Article by Katie Rowley Art by Koli Razafindandy
In the dingy, poorly-lit, depressing second floor of Armstrong Hall; in his tucked-back office, cluttered with books and chairs, Steve tells me that this semester is my “swan-song.” It’s the ending. In a different book-crowded office, Brandon explains away my feelings of nothingness and pointlessness as a symptom of living in the aftermath. I am a ghost walking around this campus. It is all ending.
It’s been five months since I last had sex. Five months since I’ve been kissed. Five months since hands have grazed the curves of my body. Five months since I’ve felt desire for me radiating in the eyes of anyone. I kissed a boy in the back of my car in 2019, and I didn’t stop kissing different lips until April. I have never gone this long without the feeling of someone’s skin pressed against mine.
One month into my senior year of college and I feel nothing but bored. And behind in everything that is sort of important to me. One month in, and I feel nauseous all of the time. One month in, and the headaches have returned. One month in, and I’m going to bed so early that the sun still fills my room. One month in, and I get so high I can’t speak, can’t think, can’t write.
At his reading during the first week of first block, Brandon reads about a poet’s funeral, and now, I can’t stop picturing mine. I feel it deep in my gut: I am going to die before I graduate. But take that with a grain of salt because I swore I was going to die before 21. I couldn’t stop picturing a funeral. All of my friends huddled in black with their boyfriends and better friends. Every time I get high I think of my death, but I can’t stop swallowing too many milligrams anytime boredom seeps into my consciousness.
I think I am unlovable. A boy tells me that I should be worried about spending the rest of my life alone and, although I know he didn’t mean it like that, I cannot stop replaying the sentiment in my head. He doesn’t know I’ve been worrying for ages now. I stand in front of my mirror, "Nobody loves you and you do not love anyone” repeating over and over again in my head. I want it to be a freeing statement. I do not belong to anyone. I can do whatever I want. But, the confession reeks of despair. Nobody loves me. I do not love anyone. I fear I am incapable of love.
In May I wrote that, “I want to eat nothing and drink shitty wine and be drunk at a party with people I do not know. I think I will die before I feel love again.”
Sometimes I wonder if I have already died. I think I’ve written this exact statement over and over again, but it's true. I sit in the small quad that overlooks the Rockies and don’t recognize a single person walking toward the gym. Not a single one leaving either. I sat in this exact spot as a freshman and wrote about my shitty boyfriend from home and every bit of high school drama I could remember. It was peak Covid and I’m sure I was wearing a mask outside and no one else seemed to be on campus. I didn’t know anyone and that was exciting. And now, I also don’t know anyone. It’s weird, being a witness to your own disappearance. It happens so fast you can’t pinpoint when everyone stopped looking at you.
I got my first headache this summer. Obviously not my first-ever headache, but this one was different. I canceled a date with this guy I didn’t really want to see. I drove to King Soopers and I felt high. I swear I was sober, but none of it felt real. The key in the ignition, the feet on the pedals, the wandering through aisles to get grocery store-grade sushi and blackberries, the drive back, the two-block long walk back to my house. I sat in my room in the dark. I thought of elementary school.
I made a list of all the reasons I am unlovable.
The dead can’t write. It’s just a fact; they don’t have muscles to control their fingers to type or scribble down lists of things they see in the afterlife or lists of reasons why they died alone. Maybe that's why I have nothing to write about. My muscles and tendons and bone and marrow have all disintegrated and someone will find their dust buried somewhere on this campus.
I am too much. I have a working theory that I write better when it is cold and I cannot feel my hands and I am so shaky. A sentence I do not think I can say out loud: I am certain I would be loved if I were skinnier. (A sentence I am scared of even putting into words.)
Three years ago I brought a boy into my bedroom and now I get scared when I am too high.
My face is a combination of the worst parts of my parents.
I am too much of my father all of the time and too much of my mother when she is sad.
There is nothing here. I am barren. All of the boys can feel it once they sleep with me enough.
Tequila drunk in the kitchen of a house I am terrified of, I tell someone that my biggest fear is failure. I don’t fail. I’ve never failed a class. Never failed as much as an assignment. I think, in the kitchen, still for a minute, I guess I have failed relationships.
I think, in a classroom now, for a minute, I feel like I am failing right now. I cannot tell you what I am failing at.
I am so angry and so sad and so scared, I feel as though there is no room in my body for anyone or anything else.
I think all of my hair is going to fall out. Like an evil witch in a storybook. I stare at my reflection in anything/everything.
Carly’s mom used to get migraines. I am seven and standing on the edge of her parent’s bedroom. It is summer and hot and the blackout curtains are drawn; it is so dark. Carly is talking so quietly with her mom; I know it is because of the headaches but I cannot help but think it is because she does not want me to hear. We spend the rest of the afternoon stifling the sounds of our girlhood in the basement. We make spaghetti out of playdough and I fail to recognize that there will be a time when I forget what her basement looks like.
I fear I have gotten tangled. So wrapped up in my own thoughts; I have nothing else to write about. Nothing else to think about. I have become nothing.
I write lists about how unlovable I am.
I sit with my friends and I do things and I go out and I talk to boys casually and I have two dating apps downloaded on my phone and I have two jobs and I have applications to fill out and I have more friends than I ever had and I laugh and I tell myself I am happy but I cannot shake the knowledge that I am nothing but boring. (And no one loves a boring girl.)