Tattoo

I’ve always been a bit of a pessimist. I mean, I don’t mean to be, but when I hear something good, I automatically search for a bad side of it. I can’t linger on the good news, because by the time I’ve registered it’s good, I’ve already found the bad, and instead of smiling, I grimace, because all I have fixed in my brain is the bad side.

It’s depressing really, I’ve never felt that positive rush when someone says something good, it’s instantly drowned out by these feeling of deathly expectations, even if I can’t find a bad side I can count on that feeling to ruin it all until I do find one.

That’s why people don’t like me. I take everything seriously, I can’t help it, I understand it’s a joke, but all I can think about is how I would feel if I found out people were telling jokes about me, and it doesn’t feel good. So I can’t laugh, maybe a small, forced smile as a half hearted attempt to fit in, but I just can’t make myself laugh.

I tried it once, and it made me feel sick. I don’t know how those smiley people can do it so much, it hurts my stomach, and my throat, and it makes me feel dizzy. Not to mention how stupid you look in an over-exaggerated attempt at expressing amusement. It doesn’t make sense to me why you would want to put yourself through that humility, and pain, merely to make someone feel good about themselves, and to fit in.

Mankind are so stupid sometimes.

My eyes strayed away from the mirror I had been glaring at all this time, and towards the window where weak sunlight shone through, giving me the view of grey-tiled roofs and a patchy sky. I didn’t want to look at myself anymore. It wasn’t out of vanity I did this every morning, I don’t know why I did this every morning, but it was routine, and I liked routine.

I glanced back to the mirror, really seeing my appearance this time. Messy light blonde hair, faded grey eyes, ivory coloured skin and purple bruises hanging hauntingly below my eyes. Mum used to say it looked like I would fade out of existence at any moment, back when it first started. She would laugh after saying it, and I would force a smile, not telling her of how skin-clawingly empty I felt lying there for hours in bed, exhaustion pulling at every fibre and mind empty of dream-enchanting thoughts. I wouldn’t laugh with her though, it hurt too much.

Mum wasn’t even my real mum. She had dark hair and eyes, and was practically made of curves, the complete opposite to me in every physical way. Except for her skin, it was ivory like mine. When I had been growing up, that was the one feature I clung to, the thing I used to make myself believe she was my real mum. The one similarity.

When I was kid, I laughed a lot, but all kids do, I guess. Just most of them carry it through to their teen years, and their adult years, if they make it that far. I left humour behind when dad left us behind. It was my fault he left. There are no two ways about it; if I hadn’t been such a fag he would have stayed, and mum would’ve been happy.

Faggot, that’s what he called me. A useless, fat faggot who he was ashamed of. He shouted at mum a lot when he left, saying they should never have adopted me, saying they should of let me grow up in a grimy old orphanage. He said I would have been roughed up; straight as a board and a real man. He said that she pampered me too much, and it was her fault for treating me like such a girl that I ended up like this. A useless, fat faggot.

I haven’t slept properly since.

And when I do, it’s always drowning. Drowning in those tears mum cried, all the tears I cried, and that one, small tear dad cried when he walked out the door, shaking his head and looking disappointed. That tear hurts the most. It shows how let down he was by me, how I disgraced him so much he couldn’t bear to hold a household with me.

I was so disgusting.

The muscles in my hands flexed as I turned them to look at the underside of my wrist, staring at the oddly silvery skin adorning the underside of my arm in bundles of lines. It had felt so good then. I had been so angry, so frustrated, but there was no-one to blame but myself. So who better to punish than myself?

It started with a ruler. The only thing I could find, the edges were ridged, it looked like it would hurt. It did. I deserved it. It was possibly one of the bluntest things in my room, it took me a long time of continuous sawing at my wrists, back and forth over reddening flesh, to breach the skin and reveal red underneath. It didn’t even bleed; it was just a gaping red hole, spongy crimson flesh visible between the upturned edges of the wound.

The ruler hadn’t cut cleanly, the edges were ridged like the ruler, and torn like a starved desert. It was pretty, in the odd way. In the horrific beauty of something disgusting, meaning-filled but so insignificantly small.

Next time; I used a knife. A real knife, not a blunt edged one for children, a meat knife, for cutting meat. Which all I was. Useless, brainless meat. It bled that time, god did it bleed. Ruby red liquid seeped readily from the multiple marks, it hadn’t even hurt every time I pressed it to my skin, but moments later a strange throbbing initiated. It felt like my pulse was steadily pushing blood from my arms, I felt the thudding, the reassuring feeling of warm blood oozed across my skin.

My arm looked butchered; it was all pretty and red. But it didn’t have the simple beauty of that first cut, that one cut made with a ridged ruler was so, so pleasing.

I shook my head, tearing my gaze away from my pale arms and ran a hand through my hair, letting out a breath as if all my past memories were caught up in hydrogen. In the mornings, I liked to pretend cutting was a thing of the past, a childish way of taking care of things, but it felt so good.

“Jasper- are you up?”

My chair creaked as I jumped up in it, scared by the sudden sound of my mums voice from behind the door. I hadn’t heard her walk up to it.

“Yes mum.” I called, dragging out the m at the end how she liked it. It made me sound stupid, but it made her smile, because it’s what i used to do when I was little. Anything to keep her happy.

“Breakfast is on the table love, have a good day.” her voice grew fainter half way through her sentence and this time I heard her footsteps pull away, heavier than usual. She always carried the laundry basket around the house with her in the mornings, to collect everything.

Slowly, I pulled my hand away from my chest where it had shot up when she scared me, and rested it back down in my lap.

School.