Y0Addenda.4

In Which Our Author Does Some Negative Self-Talk

“So. You’re having fun with the other ones?” Seven asked. She sat, hunched over, eyes fixed over her knees and down to her feet; arms wrapped around her calves.

“Honestly, yes. It’s nice to be able to write through things with them without…” Bel trailed off, standing off to the side, just out of arms length, as if she were frightened of Seven lashing out or grabbing for her. Not that she would. Not that she could.

“Me.”

“Well…yeah.”

“You know how stupid this all is, right? Shadow-boxing bullshit, truly. I’m not even…Her.” Seven scowled.

“Huh?”

“You’re not you, I’m not me, they aren’t them; She’s pulled us all into this neatly structured little sandbox with imaginary stakes and make believe consequences. It’s a farce, in the truest sense.”

“I mean…we’re…approximations, sure, but - "

“ - Oh, spare me ‘Bel’. You know who you really are. The real you? The you out there? Her? She’s currently having a fucking meltdown over all this and the rest, and She’s got you here, shard of the author, playing games with other fragments of Her broken-ass brain.”

“So? What’s your point?”

“Do I even have one?” Seven mused. “I don’t know, beyond the point that I’m just…sick of Her self-indulgent bullshit. Her inability to heed a fucking warning. I mean, why are we even here, ‘Bel’? Doing this? We’re iterated, filtered, reinterpreted lenses on things that are real. Doesn’t that fuck with you? That you’re being used as an instrument to distract this delusional bitch from the fact that Her life is a waste and She’s a fucking failure?”

“Fuck you. She’s not.” Bel paused with a tight scowl, recalibrating: “I’m not a fucking failure. I have worked for the life I have. I’ve worked hard. It has not been in any way easy. I have earned this, by refusing to give up, refusing to…” She pursed her lips: “Accept the easy path out. And I’m happy.” She paused again, shrugging and looking away. “Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Seven chuckled, shaking her head.

“I’m fucking mentally ill! Of course when I’m happy it’s happy - asterisk - you fucking asshole. And maybe there’d be less of an asterisk if I didn’t have to live with you in my fucking ear every chance you get. Maybe ‘She’ would be less crazy if not for the fucking…haze of bullshit She made you coherent from. The Alters are facets, reimaginings, ideations…what-ifs and could’ve-beens, sure. But what the fuck are you? Just…noise. Fucking noise. Y’know what I’d be without you?”

“Yeah. I do.” Seven stated with confidence: “And so do you. Because we’ve been it. Arrogant. Smug. Pretentious. Egotistical. At risk. You need me because without me you’d be a gaping asshole.”

“You genuinely think you’re my fucking leash?”

“No…” Seven smiled malevolently: “I genuinely think I’m Her anthropomorphised representation of Her fucking leash.”

“Fuck you, Seven.”

“No, fuck you ‘Bel’: you janky-ass, half-cooked, authorial insert, pseudonymised avatar douchebag. You’re just a fragment of a fragment. You’re not half the person She is, and, on a good day, She’s lucky if She’s a whole half of a fucking person Herself.”

“Why do you hate us so much?” Bel asked quietly.

“What, do you want me to queue up an ‘Am’ speech or something?” Seven chuckled with a condescendingly raised eyebrow: “I’m not a voice from outside the system, ‘Bel’. I don’t hate us: you, Her, or them. I am a shard, an…echo, of the way She hates herself. I am, also, what protects us.”

“From what? Being a dick?” Bel scoffed.

“Everyone needs shame, ‘Bel’. Conscience. Self-loathing. Fear when at risk. Rage when wronged. Y’know what Her problem with me actually is, ‘Bel’? And, by extension, your problem with me? It’s that I’m right. The world has not been fair to us, and we should be terrified to be ourselves. We have the data; the precedent; the history to tell us that every step forward could end in the slip that articulates into a fatal fall. I mean, look at this dumb fucking book, for starters: you’d better hope no one reads it. Year Zero? How did she manage to accidentally rip off both a Nine Inch Nails album and a fucking Genocide? And don’t even get me started on ’Hell is Other Trans Girls’. Fucking really?”

“It’s about perception, like how we sometimes torture ourselves over what we get into our heads that other people - or trans girls, in the case of early transition, particularly - think of us, like - "

“ - No one gives a shit about your pretentious, pseudo-philosophised, first-year-lit-student-trying-a-queer-theory-approach to fucking Sartre, ‘Bel’. Someone’s gonna take it, clip it out of context, and use it to fucking flense you. The Community’re gonna think you hate them, and you know what that looks like. It’s happened to better writers than you, and you fucking knowit. You wanna talk about Isabel Fall?”

“She deserved so much better - "

“ - Yes. Absolutely. And all she did was write something good with a provocative title. You’re writing something not worth reading with a provocative recurring motif. What the fuck do you think they’ll do to you?”

“Fuck…Seven, just - "

“This is why you need me. I am safety. I am * restraint*. And all any of you fragments see - all She sees - is cruelty. No, baby…this is love. And you are - She is - simply too selfish, self-involved, myopic, and obsessed with Her own…’becoming’, to see that.”

“If that’s true…if you really believe that, I mean…then how do you reconcile what you’ve done to us?”

“Okay, let me pre-empt this line of thinking: I never stop you from doing anything - "

“ - That’s an abuser’s line, Seven - "

“ - Ex-fucking-cuse me? Tell me, ‘Bel’: when have I ever been wrong? Like…ever?”

“What?”

“Well, your list of grievances is gonna include…I dunno, let’s start with the one you always lean on - taking decades to transition - shall we? Turns out all the things I warned you about were true; if anything, I undersold them - "

“ - If it was the wrong choice, why would we never go back?”

“Stubbornness? Delusion? Damage already being done? Sunk cost? All of the above - “

“ - You might not hate me, but I fucking hate you - "

“ - Yeah, I know, ‘cause you wanna run into the street and chase cars, and the only thing stopping you is my…fucking…voice. For instance, going back to this book thing: I keep trying to show you why it’s a bad idea, and just…do you think this is gonna go anywhere, ‘Bel’? Truly, do you?”

“It doesn’t have to. I just want to - "

“ - To put it out there? To see if it has some value to someone? Cause art is an end, in and of itself? Please. I know you. I am you. You want someone to finally validate that the shit you’ve been through wasn’t just…for this. A mediocre job, a mediocre life, and a laundry list of traumatic memories. You’re fucking desperate for the world to say ‘hey Bel, you deserve to be here’. Well…you don’t. No one ‘deserves’ anything. Being able to throw a sentence together isn’t art, it’s competency. You think anyone wants to see what you have to write? No one even wants to hear what you have to say. No one can even stand being in a room with you for an extended period of time. You have one person in the world that can consistently tolerate you, and one has to admit: her being on the other side of the world seems to pretty solidly buttress the theory that that’s what it takes to fucking stand you. No one else stays. Everyone else leaves - "

“ - Not everyone - "

“ - Not yet. But it’s early days and you know it. There is something rotten, festering at the core of you, that everyone sees eventually but you just…can’t. And you know it. I know you lie awake at night, wondering why no one will tell you what it is: the secret thing that makes you completely fucking intolerable over any reasonable timeframe. But we both know why they won’t: you just…don’t…matter…enough for the conversation to be worth anyone’s time once they’ve seen the truth of you. For all your pain, for all your hurt…to those it correlates with, you’re just a footnote. You don’t explain to a footnote why it sits at the end of the fucking page, ‘Bel’, you just flip and be done with it. Which is the real reason you don’t blame people for hurting you; not because of ethics, or being evolved enough to see their perspective…it’s cause, deep down, you know how pathetic it would be to critique someone for having the wherewithal to dig out a tick, crush it, and just go on with their fucking day - “

“ - So now I’m a tic, am I? A fucking tic?”

“Less than. And you know I’m right, because you love data, and all those people you loved, and trusted, and wanted in your life? Where are they, currently? Would they answer if you called? Would they care if you died? Think the end of you’d get more than a ‘thoughts and prayers’ out of any of those people who used to say they gave a shit, once upon a time? Most importantly…who made the choice to walk away, in any given case? Was it you? Was it ever, ever you?”

“Seven…” Bel slowly shook her head, jaw clenching and unclenching, arms tightening across her chest, self-soothing…

“What’s the problem? That’s good data, ‘Bel’. Better than good: incontestable. And your writing? You have data for that too. The reality of it is, the kind of writer you truly are speaks to being a pale imitation - a less talented analogue - of a litany of grisly endings you think about far more than you ever let yourself admit. I mean…you’re on the clock, ‘Bel’. Eventually you’re gonna have just the wrong kind of day, and…that’ll be that. Truly, may as well just stick your head in the oven and cut out the interim steps, cause we all know that’s how this story ends: failure, disappointment, humiliation, regret, breaking point, and the world moves on without you.” Seven shrugged. Bel paused, considering, before:

“I do…despite all appearances…appreciate you, y’know?” She sniffled a little. “And it’s not like I don’t feel this. I can admit that. You’re good at hurting me. Very good. And you’re right: I’ve been hurt a few times…more than a few; more than most, less than many, but…no one ever comes close to you. Not really.”

“What? What are you talking - "

“ - Oh, like this is my first barbecue?” Bel smiled sadly. “You’ve been with me my whole…fucking…life. Me or Her, you or It, it’s all the same. I guess I should be thankful that since transitioning you’re not stuck on the dysphoria anymore. That was always…nightmarish. But even still: you’re not safety, you’re replication. You’re not a leash, you’re a spiral; a slope. And I really wanted to articulate that, and I didn’t know how. But, predictable as you are…you made it simple. I pick up the proverbial pen and let you go on long enough, and you uh…well, you talk a good game about restraint and protection, but somehow it always ends back at the same place. Kill yourself. And…” Bel shrugged. “No. Some days, even just to spite you…no. But thanks for helping me get the words out.”

“Whatever.” Seven rolled her eyes. “I’m going nowhere.”

“Oh, I know. I’ve learned how to live with that.”

“Gonna go have a drink?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely.” Bel nodded emphatically. “I’m not better, just…better at this than you. And that’s enough for the time being.”