm months to come back.

If I can’t have a warm mother, maybe a warm sun is the next best thing.

March 1

I want to leave. Let me leave, please. I don’t care that I’m only seventeen, I need to get out of this place, away from this bed where I’m trapped every night because I’m afraid of the germs on the floor, the entities lurking on every surface.

You don’t understand. Let me elaborate. All day long my heart is going, going, going, and my thoughts are racing, eyes flitting up, down, everywhere. Everything is a calculation, a logical equation I have to solve, or I risk disaster. Maybe I hate math so much because every day feels like a riddle, a code to break.

Did I touch that railing? Did I touch this handle? Did I feel it against my skin? Maybe I did brush up against it, but I didn’t feel it. Maybe my body, and my own senses, are lying to me.

Maybe I need to scrub off my skin the way Mom scrubs residue off her baking sheets, the way maids in old cartoons wash clothes with a tub of hot water and an iron grate.

And at the end of the day? That’s what I do. I pour scalding water all over my body and try to purge myself of the illnesses that threaten my life. I drown them in soap and tears. I breathe in steam until I feel faint and I have to stumble out of the shower, exhausted and sopping and burnt pink, but clean.

Clean, and safe.

But not tonight! Not tonight, because Mom let the dog in my room, and he climbed into my bed! And I can smell it. I can smell his paws and fur in my blankets, which used to be so clean. So safe.

But now I have nowhere to go to be free from the fear. I can toss and turn all I want, but the fact remains: I am sleeping in a contaminated area.

If it wasn't so late I'd pull the air mattress out of my closet and throw one of my old clean sheets on it. But that would wake Mom and Billy up.

March 6

I washed my bedding a while ago. Clean now. Tried to talk to Mom about the dog but she wouldn’t listen, said I needed to get over it and that I wasn’t going to die.

She doesn’t understand how real it is to me. Death. How near it always seems.

Maybe it’s because, deep down, I know I deserve it. To die.

There. I said it. Wrote it, I guess.

How can I really believe that?

I do everything I can to stop it from happening–or at least, to keep it at bay–but every breach in my rules of safety brings me closer to danger.

Humans have no idea how easy it is to be alive one day and gone the next. Car crash. Allergic reaction. Freak accidents. Diseases. Maybe I can’t prevent all of it, but I do what I can, crazy as it sounds.

And somehow, deep inside, I’m hoping Mom can come rescue me from this. From this swirl of aching fear. This weird feeling that I shouldn't be here anymore, that every day is borrowed time. This feeling that I deserve to be struck down, and by some reluctant, continual act of mercy, I'm still here.

March 8

I'm still here.

I'm still waiting.

Waiting for her to say something, do something, to help me. I know, I know, I should say something to her first, but I don't know how. I don't know what to do.

It's getting worse. I spend hours tugging at my necklace, washing my hands, clicking my pen in class in groups of three until it feels right. Until it does, I can't stop. I'm not in control of myself anymore and it scares me.

I'm watching myself fall apart.

I see other girls in my class with flawless makeup, pretty hair done up in braids, wearing Pinterest-perfect outfits. They laugh. They chatter. They touch their faces as they talk, pull hair out of their eyes and mouth, tuck it back behind their ear without fear of breathing in staph or any other germs. They rest their chins on their hands, the same hands that have to pass around work packets, pick pencils off the floor.

I wish, I wish, I wish I could do that.

But I'm too tired in the morning to put on makeup, tired from staying up til 3 am, scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing. Hoping the guilt will wash away down the drain, and the bacteria with it.

I can't touch my face before using ungodly amounts of sanitizer.

I can't wear red, as pretty as it looks on other girls, because it's the color of death. The color of blood. And through some irrational logic, I've convinced myself that if I dare to put on that maroon sweater at the back of my closet, something awful will happen, and I'm not ready for death yet.

Mom? Do you compare me to those girls?

Do you watch them and wish your daughter could be like that?

Pretty?

Happy?

Free?

Come get me, please. Look at me. Please take my hands and kiss them. Make them stop hurting. Kiss my forehead. Make me stop thinking.

I know you can do it. I know you see me. And maybe you don't like it: my thin hair, dark under eyes, permanent frown lines.

But I need you. I need you. I need you.

I'm still here.

Still waiting.

For now I guess the moon will keep me company.