It was under control

seven

Jules

I still remember when red use to be my least favourite colour. I would always waste it by drawing on myself, using it up so it was no longer in my collection, and preserving my favourite colours like yellow or purple. I remember when my arms would be covered in red doodles and random lines, always staining and staying for a week. Mum would always get angry and shout at my red coloured face, "Fuck sake Jules what have you done now?" Emphasising the use of her poor language to me even when I was young, while my 5 year old self would glare innocently up at her with my sparkling blue eyes, never understanding why mum would get so mad over the smallest things. You see I wanted to be just like mumma, red bruises and scratches all over. While she would usher me into the bathroom to scrub the vibrant red ink off my body. Mumbling to my father, "honestly that girl will be the death of me, the downfall of the family!"

However as I got older, red became one of my favourite colours but for different reasons, however I still didn't like to preserve the red, no, dark incisions irritated my skin; the thick red blood tainting and covering every inch of my body, giggling to myself, "look mumma, i'm just like you! I drew with red ink again..." As I laughed with a gargling stomach laugh, while I peered at myself in the mirror, the ghostly corpse that wore red, I finally realised that mother was right, I was the downfall of the family. The disappointment that no one wanted anything to do with, but in reality, I was just the blueprint of her, and she really wonders where I get it from.

Oh and how I remember when I use to be daddy's little princess, oh how I remember when daddy loved me. Constantly playing games around the house when mum was out, hide and seek being my favourite. "Where's my little angel gone?" He would murmur, while a sequence of mini giggles arose in the bathroom, as I hid in the bathtub; dad would run through and pretend as though he was going to turn the water on, all over me. "There's my cheeky princess!" My dad would stomach laugh, "I found you! I found you!" He would chant while sweeping me up and tickling me until I was sure my food would come up and my stomach hurt from laughing so much.

"Where are you Jules?" But at that moment in time, he was left with excruciating silence, you could almost hear a pin drop, no giggles emerged this time, "Julianna?" He begged only to be met with a second round of silence. While he headed for the locked bathroom where all these years I liked to hide. Aggressively knocking it down with his shoulder, as he was situated with his blood covered daughter, drowning in her own lifeline, shakily holding the blade to her skin, "Fuck Jules! Shit! What the hell are you doing idiot?" His face as red as my body, until he composed himself and dropped to his knees, "Where's my little angel gone? What have you done princess?" Almost as though he realised his impulsive anger and regretted it, his daughters last moments would be him shouting at her. "I can't lose you." My father would plead, "Please i've lost you."

So now as I play the spiky edges of my sternum like a violin, I tap my rib cage just as if they were keys on a piano, while the rumble of my stomach amplifies as though i'm connected to a speaker, my collar bones all too similar to a flute, and I hit my hip bone as the drums. The sounds of my suffering was not played to be pretty, but painful to the ear, as it is physically painful to me. While I attempt to romanticises and glamourise my suffering through a repetitive and harsh rhythm. The words that fill my head everyday becoming the lyrics, the words my parents drilled into me, the words I convinced myself on the daily to listen to, are now singing loud and clear for everyone to hear.

You will never be good enough.

You are not sick yet.

Disappointment.

Starve yourself.

Make that heart stop beating.

So when I die, do not sit at my grave and tell me how much you loved me, how much you truly cared for me and how much you now miss me. Because they should of been said when I was alive, I wished they were the words I heard. Because where were you when the showers started to sting, the calories were being counted, the stepping on the glass every hour, the body checks and the dying skeleton that sat near you. Where were you?