Page 99 of Haunt Me

His voice found me. I could still have him, even like this.

But after a point, the Internet was not enough. The songs are not enough. I miss him like air. When I stood outside his first concert, I told myself it would be just this one. But this proximity to him, even if there were walls and distance and bleachers full of people separating us, was intoxicating. Before I knew it, I was following him around the state, listening to his voice as if it was my own, personal drug. Dad always came with me, until my panic attacks got to be too much and I was admitted in here. That put a stop to my following Issy’s concerts.

Now, I just sit here, in my room, and listen to his beautiful voice. It seems that’s how I spend my days, listening. Always listening to him sing, unable to do anything to stop his pain. (Is he singing about me sometimes? No, that’s absurd. Stupid.)

I have been thinking about ‘F’ and all the texts I sent her (to myself, I mean). I now want to have real friends to chat with. Real sisters. Am I allowed to think that? To want that? My head says no, but I know not to trust my head, because the monster is inside it. The thoughts are not mine—they are thoughts Solomon put inside it. I need to remember that. I need to fight them. I need to fight. Every day is a fight, and I will keep fighting. I will win, I promise.I will win.

You’ll be wondering how a sane, perfectly normal (I kid, of course) person as myself ended up texting her own self. Well, I was lonely. That’s it. But maybe creating entire conversations out of nothing was what made me start thinking about writing. About making things up and then making them real with words.

Then I met this boy, and I had so much to text myself about. I would send all these walls of text to ‘F’ talking about how I was going to eternal damnation because I was in love with a boy. I would sneak out of the house every few days, and pretty soon, every day. Because of him, I did all the forbidden things: I talked to someone, I touched someone, I looked at someone… I tried so hard to act normal, so that this normal, god-like boy wouldn’t see I’d never even been outside before. But I needn’t have worried. Isaiah would never judge me or mock me. I remember, we would sit under the trees and stare at each other like a couple of loons. I remember just smiling, staring at him. He smiled too. He looked like he felt like dying. I felt it too. I can’t explain it. Looking at him… it made me feel so much it was like constantly dying. And from the looks of him, he felt it too. Sometimes I would look at him, and his face was twisted in pure agony. In pure torture.

But all we did was smile.

Eden’s Email

I got too depressed to finish my last email.

But—progress. I have kept them all, I’ll have you know. My therapist says it’s great that I don’t compulsively delete everything I type now, even though she knows how much of an internal fight it is not to delete my messages like I used to. It’s almost a compulsion. The shame, the fear… I have to fight them with my every breath.

I think she hopes I’ll show her the emails, but that’s not happening. I won’t show them to you either, of course. It’s ok. They are for me. I need to write them. I need these words to exist.

I need the truth to exist, written by my own hand.

P.S. By the way, I did not delete all my texts to myself on my old phone. There are so many left. Especially by the end, I had stopped deleting them. Maybe deep down I wanted to get discovered, who knows? But they are still there. If the police ever give it back to me, I will reread them. Or not.

Eden’s Email

Confession: I still write to Solomon. I write emails and letters to him, which I never send. But it’s a compulsion, almost like I’m addicted to calling him ‘Father’. I have actively stopped thinking about him by that name, but… it still resurfaces. I need to get it out of my system. Like a catharsis. I wonder if I’ll ever stop.

Writing to you, my sisters, is the only thing that helps so far.

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