BEB: With You, I Am
By Samantha Freedman, Artwork by Caleigh Andrews
I am whole before I meet you, but I don’t have to be less than to look for something more. You snake your way into my bloodstream through a needle that I hold, I don’t know if I like this new feeling that is now rushing through my veins. Pump, pump, pump, pump. I glitch, I mutate, I turn, to mush. I don’t know how to wear this new part of me.
How to be again, when your insides, your rationality, and your self control are pulverized by a foreign substance of your own injection? My friends teach me that to be is to love, Catholicism teaches me that to love is to give without asking. I love, I am, I try, to be. A ballerina, I dance around you, always on my tiptoes—don’t make too much noise, don’t ask questions, stand clear of the distance you create but don’t stray too far from the borders you mark, delineating the compartments of your life in which I am allowed to exist. I fall into boxes, I am given a shape.
***
The first time, I remain static, letting your hands wander. It’s not that I don’t want this, I just don’t feel much of anything right now, and my indifference is no match for the closeness you have granted a girl who draws no boundaries. I am surprised by the force with which you want, by the intensity with which I feel alive because I am wanted. I get drunk off of this, not the wine. I learn, here, that my body fits perfectly in the space I felt between us, and I gladly, begrudgingly, casually, fill it.
The second time, the third, the fourth, I push my body into yours; this way, you can feel me, this way, I am. Your hand glides down my back and each place it traces over is brought into existence, in the darkness of this room with your eyes closed, I feel seen. I bury myself in the arms that affirm me, I am, I am, I am, I am.
***
I
Feel
Like
A
Person.
I am a person who is normal, who feels things other people do, who does things other people do, who has been awarded a title of personhood. I am…doubtful? Like a person with a sinking feeling. I can’t seem to get across to you, but I refuse to stop reaching. Or maybe I don’t reach for you. Maybe I just extend my arms, and it’s always me pulling you up when you’re tired of feeling down. I do this for you. For me? For you. It tires me to sit here with my arms outstretched but it’s what I was taught and it’s what you deserve and I think it can get me this feeling that I crave so deeply. In the end, I hold on to the hope that your actions and mine might make you happy. Maybe I’m not a person after all.
***
You tell me that this isn’t working, or maybe it’s a question, but I don’t answer questions about how I feel. Instead, I latch onto your incapability, grab ahold of your guilt and self hatred and prepare myself to unravel, slowly, slowly, slowly, like the wheels turning in my mind as I calculate the fastest way to make you not feel so bad about hurting me. Spread thin, I am a blanket, ready to wrap you up in warmth and love, I just want you to feel warm and loved. In your room at night, I am with you, in your silence, I am with you, we haven’t spoken in a while, but I’m still with you. Where did I go?
***
It is strange, to feel nothing—to feel like nothing—when I know that I am, that I can be, without you. I am, I am, I am, I am. Sad. Pathetic. Okay? Is this what you want? Can I do anything other than give you what you want?
***
I smile. I laugh. I dance. I’m still a friend, a sister, a daughter, a self. I tell myself this, I feel this sometimes, sometimes I let myself be held and cared for and sometimes I believe people when they show me they love me. I’m getting there, okay? I’m okay, I am. I am, I am, I am.