I mentioned obtuse side journals. The most illuminating is the earliest incarnation of “boy”. Later it became more straightforward, but boy’s first entries contained the most emotionally dense words I have ever written. They’re also the most honest, the closest possible approximations to my raw feelings. It looks like I deleted the original posts, but I’d left a private post that collated them all, which I’ve now made public:
Forewarning: They are dark. I make very heavy use of metaphors. Sometimes the proceeding line sheds light on what they mean, and often there are multiple meanings. Reading these back to myself, I found that the most likely explanation of any given line is the one that hits the hardest emotionally. There are frequent references to a fractured identity; suicide; self-destruction; self-harm; and a burning self-hatred. The reality of things — the real truth of my situation — was too hard, too complex, and too unattainable — and so, I hid among those words. I didn’t want to feel, but I felt so much. My mum’s voice echoes within these words, loudly.
The characters I reference are, as far as I can tell or remember, parts of me: Parts I could feel slipping; parts I didn’t like; angry parts; hurt parts. “She”, I think, refers to the fading ember of love and hope within me, as do the references to physical comfort — but even then, I wrote with anger against those parts of me.
I became a fractured person, each journal an attempt to either capture and sustain a dying part of me, or to deal with the new selves that were emerging, and the new conflicts they presented in my mind.