I don’t feel anger any more. I ate all of my fury long ago. Perhaps some lingering traces of it are still clinging to the lining of my stomach, waiting for a chance to explode.
Since I moved home, I only feel sadness, or numbness that feels blue and heavy the way sadness used to. I don’t know where my mind has gone. It feels as though I have left everything of myself in the past and closed the door. Now I can hear the beating of my heart in another room. I float down endless, empty corridors looking for something that resembles me and find nothing but images and words that I struggle to make sense of.
There are years of my life that have gone missing. I am the seamstress of my own narrative, carefully sewing together the scraps of memory I have left, hoping to create a tapestry that tells a story that feels true. I greedily hoard any cuts of memory gifted to me by the people I know. My imagined, patchwork life is all I have to hold on to.
At age 21 I started to develop arthritis in my right hand. I have never learned how to grasp things gently.