A Monster Was Born ✔️

The Notes Remain Untouched (Part I)

Here is a girl who collects journals. About a hundred of them so far, all blank and unwritten. She piles them in her closets, stacked like the colors of a fading rainbow.

Why do you not write in them? I ask her. Why do you waste them when there are so many hungry children to feed, to whom the words act like saviors brightening up their souls of sorrow?

"Shut up. You're annoying."

She gets up and walks away to her bedroom window and I sigh in exasperation.

But when she thinks I can't hear her, she whispers under her breath, "someday", her voice quiet, as though dreaming.

And when her eyes close, her soft, delicate face reflected on the sliding glass, dark hair floating around her in tangles, all I could think is what a waste it all is, for her beauty and love to have such potential in raging war upon these pages if only she were not reluctant to wield it. Children are indeed naive, but experience is what changes that. I just hope it won't break her in the end.

Looking up, she stares at me with large, brown eyes, like a doe's.

"You won't abandon me, right?"

No, of course not. How could I, when you have the gift of diamonds, making all that you touch glow and sparkle beneath you?

She smiles. The shape of it makes me feel warm inside. Then she sees the clock and gasps. "Oh, no! I am late for school!" With quick, swift movements, she packs her bag with all her notebooks and notes and electronics and leaves, closing the door with a loud thud. She always leaves me behind. She says it's because she doesn't want people to know the secrets they could torture out of me but I still feel sad nonetheless. With overdue patience, I bid my time until my master returns to my side, imagining the elegant fingers hovering over my pages.

However, when she returns that evening, she feels like a different person. No longer delicate, but like the clashes of a thunderstorm, her face red and stained with tears. I am shocked and horrified. Even the words that come out do not appear to be strictly hers, but of a girl hidden and lonely she kept inside the dark world she lives in. They come in clusters and between gasps and are hard to understand because of her ragged breathing and the new splashes of tears that threaten to break out of her eyes. Talk and scream and talk, only to break down into sobs. That is our afternoon, one I have never experienced with her before.

I feel powerless, saddened, worried. As her protector, I fail. As her true friend, I fail. As her magic, I also fail. But before I hang my head in resignation, she cries out. "I hate her, I hate her, I hate her..." An idea comes to my mind. I tell her to write her feelings inside of me, her most prized journal. You hid your voice for too long, I tell her. Me and the others you keep locked in and buried in heaps, collecting but never assigning us to a purpose. It is time to come out. It is time to make it sing.

She opens me up with a new sense of urgency and begins to write. She writes and writes and writes. Her pen moves as though in a violent trance, cold blue ink spilling in between pages. She no longer seems to hesitate and as she recounts, I move through the story with her.

It started in school. Everyday in that place was like a nightmare, where adults drain the artistic soul and fill it with words bland and useless. The students, too, rendered helpless to the judgement of others, constantly comparing and deciphering their worth. Thus, the few gems one could attain in that place were precious. And one such gem for this girl writing on me was him, Mark. They would sit in the library studying. Anything from calculus to biology to history, he could sing it to life and she would feel safe and secure besides him. A few times after school they go behind the stairs to make out. She loved the way it felt when his fingers touched her body, rubbing her breasts, and planting kisses to her skin.

You did all that and never told me? I cry out in alarm. What if you had gotten pregnant? Do you even know how to use protection?

"It's fine," she says, exasperated. "It was never that big of a deal. We would never have been careless."

She continues to write.

They were best friends, but it was more than that, because he was also her only friend. She was too shy to make friends with anyone else and they all ignored her because of that. He trusted her secrets to her and she did the same in return. Until earlier this week, that is. She stole him from her. That disgusting annoying b---

Before she could finish writing, she burst into tears. She isn't the girl I grew up with. Vengeance and hatred burns in her heart, and if she reacts too slowly, she would quickly be consumed by her own fire. I try to calm her down, but she ignores me and the tears she shed soaks into my pages.

"Why? Why does everything in my life come down to this? Even the one thing I had...taken away. I can't even see him anymore. Every day, the person he wants to be with isn't me, it's her! Why? Am I no longer good enough? Am I ugly or hideous to him? I was enduring it, I was trying so hard. But this morning, they were...I can't stand this anymore."

Oh, girl. I shake my head sadly. It's not you. You're perfect. Who knows what he was thinking? Does the butterfly care about whether or not the cockroach thinks it's good enough?

"Shut up! It's not that. You're not getting it at all!"

I don't say to her to calm down anymore. Anything sympathetic I say would be useless, only to exacerbate things even more. Assuring her, 'It's going to be ok' is like having new distance and 'he doesn't deserve you' only adds to the nest of cliches.

Do you know the tale of the witch Circe? I ask quietly.

"No," she responds, sniffling.

She was in a similar situation as you, once, when she felt unloved and betrayed by her own family for something better. But then she learned sorcery and whenever idiotic men sail close to her shores, she turned them into pigs. Pigs, because that's what those who wrong you are like on the inside.

She looks at me suspiciously. "So what do you suggest I do?"

Well, isn't that obvious? You turn her into a pig.