i burnt my hand so hard the skin grew into the bandage, and now i forgive myself for every love i'll ever mourn

understanding why I cling to everything, with a breakup halfway through.

I burnt my hand recently - severely enough to be sent to A&E by my concerned and gagging roommate, where we sat for hours together, playing cards and LUDO: King, the mobile version. I would love to recount an interesting tale as to the nature of my latest wound, maybe weave in something heroic or artistic, but truthfully I burnt it on a bowl of ramen. In a head full of pressing questions, obfuscated phrases from books, and general perturbations about whether I am appropriately upkeeping my relationship with everyone (everything) I’ve ever liked, there is, apparently, little room left for safety awareness. I poured boiling ramen from the pan, to the bowl, until the bowl overflowed. I was thinking about how good of a day I was having, how this was 100% the best ramen I will ever make, when it went all over my left hand. I had never actually screamed with pain before - it felt unnatural, and my cheeks flushed pink almost immediately for my audience of silicone pink kitchen utensils. After about 20+ minutes of running it under cold water, singing songs with the wobbly voice of a 7 year old with her first big knee scrape, and a few too many unanswered calls to my Mother in the kind of I want my mum desperation I had hoped to have trained out of myself by now, my roommate appeared. Gorgeous and well-dressed, ready to leave for the day. On her way out she heard my wailing, came in to ask what the fuck is going on, and promptly got us in a car to A&E - me writhing in the back helplessly as I gave in to the fact that this wasn’t just a small mishap, but something that will at least eat away at my day off. And that it was; we were there for 5 hours, hungry and tired, but satisfied with a unique bonding experience.

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about thinking too much about things. A very 20s paradox, as the name implies. I was raised by someone who revelled on throwing out anything that wasn’t being constantly used in favour of a clean home. I had toys put on eBay before they’d come out of their box. I once came home from school, with surprise, to my cat having been sold. She bought her wedding dress online, and promptly sold it once the day was up.
Why would I keep it? I’ll never wear it again.

My mother, in all her isolated power, does not hold onto anything but a grudge. If you love something, she instructed, you will remember it. She said this often, matter-of-factly, whilst taking medication that made her regularly forget my name. In my early years, she seemed unstoppable for this: she did not love much, and so she did not mourn much. Her life trundled on. I never saw her cry. This, to me, was the life of a strong woman. As I grew up, though, I watched as her Dostadning obsession turned to me: we stopped talking, she threw out as much memorabilia of my childhood as possible, and by the time I was 18, she had moved me into my aunt’s house with a suitcase, where I saw my aunt decorate the walls with every childishly unfettered drawing my cousin would create. It was this sterile upbringing, I believe, that made me so unable to let go.

I went back to the hospital yesterday to have the burn redressed. As the nurse tried gently tearing the gauze from my raw, new-born skin, she told me she’d never seen gauze be so attached to a wound before. I winced as she ripped, pouring saline solution everywhere in a failed effort to make it a little easier to part. And suddenly, as I watched my finger get angrier and angrier at the separation, I found myself full of forgiveness for all the purple claw marks I have left in everything I have ever loved as it tried to leave. This type of love: raw, heavy, and wounding, was written into my skin. It was encoded into my very body from the first breath I stole that I will always love everything as if it were the only thing I’d ever feel. And I have been so ungrateful for such overwhelming feelings, so regretful to have put myself through the turmoil. But in a sterile white room, the quiet hum of machines in neighbouring rooms, the deepest layers of my skin tingling from its first breath of air, I see. I understand. It is a part of me, or more so that I am a part of it. More fresh skin ripped away from the safe haven it had blanketed under, and the stinging grew stronger. How beautiful, I think, to love so easily and to feel so much, because really, is there anything more human? A bird would not mourn the bullet from its wing. A fish would not mourn the hook from its mouth. But I have watched past versions of myself crumble under the weight of terrible words from mouths I have loved terribly, just to get back up and plead the skies to be allowed to love them again. There are boxes full of birthday cards from distant family members I never speak to. Dead plants sit adored on high shelves. I keep everything I’ve ever loved, just in case.

I took a long break whilst writing this. I was expecting it to be a day or two, but ironically, the day after I wrote everything above, my boyfriend broke up with me. We live together, and I was looking forward to our life together.

To be entirely truthful with myself, and him, and you (because unfortunately, I can’t run from it anymore), we should not be together. For months leading up to it, I’d look at him and wonder if I was in love with him. I’d will myself to feel fuzzy and warm whenever we spoke, and I was desperate to make this life work, but I felt nothing. He was my best friend, he was patient and gentle and comforting, smart and funny and had a bright life ahead. But every time we talked, and it only grew in intensity, something was gnawing at my gut. And truthfully, you can see it in my writing; at the start of this post:

and general perturbations about whether I am appropriately upkeeping my relationship with everyone (everything) I’ve ever liked,

and in my previous posts, too - I took beautiful lessons that I had learnt about myself and my life and the universe, and I tumbled them into trying to convince myself it was for him. If I could take a beautiful thing, and make it about something that I wanted to be beautiful, maybe it would be. But it wasn’t, and the gnawing didn’t stop. It just leaked into every other part of my life. My writing, my job, my friends, even what I’d wear and watch and listen to. I was so desperate to believe I loved him that I flipped it and projected it onto him, and became terrified that he didn’t love me. I pressed him about it constantly. I stopped acting like myself in an effort to be someone he’d love more, even though I was perfect to him in the first place. Even though I wasn’t sure I loved him. I was miserable, and really, it had nothing to do with him. I didn’t want to understand what it was, because on paper everything made sense, and the idea of abandoning something that was supposed to be perfect was terrifying. What if this was my only chance at happiness? I was in love with him, and he is lovely, so why couldn’t I make it work? But whatever it was, he caught on, and after I asked him to really think about whether he wanted to be with me or not (in hindsight, an obvious projection), he told me we should break up a week before my 21st birthday.

And now I am here: 9:30 the morning after my 21st birthday, in which I went to bed alone at 10:30pm. And I am okay, because it is wrong for me to be in a relationship with someone I am not in love with, and I am glad to know there is goodness like him out there for me, and he will not be the only man to treat me kindly (something I have to believe). But I am not okay, because for the first time since I was 14 when I got my first boyfriend, my life has to be about just me again. Now I am faced with the fact that after my years as a child, coming home from school to sit alone in my room in silence, and eat dinner in silence, and get ready for school the next day in silence, I cannot fucking stand to be in silence. I wake up and put on a TV show I’ve seen 16 times already for the background noise. I open instagram to listen to the sounds of reels, not even watch them, whilst I clean my teeth. All just so I can feel less alone. I spent so long alone as a child that I cannot bear the thought of it. So I dig my nails into everyone who will love me to spend as little time alone as possible. But I can’t ignore it anymore, because if I run into another relationship to avoid it, the same thing will happen. This isn’t a cycle I want to be a part of. I want a real love, I want to have a life with someone - but I need to be able to have a life with myself first.

So, I will learn. My therapist told me to say I am in the process of learning how to be on my own, instead of that I have to learn how to, because just knowing it means I’m on the journey. But before this, I think, I have to learn how to be okay with just being on the journey. How lucky I am to be able to learn to love myself. What an opportunity. I am alive, and I am young, and I may have spent a lot of my life unwell, but I believe that it can get better. I have to. People will love me. I will love me.

My hand is healing well, a week and a half later. And I will heal too. And despite not being able to make it work with him, despite worrying about being alone, despite being afraid of what the future holds, I forgive myself. I understand why I couldn’t let go, even if I wasn’t in love. I am afraid I will be alone when I am old. And the truth is, I might be. Or I might have a loving family. I might be a drug addict. I might be resting after a long, fulfilling career. I might be dead. I might be famous. I might have a lovely friendship group in a nursing home where we’re all batshit insane and cackling at terrible jokes about our lives. But I don’t know this. And I am 21 years and one day old. I am at the very start of my life, and I have no idea how it is going to go, but I do know that if I spend it worrying about how it will be in so many years, I’ll get to that point and be upset that I wasted so much time worrying. I’m here now. I’m alive now. It doesn’t matter what it will be like, it matters what it is like. And it’s pretty beautiful. I bought myself flowers. I’ve recently made some really interesting friends. I’m starting to write again. I just got a pay rise. I’m going to go on antidepressants, and I’m going to be okay. And I forgive myself for clinging to everything, because there is a baby version of myself in me who never got to hold onto anything, or anyone, and she was lonely and afraid. But I’m not her anymore. I am funny and smart and kind and it is in my DNA to love with everything in me, and I forgive myself. I will sit next to baby me on my sofa, and I will tell her I love her, and that she’s never alone because I am there and I will look after her. I’ll take her out on adventures and bake cakes with her and decorate her bedroom walls with pretty things, and we will be okay. If it is written in my DNA to love with everything I am, I will use it to love myself. I am only 21. I have so much time to do everything else. The sun will shine for me forever.

Anna Laura art