Havoc

The Girl in the Hospital

Hello there.

Are you new?

I don't think I've seen you around here before but then I don't always recognise those like you here, there's so many. There's so many that I can count them on one hand but then next thing I know I've reach the thousands and I realise that I've double counted someone and another has changed their shape to make them seem new and I get frustrated and confused and I stop.

I choose not to count them any more.

Don't want to get lost in the numbers.

Then there are the ones without a face or a body and they're just a voice. A voice in the wind, the walls, in the cracks. The cracks in the walls, the cracks in my mind, the cracks in my body, in my screams, in my soul. Cracks that are all around me, threatening to crumble down on top of me and crush what's left of me.

I would watch out for those if I were you. Nothing good ever came from the cracks. Dark things lie in those cracks.

I should know, I was born in those cracks.

But perhaps you already know this.

Perhaps you've also come from those very cracks and are here to torment me.

Perhaps you're just like the others and came from nothing and maybe I've already met you before but you've made yourself seem like new.

Not that it matters. We all become new eventually.

Most think we're only new when we're first born but that's not true.

That is when we're brand new, and we're never like that again.

Then we learn how to talk and walk and once again we are new.

On the first day of school.

We are new.

The first time you make a friend.

We are new.

The first time your mother grabs your stomach and tells you that you need to lose weight. Don't you want to be skinny and healthy and be able to wear pretty thinks?

We are new.

The first time someone make a lewd comment and you realise you're not a person but an object.

New.

The first time your friendships break down and you're left picking up the pieces of your heart and self-esteem.

All new.

The first time you fall in love.

New, new, new.

The first time that love crumbles and shatters and you learn love doesn't exist.

New again.

The first time you die or the second or fifth or tenth time.

Shiny and new, except for the cracks. Watch out for those.

We don't always remember becoming new, even though we remember the moments like they're carved into our skin. I didn't. I clung on to the person I was, not embracing the new me that was being born with every second, every new experience, every action and reaction, equal or opposite.

It was one of these moments. One of these reactions that led me here. Lying in a hospital bed, once again. Only this time I'm awake, more awake than I've ever been and this time I'm not filled with tubs to keep me breathing and fed and hydrated. This time the doctors and nurses have no need to zap my heart several times to make it work again.