Carousel

I can no longer feel the grit of sand in my toes; I can no longer feel the sharp, chill waves at my legs. Numbness has taken me into its icy embrace. I clutch tighter at my black woollen jacket, wishing I had worn something other than a flimsy skirt, yet thanking the sensible portion of my brain that made me rip my jacket from its hook as I stormed out the door earlier this morning.

I was standing there, on the sand I couldn't feel between my frozen toes, looking out across the August sunrise that felt like winter, gazing at the deep oranges, yellows and hints of red that drenched the shoreline with what seemed like fire-light. If I gazed long enough the colour would dance around my mind, play across the sky... I closed my eyes. I listened; carousel music twisted its way through my thoughts, haunting: my father peering at me through his sunglasses, a grin spread across his features as he laughed, one of his deep laughs he kept for times like this: looking at me, probably with a childish, wondrous smile at the painted horses of the 'Grand Victoria' as we twirled and whirled, and rose and fell, round and round, and as we smiled and smiled: together.

"Keira? Keira!" I don't remember him shouting my name...He was smiling...

Confusion broke into my thoughts and I glanced around to find the very same father standing not two metres away from me. He was shivering, bare footed and confused. The same expression that has creased his usually warm features in the cabin just now while I confessed everything.

This is what I want, I reminding myself. My life had become a series of monotonous events. I hated myself for not breathing when my lungs expand, for not truly seeing when my eyes opened, and for not fully feeling what I then felt. I never enjoyed hurting people either. Breaking away from them had to be better than making them suffer my pain. A clean break, no drawn out goodbyes, but they find a way to cling on when all I wish to do is leave them, to move on for us both.

Apparently, though, nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.

I feel like the edges of myself have faded away. That I have left myself in bits and pieces here and there, yet nonetheless I lack a true, tangible identity. I'm not clearly defined, even though society struggles to stigmatise everyone and everything with a label. I'm not specific in any way. I'm not whole.

I spun back around to face my lovely, beautiful sunrise. To hide my tear-filled eyes.

By now I was used to control. I craved it. Being in control helped, it soothed and set boundaries. As I felt the all-too-familiar sensation flow through me, I knew what I had to do. But this was not a place where I could do what I  wanted to: curl up and let the tears and sobs flow as they wanted, so that left only one option that I knew of: shut down. Empty my mind, fixate on something, and don't let whatever thoughts or words that surrounded me sink in. I stared at my sky, trying to focus on something else, anything else than my father's words. But the tears wouldn't stop and his words filtered through my defences. "not eating...love...die..."

I felt my face twitch a little, as I tried to stay in control but I made the mistake of looking at him. I could see the pained look on his face as he watched me ignore his speech.

"You're killing yourself."

It was obvious he was repeating these words from the expression that still drew lines of confusion across his forehead. I hated myself for making him give me this talk but so long as I kept my swimming eyes fixed solely on the lightening shoreline it would never...

It is long overdue though. "You should eat, you have to eat."

I hate those words. They think I don't know when I should eat?
The people I know all take their turns to give me these talks, but his is the worst, because I care about him the most. I'm letting him down, and if I dared to look at him straight I'd see it in his eyes. But I hate myself too, and I hate myself for hating myself in the first place. It's my own, personal, and very ridiculous carousel.