Whilst I was on the phone earlier today, in the lounge, a woman with long emaciated limbs and an achingly fragile demeanour wandered in and sat melancholically by the window, overlooking the green pastures rolling over the horizon and bathed in a warm orange glow from the setting sun; she seemed utterly broken – like a feather that had been stuck to the bottom of a muddy tractor tire, rolled over again and again for years until it was utterly weary, like a war torn country that was once beheld as the finest civilisation in all the four corners of the vast earth – she must be suffering from anorexia nervosa, my whole heart was suddenly thrust towards her in an almost paternal state of affection and protection, as if my soul was desperately urging me to wrap her up in a cosy blanket in front of a roaring open fire with a large mug of nutritious soup and freshy baked bread, her barefoot toes curling upon a thick rug draped upon the fragrant oak floorboards. She seemed so raw, so vulnerable, a truly delicate flower, withered by the savagely scorching sun, a kite in a hurricane, to paraphrase that wonderful old quotation. Her tender body was so skinny, so unbelievably thin, her legs looked like twigs, as if they would snap at any moment, even under the miniscule weight of her upper body, her neck looked as long as a giraffes, occasionally buckling under the weight of her head, in which I felt sure a million dark thoughts were swirling, tormenting her delicate soul, lashing her ego into submission, emotionally abusing her into the absolute surety that starvation was a source of value, a reasonable path of action, the only way to be herself, a self that deserves love; though these are only my subjective intuitions, the thoughts I imagine rain down on her battered ego like a torrential waterfall of dysfunctional detriment, when in reality, the mysteries of her soul are truly revealed in their purest form to no one but herself, o’ but how I wish to seep into her tender skull and discover those dark secrets gestating within her, the events that moulded her into who she is – in the poetic night, alone in her bed, accompanied only by her soul – to know her romantic loves, her childhood, her family and friends, her calling in life, her purpose, who she wishes to be, who she was, the person she desperately wishes she could wish to be if only she would let herself believe it were possible.
Later, I was sitting at my desk, looking out the window, and there she was, sitting destitute at a patio table in the dusk-lit garden, smoking a cigarette, a small glass of water in front of her; then, in a secret display of despair, she stubbed out her cigarette in a dark ashtray and put her head wearily in her hands, and in that sad pose she remained, still as a lily pad on a mill pond, and even from my seemingly faraway position in space, I could feel vastly powerful waves of sadness emanating from her and I could really feel the darkness her bleak heart was mired within, I was utterly transfixed by her suffering.
Journal Extract by Stamos Mardou