“portrait of an identity crisis, on the borderline” | Alexis Ma | Nonfiction

Portrait of an Identity Crisis, on the Borderline

Alexis Ma

—the intersection where attachment, vacancy, & splitting collide i. metastatic error & reboot

The soft, blue-washed scene of a.m. is the first thing that greets me on a Friday morning. My stomach rolls my body into consciousness, the unwanted hangover making its presence known. It feels as though a sizable brain tumor has grown overnight; a cluster of metastasized abnormality that rages like drumming metalcore syncopation against my temple, firework finale that bursts above my brow as I sit upright. With the utmost gentleness, I press two fingers to the pissed-off thing; not a tumor, just a product of my own negligence and unchecked stupidity.

This is not the first time something like this has happened.

I know it won’t be the last time either.

ii. maestra of seduction

There is a kaleidoscope of butterflies beating against my bones.

It’s the way Boy smooths his palms over the planes of my body, settles his grip on the hip that meshes so nicely, so perfectly with his own. My stomach somersaults every time I catch his half-hooded gaze, the one that lingers on my face longer than it should.

“You don’t need to be nervous,” Boy says. Which is laughable since his voice is the one that’s trembling (it’s clear he’s far from experienced; either that, or I intimidate him). “We can take it slow, if you want.”

We don’t have to—we really don’t.

There is a pregnant pause, a question hanging in the air that I would rather die before answering. Mainly because I’ve answered it more times than I’d care to admit, and saying anything would be a dead giveaway.

Yet somehow, I can’t deny the spasmodic fluttering of exhilaration that arrives with the simple press of Boy’s lips to my forehead; I don’t want to fall in love with you. But Boy is waiting, won’t budge an inch even if the stillness of the room screams for him to do so. The only things progressing here are the hands on the clock shoving time forward another minute, then two. Out of everything, the gentle crescendo of midnight rain against the window demands my attention. We are stuck inside the pane, but I’m the only one counting raindrops trickling down the glass, caught wondering is there no end to this weather? I eventually snap into the jigsaw of Boy. Effortless. I force myself to close my eyes and pretend that I fit with absolute precision. The notion of belonging to myself, and being okay with it, is terrifying.

I’d rather think—no—believe that my purpose is to fill a void. That way, I can evade the vertiginous spells in which I am sure to be alone and without meaning.

That way, I can mince the differences between love and dependency between my teeth, a means to slowly persuade myself that attachment orbits near and ‘round the otherwise out-of-reach thing that is devotion.

I really don’t want to, but I probably will—

“You look amazing.”

Too late.

iii. pink sky in the morning (i.e., an undercooked warning for “radical acceptance”)

I’m mind-blowingly drunk and spinning out. He looks at me with animalistic craze, and side-sweeps the matted knots of hair to showcase the submissive tilt of my neck. Will the nails that rake over my skin accidentally snag on the makeshift stitches, the despair and angst written all over me? Crusting with drying regret, the places where I, too, have tried to tear myself to pieces.

I doubt he’ll even notice. No one ever does. I hope he at least steals a halfway-decent look at the thud-thud-thudding thing housed between my ribs, deciphering the Morse code that the body’s workhorse pulses on a never-ending loop. The redundancy of look at me, look. It is always during this momentary bliss that I dare to finally set aside the knife that severs, over and over again, what little remains of me. Because this time around, I pray that what I so generously give will be enough for him.

Maybe this time, despite all that I am and am without, he will notice, and he will stay. And maybe, for once, it will be enough for me, too. iv. battering tempest (alt: the real self-fulfilling prophecy)

It’s unforgivable how many times I’ve done something like this.

My shrieking lungs are a crippled city.

People started skipping town when the torrential rain began leaving violent bruises. Debilitating: the wind that gave out backhands for free, high-rises that shrunk in fear even under the pitter-patter of timid rain. The sporadic cloudbursts, one after another, were meltdowns without a moment of calm in sight. A storm that wailed bouts of thunder and shrieked. And the rain: the water that swelled, surged. The water that swallowed its victims blindly. In that case, perhaps, I am as unforgiving as water. Relentless tidal wave of self-doubt that knows only how to recede and surge. I wash away any lingering evidence of the crimes I feel I have no choice but to commit. Cutting off the hands speckled in clay, leftover from the slab of meat he supposedly molded into art.

He thinks I could be put on display at the MoMA, or so he did the night we met. I remember studying myself in the mirror the morning after, eyeing the so-called masterpiece and finding no meaning in its forced existence. A waste of time, I told him once he emerged from the bed, yelling obscenities and verbally assassinating his character. I pose caricatures of a feeling I wake to every single morning: unadulterated hatred. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. Take that atomic-sized bomb now embedded deep in my brain, and just throw it at him—this right-swiped, one-night stand that knows nothing about art, or how to discern a forgery from the genuine arti-

cle. I hate you. The hostility he believes is meant for him; yet, most days, the hatred has a trajectory only to kill the sick thing in my head. It’s a brutal reality that has come to pass, but unfortunately, anyone that intercepts that loaded missile is a casualty. Forget what I said before when I questioned whether I was akin to water.

I am the water, the rain.

Somehow, though, I find that I’m also eroding. For bone by bone, my resolve to escape the damage left in my wake is replaced by the desire to be buried. Buried in the watery grave hollowed out by the part of me that flirts with death at the intersection. Turning to binge-drinking on a weekday, just so I could forget that I failed an exam rather than studying for the next. Raking my nails down my back, deeper than the previous time, when I last disappointed my father. Impulsively inviting an unfamiliar face over for sex because a quick, rough hook-up was just about the only kind of emotional connection I could stomach. Every time, I imagine how I must look to them, so transparent, so shallow they need not ask what I want from them; it’s obvious I’m aching with emotional hunger. And if they have the decency to ask, they find that I’m warped like the guardrail that will eventually catch our careening vehicle, but only one of us killed on impact off the shoulder of I-95. I survive the wreckage with nothing but regret for getting into the passenger seat, just the backseat driver in every relationship I’ve ever had—too afraid to drive. I always grab the wheel out of impulse, thinking I’m saving us, but end up steering us into disaster.