J’s Diary Entry

Tuesday, 4 July 1995

I’m walking down Collins Street, around 6:30pm, and I see this couple walking towards me, and I think, How do they do it? How do they make it seem so effortless?  This drifting apart and coming together again, like the sea and the shore. I don’t know how people can just meld so comfortably. I feel twisted and convulsed, like I’ve bent myself into an unnatural shape from which I can’t release myself.  It seems like other people can just be together, but I have to leap this yawning chasm of self-doubt and loathing.  I teeter at the edge with stage fright and astonishing fear of rejection. I want to tell people this, but don’t want the attendant pity, or at best, sympathy. I just want to be accepted.  I fantasize about showing someone my scars and they accept me still.  But I know this won’t happen.  Who wants a self-mutilator? I don’t want to be a novelty in someone’s sexual history, “Hey, I once fucked this guy who used to cut himself up.”

Is it ever going to get any easier?

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