Estimated reading time — 17 minutes

12th June

Marie picked up the last of her stuff today. I’d hoped that some of the tension would have dissolved with time apart, but she wouldn’t even look at me. Just dropped her key in the bowl by the door and checked I had the right bank details to return her deposit.

The flat seems properly empty now. I’ve been alone in this place for over a week, but that last little box of Marie’s errata apparently made all the difference. There’s no trace of her, or of Lara, or even Lara’s boyfriend – she deep-cleaned the bathroom before she left, so the shaved-off stubble that I thought I’d be finding for months has vanished, too.

I keep biting my cuticles. The manicures were helping, but I can’t afford them, now that I have to cover the bills myself. Between the constant sniping back and forth, pressing my ear to my door every time I had to leave my room, and the chaos of my housemates packing up and leaving me, there’s barely any skin left on my fingers. I couldn’t even wipe down the kitchen this morning; the leftover cleaning spray on the cloth stung so badly that my fingers shook for 20 minutes afterwards.

Dad called again. He probably just wants to know that Marie left her key, but he’ll ask how I’m doing, and about the job hunt. There is no job hunt. I’d rather starve, but thanks to him, I don’t have to. I ignored the call, and texted him that I was about to go into a movie, which should buy me a couple of hours. After that, I can make out that I’m getting ready to go out. It’s a trick I picked up from an anorexia forum when I was like, 14. I keep interrupting him, pretending to be distracted by someone else in the room. I’ve gotten good at it. Dad likes to know that I have friends, it’s why he moved Marie and Lara in with me. But there’s something wrong with me, and eventually, everyone notices.

He’s calling again. If he asks, it was a really long movie.

14th June

Where does the time go? I wake up, I look at my phone. I think about making breakfast, and usually decide against it. I wash my face, brush my teeth. Maybe shower. Then…what? I drift from one area in the house to the next, and I guess I just keep myself distracted. Then, suddenly, it’s getting dark, and I’m allowed to get high. As soon as I’m high, that’s my evening gone, so I try to keep a rule that I can’t smoke while it’s still light out. Writing in the diary makes me feel like I’m doing something, at least.

Get a job, Dad would say. That will give you purpose.

I can’t stand it. Even the thought of it. I’d rather stick my hand in a bread slicer. Standing around all day. The horrible small talk. Having to make friends with people by mere virtue of being forced to stay in the same place every day. Not being able to leave. And for what? I live rent-free, and Dad sends enough for food and weed and internet access. If other people need to feel productive, let them work. It’s enough for me to just exist.

18th June

I haven’t left the house in 8 days. I thought I was supposed to go stir-crazy or something. I’m doing fine. I don’t crave sunlight like I’m supposed to – I’ve even shut the curtains. I don’t need to know when it gets dark anymore. I’ve given myself permission to smoke as I please. There’s fuck-all else to do.

There’s a bloodstain on this page. The index finger of my left hand has been bitten so much that blood has pooled around the nail. I didn’t notice, and went to flick a piece of lint off the diary, so now there’s a big streak of dark red across yesterday’s entry. All my fingers hurt. I don’t know why I don’t stop biting them.

22nd June

Last night I was awake so late that I watched the milkman do his rounds. I didn’t think they still had milkmen – I thought it was something we left behind when supermarkets started delivering. But there are at least four people on this street who still get bottles of milk, like it’s the 1940s. Go figure.

I finally wiped down the kitchen today. My fingers still sting from it. At one point, I stopped being able to feel them; it felt like they’d caught on fire and burned all the nerves away. But, the kitchen is clean. The bathroom will need doing, though.

I had to speak to Dad; he was threatening to come round if I didn’t answer him. I can’t let him see the flat. It’s really not so bad, considering, but there’s no mistaking that I’ve been here, and not out with friends like I’ve been telling him, and he doesn’t love that I smoke weed. Bit hard to hide when I’ve been smoking inside with the windows shut.

I think he’s been talking to Gran again. He always sounds so disappointed in me after he talks to Gran. She gets on his case about letting me squander my life and trust fund. Dad had already gone to uni and bought his first investment property by the time he was my age. I can’t even make my own friends.

I said I’d go for lunch with him next week. Lunches are even worse than phone calls. Having to pick through some sort of pretentious salad, because Dad thinks mealtimes are supposed to be miserable or you’ll get fat. I can’t roll my eyes or doodle or watch Netflix with the sound off and the subtitles on, like I do when he calls. I have to look engaged and animated, and all the other shit I can’t be bothered to express. Marie was much better at handling Dad than I was. She and Lara used to flirt with him; attending lunch in spaghetti straps and low-cut summer dresses; slowly flipping their hair over their shoulders so that his eyes would follow the movement.

It was disgusting, and I know he wanted to fuck them. Lara said he could think about it all he wanted, as long as he kept the rent low. I asked her once during a fight if she’d actually do it in exchange for the rent. She didn’t answer.

24th June

My thumb won’t stop bleeding. I tore a chunk out of the cuticle – one of those really satisfying little hangnails that wind up being way too deep. I should have stopped sooner, and nibbled the skin in half when I realised how deep it was going. But I couldn’t stop. I had to see it to the end, and now I’ve spent the last 40 minutes pressing toilet paper into the wound. It just keeps coming; every time I lift the paper away, it looks clear, but then a bead of blood wells up within seconds and I have to put pressure back on it.

I’ve switched to sucking on it. It hurts less like this, but it feels like I’m swallowing entire mouthfuls of blood. At least it’s going back into my body. Is that how blood loss works? I’m just being dramatic – there’s not that much blood, really. It’s just annoying. I should be able to stop a ripped cuticle from bleeding, right? It’s not like I’ve chopped a finger off.

28th June

Lunch with Dad today. The first thing he said to me was,

‘Have you been watching what you’re eating?’

I get it, Dad. I’ve put on weight. Ironically, he also wasn’t happy when I barely ate my meal. I can’t please him. I did what I used to do when I was 11 and he and Gran had shared custody; I go on autopilot and start making lists. I nod at his questions and hum in agreement at whatever he’s talking about, but in my head I was listing every actor I could think of whose name began with A. I lost a good 15 minutes trying to remember if Alfonso Cuaron was an actor or a director.

I snapped back to attention when I realised Dad was talking about someone who’d died. A relative? One of mine or one of his? He didn’t seem too cut up about it, so I assume it was someone distant. I nodded and clucked sympathetically, and he seemed satisfied with that. He asked about my fingers, then.

Yes, I know. Fingers, plural. I had plasters on three of them, even though the middle finger wasn’t too gruesome. I just didn’t want him to see how much I’d been worrying at it. The other two are pretty bad under the dressings, though. I finally got the one finger to stop bleeding, only to find myself chewing at it the next day, completely zoned out. So it started bleeding again, obviously. My thumb got the same treatment a couple of days later. I must have been anxious about seeing Dad, but smoking more didn’t help, either.

I told him I shut them in a door. I don’t think he believed me, but he didn’t pry.

It was only an hour and a half, but it felt like I’d been there for hours by the time he signalled for the bill. The waitress hesitated when she went to take my plate. I’d barely touched it. I gave her my most winning smile and told her it was delicious. Dad glared at me as he paid. I was just excited to get the hell out of there.

I stopped at a McDonald’s on the way home and ate and ate and ate.

1st July

New month, new me! That was a joke. What is new with me? Sometimes I feel like writing in this diary, but can’t think of a single thing to update it with. I got some new weed. It makes me tired, but also horny. So that’s been taking up some time. I need to stop watching porn, though. The stuff I’ve been looking at is getting weird. Post-nut clarity hits way too hard when you’re on the Eastern European part of the internet. I bought a new vibrator, which is pretty rad. It has like 15 different settings and is strong enough to knock my phone off my bedside table. I used to use my left hand, but, well. My pointer finger got infected; like, really badly. I think the nail is starting to lift off the bed. It’s gross. I’ve just been taping it with plasters so I don’t have to think about it. Smoking helps the pain a bit, but I can still feel it throbbing.

I started a new series – the one that everyone online is talking about. I gave up after two episodes. Couldn’t get into it. I’ve just been watching old episodes of The Simpsons. I like that I don’t have to pay attention.

2nd July

The nail came off when I tried changing the plaster. It hurts like a bitch.

4th July

I think my ex-boyfriend is gay. I found myself going through his socials this afternoon, and he’s taken ‘interested in: women’ off his Facebook. Some guy is in all of his recent photos, never quite in frame. I clicked through to his profile, but it was locked. Same with Instagram. From his profile picture, he definitely looks gay, though, which is probably why Jorge has him crammed in the corner of every photo.

I accused him of a lot of things when we broke up. Being gay came up a lot, but I don’t think I ever believed he was. It just felt good to call him names. Hopefully I wasn’t right about the paedophile thing.

8th July

I had to leave the house today. It’s been over a week since I saw Dad, and I’ve just been inside since. But I woke up and could barely move my hand at all. It was massive, and there’s a stain on my sheets from the pus that leaked out while I was sleeping. It smelled awful.

I managed to get an appointment with my GP on short notice. He gave me an injection, and lectured me on proper hygiene, avoiding infection, seeing a doctor before it gets this bad, blah blah blah. I made a list in my head of British actors in American films. The swelling has gone down a bit, and he dressed it properly. The antiseptic was the worst bit. I have to get some special antibiotics from the pharmacy tomorrow. I’m not thrilled about leaving the house two days in a row, but these ones had to be ordered in, apparently. They’ll probably cost a bundle, too.

9th July

What the fuck is wrong with me? I went and picked up the antibiotics, and got the fright of my life on the way home when someone’s German Shepherd lunged at me. I think it was a German Shepherd – it was one of the vicious black-and-orange ones. I’m not good with dog breeds. Luckily, there was a fence separating us, and the stupid dog couldn’t work out how to jump over it. Thinking back, it might have been wearing a shock collar. That thing should have been put down. What’s the point of keeping an animal if you have to electrocute it to keep it from running away or mauling people?

I don’t know why I let it bite me. I knew what would happen if I dangled my hand – my swollen, oozing hand – over the top of the fence. For a second, I thought the dog wouldn’t do anything. It just sat back, huffing its mouth out in something that almost looked like bemusement. Then, its eyes flashed, and its lips curled back, revealing massive, sharp teeth that sunk into the meat of my palm.

The pain was indescribable. My knees gave out almost immediately, and I dangled there for a moment, held up by the powerful jaws of the dog as it shook my hand back and forth. I thought my arm was going to snap. I’ve never heard that sound come out of my mouth before – animal and guttural. Just incoherent noise, which alerted a passerby. I don’t know what he did to get me free, but the dog let go of me with a yelp, and I slumped into a heap. It felt like my hand was humming, vibrating with pain. There was so much blood, and deep, jagged gashes in my hand. Flesh hanging from the wounds like ribbons.

I did it on purpose. What the fuck?

I should have stayed. I should have let them call an ambulance, or drive me to A&E. Something. But I couldn’t imagine facing my doctor again. I hadn’t even started the course of antibiotics to treat my first self-inflicted injury; imagine returning the next day and having to explain a dog bite.

I bundled my mangled hand into my jacket, and snuck away while the guy who rescued me got into a screaming match with the owner, who had emerged from the house in a dressing gown that didn’t quite cover everything.

I’ve been sitting here since I got home, my hand laying useless on the desk next to me. I have extra bandages from yesterday’s visit, but no antiseptic. I have to disinfect the bite. They say that by the time you start showing symptoms of rabies, you’re already dead. I could barely think, my head was so clouded with pain. But I was lucid enough to remember that alcohol is a disinfectant, like the vodka in my freezer. And lucid enough to know it was going to hurt like nothing else I’ve experienced. There’s a bowl of it in front of me. It’s decent vodka – I stole it from a fancy cocktail bar that we went to for Marie’s birthday. She was not impressed when I produced it from my jacket when we got home, but she still let me make her a martini.

I can’t do it. I don’t know why I could feed my hand to a rabid dog, but not stick it into a bowl of vodka.

Early symptoms of rabies can include fever and abnormal sensations at the site of exposure. These symptoms are followed by one or more of the following symptoms: nausea, vomiting, violent movements, uncontrolled excitement, fear of water, an inability to move parts of the body, confusion, and loss of consciousness. Once symptoms appear, the result is virtually always death.

I just copied that straight from the Wikipedia page. I have to do this.

Wish me luck.

10th July

My hand is bandaged up. I can barely feel it anymore. I passed out once I stuck my hand in the bowl, but woke up almost immediately when I collapsed and caused the bowl to tip over me. Waste of good alcohol. I just lay on the wet, stinking carpet, hoping that I’d absorb the vodka through my skin and get too drunk to feel my hand anymore. I don’t remember much of what happened next, but I woke up this morning, apparently showered, bandaged and put to bed. For a moment, I thought maybe Lara or Marie had returned and taken care of me. For a fleeting second I even wondered if it was Jorge. Then I sat up and saw the carnage I’d made of the flat, and realised I must have done it myself. The carpet is still saturated with vodka. I need to clean it. Knowing me, I’ll accidentally drop a lit joint on it and blow the whole flat up.

I should have kept reading the Wikipedia article. Turns out, dogs don’t carry rabies in the UK.

13th July

Antibiotics are magic. I already have movement back in my fingers. I figured that a trip to the GP would likely result in more antibiotics, so I just used what I was already prescribed. I haven’t changed the bandage yet. There’s something seeping through, but that’s probably for the best, right? It’s probably discharge from the healing. Gross.

14th July

Is it really stupid to wonder if I’m possessed?

No, seriously. Apparently self-harming behaviour is a very common symptom of spiritual interference. And I let a dog bite my hand. For no reason. It doesn’t make any sense. Unless there’s some sort of force trying to hurt me.

16th July

I keep my arm in a sling now. I’m terrified of losing control of my hand and hurting myself again. There’s definitely something at play here. Even after bandaging it up, I keep hurting myself. Knocking it against counters, shutting it in a drawer. I tried making soup yesterday, and just for a moment, I thought about plunging my hand into the boiling pot. I turned the stove off, and wrapped my hand up against my chest. I don’t know how I’m going to sleep like this, but I won’t let whatever this is hurt me any further.

20th July

Dad got sick of me ignoring his calls and turned up at the flat. I woke up to him pounding on the door, my phone buzzing next to me with the 8th missed call from him. I fumbled with my phone, trying to shoot off a text to him one-handed, telling him I was out, that I’d talk to him later.

But of course, he has a key.

I could just about make out the look on his face as he let himself in. The flat was dark, every curtain and blind shut, but as I followed his gaze around the room, I saw it through his eyes.

I’ve never been Mary Poppins, but this was another level. Empty fast food trash strewn around the house, ash and tobacco and crumbs littering the faux-granite countertops in the kitchen. Blood smeared on walls from where I’d knocked my wounds against them or steadied myself with the wrong hand. Dirty underwear, stained carpets, tchotchkes knocked off shelves and never put back.

This was going to be a hell of a lecture. I waited for the explosion, for Dad to point out every speck of filth and to list off every achievement I’ve ever squandered in my miserable life.

But he just quietly said, ‘You’re on your own, Camille.’ and he left. I didn’t even have to hide my bandaged hand. He didn’t care.

I don’t know what I feel. I should be panicking; what if he evicts me? He’ll definitely cut me off, and then what do I do for money? Why don’t I feel sad that he just left me? Why don’t I feel anything?

24th July

The possession thing was stupid. I think I hurt myself because I deserve it. I’m an ugly, broken person and now I have the hand to match.

Dad hasn’t cut me off. I got a text from him later that night, detailed but curt. I could stay in the house, and he’d send me an allowance, but that was as far as our relationship went. No more trips out, no more chasing after me with phonecall after phonecall, no more relying on Daddy for support. I guess he found the lunches as tedious as I did.

28th July

The delivery driver saw my hand when he passed me my food. He said I should go to the hospital. I shut the door in his face.

I’ve gotten so proficient with my right hand that I was halfway through my lamb pasanda before I noticed my finger, dangling uselessly over the bandage. It must have gotten caught in the door. I didn’t feel a thing. It’s like the hand belongs to someone else now. I flicked it with my other hand, to see if I had any control over it at all. I think it’s just connected by the skin around it – an invisible amputation. Connected but not.

My ring finger. In another life, someone would have slipped a gold band on it, in front of everyone we love. I’m trying to imagine what that would look like. It’s a pretty empty audience on the bride’s side.

August 2nd

Some of my hand has turned black. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do what I need to do.

August 4th

it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts

August 5th

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the smell of burning flesh. Even now, I can smell it, but I can’t work out if it’s still lingering or just in my head. Maybe there are still particles clinging to the insides of my nostrils. I don’t understand how it smells so different to cooking an animal. Isn’t human supposed to taste like pork? Because it certainly didn’t smell like bacon.

I had to burn it out. The badness, the spirit, the pain, whatever I thought I might be released from. My whole body shook as I stood in front of the stove, waiting for the electric hob to heat up. Dad has an induction stove in his own home, but he cheaped out on the rental properties. I had to stand there, the wait nearly as agonizing as the pain in my hand.

I think humans have something in their brains, some self-preservation instinct that keeps us from sticking our extremities straight into fire. I guess mine broke, because I just watched myself place my hand on the burning red circle. It didn’t feel like my hand; this mangled, misshapen mess sticking out of my sleeve. Grey smoke curled up from where my skin touched the hob, accompanied by a sickening sizzle. That was my body. And I just watched, like I’d switched onto some disgusting medical programme on Channel 4.

It took longer than I thought it would for me to feel it. I don’t know if the hand was too far gone, or I was in shock, or what. But I didn’t scream. My mouth opened, but all that came out was a whimper. I had nothing left in me. My hand, too, was not so easy to remove from the stove. My skin had melted, fusing me to the glass. When I finally managed to lift it away, the skin and fat warped and stretched like melted cheese, much of it remaining on the stove.

I feel…oddly calm. I’ve bought myself some time – cauterized the malignance, so it can’t infect any more of my body. My body. But I won’t be safe from it forever.

August 6th

It’s a useless appendage, and it makes me useless. I don’t write with it, I don’t reach with it. But it points accusations at people I care about, it shovels fat and salt and sugar into my mouth, it holds the lighter so I can inhale poison into my lungs.

It’s amazing – all my nerves are dead. I can stick a needle in there, I can cut it with the blade of a knife, press a shard of broken glass into it – and I feel nothing. It doesn’t even bleed anymore. I can’t move my fingers, but sometimes if I push a pencil into the right spot, one of them will spasm or recoil. Like I’m a puppet or something.

August 7th

Just do it

August 8th

JUST DO IT

August 9th

DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT

August 10th

Today’s the day. I woke up feeling good, great even. The best I’ve felt in ages.

Enough skin has sloughed off my palm that I can see one of my tendons. It doesn’t matter now.

I’m not evil, and I’m not a fuckup. I’m just sick. Deeply sick. I’ve lived a life of comfort and selfishness and gluttony, and that sickness has grown and solidified like a tumour. But you can remove a tumour.

Once I’m free, I’ll fix my life. I’ll clean the flat from top to bottom, I’ll find a job and pay Dad rent until I can find my own place; stand on my own two feet. I’ll reconnect with Marie and Lara and Jorge. I’ll apologise for every name I called them, every ugly word that ever spilled out of my rotten mouth. I’ll start running, or maybe even go back to ballet. I’ll eat clean, I’ll drink enough water that my piss runs clear and my skin gets soft. I’ll become fit and healthy and happy, and I’ll finally start my life. Better late than never.

It’ll be hard with one hand, but easier than it’s been lugging the other one around all this time.

I’ve put newspaper all over the counter and the kitchen floor. Mopping with one hand would be a lot harder than just crumpling up some bloody newspaper and throwing it away. I practiced with a couple of mouldy carrots I found in the vegetable drawer. It took a couple of tries, but eventually I was able to bring the cleaver down with enough force that I split a carrot clean in two. I can do anything I set my mind to. And my mind is set on this. I have a plastic bag to put the hand in, and the remaining bandages to staunch the blood. I’ve put on a Spotify playlist; 90s pop from when I was a kid. It makes it a lot less scary.

No, what’s scary is spending another day with this thing attached to me. Poisoning my personal growth like the tendrils of black running up towards my wrist.

It’s time, I think. The next entry I write will be unrecognizable from this failure, this joke of a person. Page after page of whining and self-pity. August 11th will be a new dawn, a rebirth.

See you on the other side.

Credit: Rosanna Bini

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