mumbling underwater

voice notes to yourself are wildly unappreciated

It was a tepid night when juggling stick figures took over my screen as tumblr swallowed the insides of my flickering laptop screen. The clippy crabs were out of reach, so was the mighty bug poll race and my favourite mutual I was half in love with. She and I would send each other public ‘anonymous’ notes but we both knew the senders, always. The town was just big enough for two pathetic, self-proclaimed yearners. I went through my blog, scrolling down reminiscing, snickering and cringing as I reached the very beginnings of this degeneracy. Oh how sweet were those years, the first times I’d stumbled upon the ‘thinspo’, ‘nude’, serious fanfiction and the ‘edgy’ edgy tumblr posts. I remember my feed drowning with unimaginably skinny girls, skinny girls with parched lips, skinny girls with emo tattoos, skinny girls with tattoos from parlours they made of their bathroom floors and blades, skinny girls covered only in fishnets, not skinny girls covered in not even fishnets, seams struggling to hold in the abomination of mankind behind. I remember being so concerned then, wondering why ever would someone subject themselves to such pain and shame, leave this debasement, ‘performative’ vulnerability out for EVERYONE to see. Over time i just got desensitized more than I started understanding. Those nude, lined bodies very soon got clothes, strutted towards fields upon fields of flowers, holding hats, baskets, bouquets, birds. My base, nude tumblr was so very soon overtaken by the nude soul tumblr (judge me all you want; I was very young and wanted to fit in with the uber deep crowd of poets and writers who wrote fanfiction that’d make Dante proud). I formed friends here, became mutuals with the one girl I was all but in love with, groups of shrieking kids my age who only ever took a piss at things, grown-ups who trained me in the art of noticing and running away from grooming tactics and other art appreciators.

I’ve been online for as long as I can remember but from all my years of blinking at the rate of my mouse cursor, I’ve found this to be the kindest thing - a random person I used to talk to on some forum once wrote a short story about me, on the basis of the username I donned then, and well, shit we spoke about. I still think about it, think about him, think about the girl he wrote this for. Compartmentalisation is a scary drug, it’s wiped years off of my life but what you can’t see can’t hurt you.

For all its faults, tumblr and all those weird forums I frequented somehow fixed a lot of my body image issues. I think my mind may have just normalised the concept of human bodies seeing nudes upon nudes scattered randomly between gut-wrenching poems and ovary-punching fanfictions. You can’t tabooify the very things burning into your retina. That and the suicidality that was rising up the ranks those years, putting in the time and the work to go from being a mere thought, to a part of my personality, to my whole myth. Who would bother about a body that’s hollowing out as we speak?

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It would’ve been the perfect night only if it were quiet. I’d willingly drain the air from my room if it meant I’d never have to hear another girl shit about some shitty thing some shitty guy did and relay the same story to five different people; with no additions or modifications to any retelling, outside my door. (Chris Columbus should’ve taken notes from her.) It wasn’t quiet but it was beautiful. The window I was staring out of, overlooked a field of grass, mostly yellowed by swaying in the moonlight too much and dehydrating. The laundry room shared a wall with mine, which always seemed to be the biggest pain point for the laundry room for it would always do what it could to shake or soil the wall, lining all the washing machines, begging to be put down, along the shared wall, spouting tears that flooded the laundry room and watered the patch of grass besides it. One of those possessed washing machines was up and running now, trying to push itself over the edge, just enough that the pipes holding it prove useless. One of these days ill push it down, put an end to its misery. Not tonight though, my feet are frozen beneath the layers of socks and comforters and sepia tones tumblr memories, my fingers trembling as the ash flicks itself out, heart and ears pounding, causing hell for each other.

My birthday’s round the corner and nothing has ever felt this wrong. I used to pride myself in being a rational, logical person but one too many coincidences and I’ll start catastrophising about the smallest things now. A friend once told me about this one book she was dying to get her hands upon, but they weren’t shipping to the country just yet and even if they were, her parents wouldn’t have agreed to spend her college funds on a single book. I told her I’d find her a pdf at least by her birthday, two months from when we were having this conversation. She forgot all about it by the end of the day but I kept looking for the godforsaken book. I spent the entire evening looking for it then, visiting every Russian server I could find but the big, dark seas seldom ever swell or recede for lowly, sleuthing pirates. It became a personal joke; I’d spend whatever time I could find looking for it but her birthday neared and it was still elusive as ever. I was so incredibly worried she’d hate me for not fulfilling my promise- so I made her earrings, got her a necklace, wrote a letter, got chocolates, packed it all up in a paper bag with pictures of her and I plastered on every inch. (I don’t even know if the excessive gift-giving is overcompensation or fuel for some saviour complex anymore.) I still felt guilty and felt a switch go off in my head on her birthday, telling me this was the beginning of our end. We did stop being friends, years later, for wildly unrelated reasons but somehow the spiral coils the tightest around the day I made her that promise. It hurt not just because I felt like I let my best friend down but also because it was a blemish on my internet sleuthing record. Causation-correlation, I dunno but the hunt for the book (I still look for it sometimes when I miss her, or when I feel online ego bruising) led me down wild paths, took me to some of the worst books ever written, that I’ll be eternally grateful for having read. One other time, I promised a friend I’d find the link to a movie up, spent days and hours this time around too, with no results, losing this friendship too, different reasons obviously but what tickles the monkey-brain’s fancy more than pattern recognition? A week before, months after the movie-friend fiasco ended, my current best friend and I were talking about some movie she wanted to watch. I chirped in with a ‘i’ll find it for you’ as one does but bless her morbidly, chronically online heart, for she scoffed saying she needs no one for this, giving our friendship a few more months. The book friend told me, when we were ending things, she’d always keep me in her prayers, which surprised me so much because she used to be in the throes of atheism when I was barely tottering on the edge of skepticism but I guess the only peace we’ll ever find is in accepting people change beyond recognition sometimes. She’s still the same person in a way, and I still envy the people who get to see her everyday and share morsels of her life with her but distances weaken gravity.

“exams have started growing on me, i’ve all but started looking forward to them so I can panic-watch movies that’ve been on my watchlist forever, entertain the carousel of old friends that hadn’t haunted my memories in months. it’s the only time i think i let myself remember the whole lot of you. I love sitting by my window so, stuffing a chunky bedsheet under my door, praying the smell of smoke doesn’t wander out in the corridor to the hostel warden, coughing, shivering with the fan on and window open, listening to the song you played for me in the washroom that day to calm my crying. It’ll be my birthday in a few hours, ive been speaking into my phone for 72 minutes now, just so I don’t call you and make a fool of myself again. Im begging myself to not spill my brain in the open for you, deluding myself into thinking you see the shapes in the wrinkles that have been tormenting me all my life, hoping you catch the beat before the untimed snickering and sighing and sniffling; when I know my words have always turned on me. Sometimes I get scared this heart of mine will slip out when noone’s looking, so I keep my bloodstream choked with caffeine and nicotine and adrenaline from constantly embarrassing myself this way, just so I know it’s there. i know you never liked me doing any of this but i know you’d understand. in my head we’ll always be on the washroom floor, huddled, crying only because the other one is, [redacted] playing softly. i still love that song, i play it for everyone i love, they love it too. i can hear you laughing, cringing at this, honestly, i’m doing that well enough for both of us right now too but you know i have to [redacted]”