CHEW, SPIT, SWALLOW bits and pieces
i am my mother’s daughter and i eat myself whole.
i eat my heart sandwiched between my lungs, my eyes squeezed inside my nostrils, my legs tied to my breasts. i turn myself into a gorgeous monstrosity and i destroy it. i shed my despair into lumps of words, i make towers of babel from strands of my hair.
when i look in the mirror i ask what happened to my kindness. i was born gentle, with petals for eyelids and branches for nails. i was never meant to become a mess of myself. i was never meant to write with blood instead of ink and i was never meant to chase myself down endless dead ends. i was meant to hold my hand and kiss my hair and i kept becoming the thing that pushes its hand down my throat. i could have become my lover and i only became my enemy.
swallowing does not feel so suffocating when it’s done by someone you love. when someone takes up your words and puts them in her own mouth. when someone takes a bite out of your chest and chews at your heart. you endure it all, when you know it is out of love. (after all, what do you know about love?) but when you swallow parts of you to perform for the audience that never applauses, never says a word, it does not go unnoticed. every part that is missing, you feel its void. the child in you that was meant to be held as she gently cried recognizes the atrocity that is made of her. she is restless, why don’t you ease her? i ask in the mirror- no answer.
i eat up parts of me and wonder why i do not feel as whole as the people i see walking down the street. why my feet with no toes do not feel as effortless as their heels clicking on cobblestones. my ankles swell up, my knees a trembling pile of dust. what do i want to tell them? that i am so self-absorbed that i do not think of anyone before i think of me? or that i am so narcissistic that i harm myself before anyone can do it for me? i destroy myself not just because i can, but because it is what i deem the most worthy.
when my god calls me to her, whatever the name might be, i will talk about how i ruined everything good in me. i will look at all the divine food she created and say i never felt full. i never feel full. it must be myself that i chew and spit and swallow, otherwise, i can never feel full. no prayer fills me up like ruining everything i own.
they say every woman feels as she is on the verge of madness, but then why am i so lonely? i see my mother and she does not need to eat bits and pieces of herself. here she stands, so whole and not a single limb missing. she once held up a crying baby, rocking her back and forth, and asked her to calm down. the baby did not calm down. my mother does not know what it is like to cry, or to yell, or to get nauseous. so i grow up, get up on my tiny feet, and i do it all for her.
i am a perfectionist and someone who can never get a single thing done. i am the most beautiful creature god has ever created and i am so terrifying that i must be exiled from the city i love. i am going insane and i am so sane that not a single emotion passes through my heart. i am so filled up to the brim that i have no choice - i have to start from scratch. i must turn into something else.
i finish where i started. i am my mother’s daughter and i spread my legs, push, scream and cry until in my arms, i hold a babygirl of my own. i eat myself whole and push myself out. my remains scramble themselves in my mucosa, in my uterus, in my serosa. i am re-born, re-created. in a minute on a hospital bed, i become my mother and my daughter. i become me, in a way i have never felt.
Sıla Yurtseven, 21, Istanbul - Turkey ✯ IG: @slayurtseven ✯ BACK TO ESSAYS: OUROBOROS
“Sıla Yurtseven was a published child author at 10 and now at 21, she tries to find her voice from scratch. She is a psychology major from Istanbul, Turkey and enjoys discovering depths of the human soul both while writing and studying. You can find her on Instagram where she shares pieces of art that she loves (along with photos of beautiful skies and cats).”