life of haleigh

Sometimes when I am asleep, and the wind is coming in through the window of my childhood bedroom, I can almost feel you here. For a sleepover, the way we used to do all the time. It was just our clothes then, I didn’t know what was mine or yours. It was our day then, we never left each other’s sides. It was our life then, a pact that if we made it to 40 and were still single, we’d run away together and live on the beach in Mexico. I always wake up in a sweat from those dreams now. Now I live in your phone as an unknown cell number, I live in your photos as a girl you used to know. I live in that stain I left on the carpet of your truck when my bubblegum ice cream melted. Now I’m the most hated girl. For twenty-five years in a row. If you’ve never been the last choice friend, undiagnosed depression at a very young age, artsy but filled with melancholy girl, then you’ve never been the most hated girl. But I’ve worn her skin all my life. At first it was the separate group chat with 9 memb...

I think back to 10:15am on August 9th, standing at my work desk in my dress shoes and a coffee in front of me, catching my personal phone ringing and putting my headphones in. All I hear now is the crack of a match stick on a striker. I knew the second I heard my sister’s breathing on the other end of the line. Twelve hours later, I was standing in my childhood home. In the ashes of everything I knew. Everything and everyone that I loved. A life that I perfectly curated. A future I was on accurate trajectory to achieve. Everywhere I looked, there was devastation and destruction. I asked my therapist if I’d ever recover. She said, “I don’t think so, but I think it becomes more normal than it is now.” More normal , another thing that pinches in my stomach when I hear it. I don’t want this normal, I want the old normal. Nothing will ever be the same. My eating habits, and making the bed in the morning. Going to the gym. My favourite songs. All my best friends. A job I used to dream about ...