It was on a groggy, humid, late summer morning which hadn’t broken but rather complemented the languid night, that I learned that breakfast is the most dangerous meal of the day. I knew I should’ve skipped it and waited until noon for lunch. I don’t know what got into me. Was I scared the coffee would upset my empty stomach? Was I too numbed by fatigue to realise it was almost lunchtime and I’d have to eat again soon? Were the apples that good that summer I couldn’t resist dicing one and throwing it into my bowl of granola? They were not, but that morning, I held the knife differently. Steady, rhythmic slicing was replaced by an absent-minded yet tense grip. I gazed at the knife in a tired obsession. It was the only thing I could really see or think of. And yet then, I felt strangely disconnected from the act of cutting and myself. My head was so invested in the tool I was holding and its possibilities in my hand, while I felt like I could see myself prepare breakfast from above. I was so invested in the means of my action, but the act itself seemed so distanced from me and my body.

I guess what followed might have been an attempt at reconnection. I tell myself that in that moment I had to realign those three elements. My thoughts, my actions and my body. Knife, cutting, wrist.

Not applying any pressure, I rested the blade on the skin folds of my wrist, those wrinkles like dotted lines luring me to connect the dots with the red pen I was holding to correct my body.

I was held back by the sudden force of this newfound unity, the sinister clarity of the brief contact shooting me right back to the safer, slightly less uncomfortable, yet endlessly more disorienting state of fragmentation. A state which made me call you.

[…]

The cobbled terrace you’d picked to meet me made the tall, trendy stools we sat on wobble with my every gesture. Parasols blocking already diffused sunrays, a static murmur rarely interrupted by shafts of deliberately muted, self-conscious laughter, … This environment was eerily different from the usual setting of our conversations, a meeting room crammed between two classrooms on the top floor. A small nook that was equipped with a sizeable table in the middle and two therapist’s armchairs in the back by the wide windows. I missed the air of safety that room exuded. I missed sitting beside you and not facing you. I missed the solace of believing I could at all times touch both walls without having to fear they’d close in on me.

The hushed, seemingly performative enjoyment that surrounded us then on the terrace gave me the impression I had to watch my words and keep my voice down. An impression that wasn’t aided by the fact we were sitting above everyone else. All the other occupied tables were regular ones that had chairs that actually allowed you to keep your feet on the ground, which made me envy the customers sitting at them. And at the same time, I was suspicious of them, for they seemed to turn all quiet when I started talking about breakfast.

Even though I tried to avoid looking you in the eyes while I spoke, I couldn’t help but catch glimpses of a face that grew incrementally more worried as I laid out the past couple of weeks for you. It seemed as though my words were slowly dragging down your chin from a look of genuine concern to one of restrained shock. Your blue casquette seemingly sank with it.

‘Do you have any idea why you do it?’

I looked away in shameful ignorance and scoured my mind for an answer. Still stuck in the thick mist of that groggy morning I replied, ‘Cause I feel ashamed.’, after which I briefly squinted my eyes so that I could see you without having to look you in the eyes. I then shifted my view downward to the notes that I’d prepared to make sure I wouldn’t forget to mention anything. Pretending to look for an answer in my smudged, jittery handwriting, I listened to the warm raspiness of your voice say,

‘Usually people do it, because they can’t stand the sight of themselves.’ You squinted back at me but only very slightly, in a look devoid of smugness. You were trying to get through to me. Your eyes a hand reaching out to me in the mist of the morning. We locked eyes and you wouldn’t let go. You knew you were right, and it was as if you were only waiting for my confirmation. I stared blankly at your casquette, realising I recognised what you’d just told me. It was what I had tried to say earlier, my lack of words before being a testament to what they had tried to convey in vain.

[…]

A few months ago, you had proposed to walk me to rehearsal. Two days till opening night and I had shut down completely. Ridden with a sense of dread and unable to subdue it, I struggled to join in the joy and the buzz of my castmates.

‘Please, have fun.’, you’d said before backstage, in a gentle worry. You’d been holding your chin with your thumb, watching me try on a pair of dress shoes to complete my costume. They fit, but I had been so tense that any covering felt claustrophobic. Curling and stretching my toes repetitively to prevent the shoe from locking me in, I said I would.

‘Please, tell me what’s up.’, you asked me later that day on our walk. My stylish but shabby bike rattled steadily on the cobbled street like the mill grinding the ideas in my head into uniform dust. I told you about the perpetual wriggling, the nights I’d rush out of bed on tiptoe to our medicine cabinet, scouring for some pill, some drop, some remedy we had. The times I’d held boxes of medication seemingly named after Romanian monsters strong enough to keep me down forever, contemplating whether or not I had been tired enough to make taking them the last thing I would ever do.

I told you about the pressure, the tension at home. How it could feel like I was suffocating in spite of the space around us. How I dodged embraces and kept my gaze to the floor. How I fled any confrontation and tried to dissolve the things I needed to but couldn’t say with my own corrective methods.  

I told you that I couldn’t imagine myself living very long and that I could only see myself proving my own presupposition. You nodded as we walked past jewellery and perfume storefronts already closed for the day. Whenever my grinding came to a halt, you asked me a clarifying question or responded in empathy, avoiding any therapeutic digging that would make me implode even further.

When we finally reached the glass entrance façade, we stood still, and you turned to me for a closing monologue that would put everything to rest, as the sun hid behind your head. ‘I want you to know that even when all of this is over, and we won’t be seeing each other as often anymore, I will still be here if you want to talk about anything that’s gnawing at you. My offer stands forever.’ And you stood there with your arms on your hips and your right knee bent slightly inward. You stood there wounded yet welcoming and I don’t think I’ve ever had a harder time trying not to hug somebody. It had been so easy to open up to you. I thanked you and as we parted our ways and I walked into the dressing room, I told myself I wouldn’t ever reach out to you, wrongly believing that that would be inappropriate, yet there we sat on those wobbly chairs.

You called me and my work spellbinding, said that I lacked any trace of malice, and I was by no means fundamentally egocentric, but I just couldn’t absorb all those predicates. They all suggested a nobility I couldn’t attribute to myself in that moment, so I just stared at you again, squinting. You got up wobbling and briefly went inside to pay for our drinks. When you returned, you sat back down and contemplated me for an instant. Then you addressed me in a sort of friendly scolding muted by concern and compassion.

‘I never want to see you like this again.’, you said quietly, and everything suddenly crystallised. You pinpointed the problem. It was as if I could see myself through your eyes. I saw a pale, restless, phantom of a seventeen-year-old, who was willing to go to lengths to correct whatever he believed was wrong with him for fear of not being or doing good. He’d created an addiction that was based on externalising his pain in mutilations that would always end up being insufficiently distracting and therefore asymptotically kept driving himself to the brink.

‘Can you promise me, you’ll never do it again?’

I couldn’t and I told you so. The confrontation I’d just experienced still needed to register. I clung to the belief that these corrections, the adjustments I wanted to make were necessary and I was afraid of breathing the wrath that was ceaselessly boiling inside of me.

I’m writing to you now, because I want you to know that even though I didn’t make the promise to you then, I have kept it. I know I’ll upset you in saying that I only do so for fear of disappointing you, rather than for respect and love of myself. I’m sorry. I want you to know that now, roughly one year after the promise I failed to make, the urges haven’t dissipated and they still dominate the life I’m trying to live, yet they remain urges, and I combat them with whatever’s there. Every morning, I wake up and truly try to have fun. Breakfast is still the most dangerous meal of the day, I still have trouble standing the sight of myself and I keep wondering how I might prove the presupposition that I won’t live a long life, but know that till then and forever I will refrain from my corrective methods. I promise.

© 2024 Emil Krastev