I Was Born With Holes in My Cells

And I am still trying to fill them

I am not a poet. But when I was 3, I woke to announce that I had written a poem. In childhood, of course, our world is simple; we have few frames of reference and a limited vocabulary. My words, then, were concise and factual:

“I dreamed about stars and I dreamed about you. I dreamed about stars and I dreamed about Daddy. Then I woke up with one eye open and one eye shut.”

This was my world at three years-old: love, dreams, and stars.

Decades later, I find myself questioning the seismic shift which has landed me in a pseudo-hospital (actually, due to a combination of luck and privilege, my mother’s house with dangerous things hidden, my medications managed and my behaviour monitored by a visiting mental health crisis team). My perspective has become overwhelmingly large, and I have too many questions.

And yesterday I woke to announce that I had written a poem:

“I was born with holes in my cells. I hunt for glue, for powder, pills, liquids and gases. I’m hoping for closure but gouging in further, losing dopamine and oxytocin and serotonin and endorphins, forever dividing and multiplying the right and wrong hormones. I’m vague on the science. And my cells are still empty.

I was born with a hole in my stomach. It gnaws at me until overwhelmed with enough food for six armies, the excess purged before my body is made swollen and monstrous with sugar and salt and fat. The nutrients needed to survive can become toxic in large quantities. I’m vague on the science. And my stomach is still empty.

I was born with a hole in my heart. I take another woman’s man and other people’s friends. I borrow a home, I steal a collection tin, I pocket the credit for the creativity I didn’t create. I collect two cats, three children (a tiny one never saw light), four limerence-heavy imitations of Nora Ephron soulmates. My jokes are inherited wit, my personality is contemporary fiction. I’m vague on the science. And my heart is still empty.

I was born with a hole in my soul. I cry out in my dreams to a God (he/she/they — hosts of saviours and spirits), for faith in truth or trust in fate, for the telling of fortunes, for the reading of tea leaves. I try to absorb the beauty of nature, the alignment of planets, the pulsing of stars, the waxing of moons. I’m vague on the science. And my soul is still empty.

What is left of me now is saltwater in an upturned thimble, balanced on the corner of my mother’s sewing box. She wants to patch me up, though she is working with fractured, slippery, rageful threads and her hands are tiring. But people love this broken, mewling, fading, goblin-girl. And all of this is hysteria and hyperbole. And worse things are wrecked and recovered from the sea.”

If I had the chance to do it all again, would I take it? Could the outcome ever have been different? Will I survive this personal apocalypse? There is no way to know.

I am still here, trying to hold hope for myself and clinging onto what remains: love, dreams and stars.