Carving Out My Girlhood by Beatriz Salvador
Photo by Beatriz Salvador
TW: Rape, sexual assault, suicide, self-harm, paedophilia, eating disorders
The first time I was loved, I was ten. It had something to do with my pre-pubescent breasts, I’m sure of it. How eager I was to ditch my yellow swimsuit and run free in the backyard, soaking in the summer light and playing with the dogs.
I flinched every time a scary movie would come up, yet I craved horror. I craved the abandoned houses, the stillness of the woods. The first time I was loved, I was loved in one of these forbidden places.
There was this old couple that lived in a cabin in the woods and by their window flowers grew, lady’s eardrops they’re called. I know this because I would sneak into their backyard and steal some to wear on my ears and pretend I was some beautiful woman, dangling her earrings, luring boys in.
Eventually the old couple left. Living in the woods is tiring, it drains you. You may become part of the woods yourself like a big rock or a rotten tree trunk. Their quirky little house was left to rot like a tree trunk, until some nuclear family in the far-off future would buy the land and build the glass fortress of their dreams.
My little cabin dipped in horror. My girlhood, my curse, my cross to carry, my secret gift. I ran for my life and never spoke of it again, my pink eardrops lost somewhere along the way. But dogs do remember, after all. I was avenged.
A year later, I would learn the seductive language of death. My little cabin in the woods became my wet dream, my coming of age. I started to make love with razor blades. I was safest on a high cliff, looking down. I held death on my tiny hands, dangling it around carelessly. I traded my home for the woods. I walked around licking sugar off my fingers, saving kittens from the gallows and healing birds with iodine.
Photo by Beatriz Salvador
When I was twelve, I discovered hunger. The black pit of the cabin in the woods became my tummy. I found the thrill of starvation, how it sucks the life out of you and yet, if you just give in every once in a while, you’ll be living on that high cliff permanently. Walking the line between fainting and consciousness, the days becoming a haze of fatigue and motherly love.
I was skipping lunch the second time it happened. We rushed out of class to roam around town, munching on our childish freedom, choosing the wrong streets to cross, the wrong cuts to take. When you’re a girl brought up on chaos and broken tableware, you are prone to bump into womanhood early. You desire it even. You perform it. At night you measure your – now growing – breasts, you try a leopard bra, you pick at your cunt with tweezers and wish it ripe, you fake menstruation. But it never comes early enough, except when men say so. Of course, now you understand shame. You understand guilt. You giggle nervously and never mention it again.
It’s settled now. Like little leeches sucking on your thighs, these love stories start to groom you on what is left to do. You understand pleasure as taking, you purge your skin off sex, yet you crave it as soon as you can get it.
At fifteen, it’s been long enough, you decide. You never shared the tale of your cabin in the woods, so it must not be real after all. You gave up hunger for a pair of perky breasts and wide hips, your body anticipating what it’s meant to do. You don’t need eardrops nor honey. At fifteen, you let yourself go on a white bed away from home. Not without a fight, no. But nonetheless, a killing. They’ll sing after you at least.
Love becomes your trading post, your body currency for older hands to gamble away. You start to fray at the seams.
Oh! How I wish to go back to the woods, curl up on the wet grass and decay gracefully into nourishment for stray kittens and country mice. Sitting on the bathroom floor of my twenties, far, far away from the woods, I carve my girlhood out with a kitchen knife. I don’t mind the infection, I want out. Torching love up because it doesn’t hurt as it should, wanting to be ravaged, beaten, and left to rot like a tree trunk. But there are no rivers to drown in around here. There are no cliffs and no big rocks and no pets to save. I am left sitting across from my crying mother, my yellow swimsuit, my barren belly, trying to tell a story that will accommodate them all. Trying to forgive myself for crawling out of the womb half girl, half horny beast.
Beatriz Salvador
Beatriz Salvador (she/her) is a graphic designer and multimedia artist living in Lisbon. She has been writing poetry and fiction from a young age, as well as exploring visual and digital art. Her work was featured twice in “Locked Room Sessions” as part of their group exhibitions.
You can find some of her artistic work here or follow her on Instagram