I Got Lobotomized at the American Girl Doll Hospital
by Adeline Swartzendruber
Written by Adeline Swartzendruber, read on 11/12/23.
“I am too forgiving to loved ones I’d kill for, but I foolishly hope and trust they love me back.” That’s not a real confession.
A confession is something you’re supposed to be ashamed of.
But this is what I write on the blank piece of paper, drunk and dimly aware of a line forming outside. Everybody is armed with their wildest lie. Because this is a game of telephone disguised as confession – the fake confession box is literally an old telephone booth. sometimes i open instagram just to look at my own profile and imagine how other people see me. I don’t know exactly what complex that is, but it’s been triggered by this exercise. It’s not just me. everybody has a story they tell themselves about themselves, and everybody wants to hear it repeated back. I’ve been looking at myself in funhouse mirrors for a long time.
I’m sweaty and shaky and this booth is narrow and dark and there’s only one pen and it’s running out of ink and I can sense the people in line growing impatient with me. But instead of getting up, i grab a second sheet of paper. I’m so boring. My confession can’t be “i’m too forgiving” – that’s like in a job interview when they ask for your biggest weakness and you say “I’m too hardworking.” It’s like, be fucking for real.
I watch my entire life in my head, like they say you do when you’re dying. I’m not sure what counts as sinful but there’s a slew of embarrassments. All of them the result of trying to make people love me. Come on, kiss me. Come on, pick me – like a scab. I know you’re curious. Am I really bleeding or is it Ben Nye?
I think of something really embarrassing to say and start writing. “I cried the first several times I had sex and the boy licked my tears, and I’m an actor so I didn’t hate it.” I thought he had a fetish, but maybe he was just checking for glycerin. Well, shit, if he was maybe I’d deserve it. I got drunk in Seeward park and told a boy about my breakup while all our friends were there and it felt easy. All our friends left and suddenly it felt hard. It’s supposed to be the other way around. I’m more clown than prey animal, despite what my poems tell you – just think about it, I’m writing poems. “Look at me, i’m so sad” says the clown with the drawn-on tear before smashing the pie on his own damn face. “Kiss me, I’m so sad” works every time. I used to feel suffocated if I was looked at with pity. Now I don’t care how you look at me, as long as I’m being seen.
I feel sick. i don’t want anyone to write this story about me. I crumple up the new sheet of paper and return to my original confession, but my original confession makes me sick now, too. it’s suddenly obvious: confession itself is the crime. And now I don’t know how to turn myself in. I’m an ouroboros of penance. I’m a coward. I say sorry compulsively, like a tic, or a prayer, and then apologize for saying sorry so much. It’s evil. I’m sorry I really am sorry. I’m sorry every time I say it. That shouldn’t sway you, though. I want someone to tell me I can be forgiven. But nobody is required to forgive me just because I confessed. Not even God.
Not mine, anyway.
Love is my religion and I practice it like a calvinist who believes they’re predestined for hell. I keep throwing myself at people like a bird hurtling into a sliding glass door, like I’m trying to be roadkill getting scraped off the pavement after the snow melts, like I would rather be dead. Maybe I would. Then I could become a still image. People’s perceptions of me would never change ever again. I have this fantasy: I get everyone who’s ever known me together in one place, and they all tell me they think I’m lovely and sweet and kind. And then I go home and jump off the roof.
I was thinking about it on the way over. While I was riding the train I got a snapchat memory from 6 years ago. I hate snapchat memories from 6 years ago because I get jealous of my 14 year old body and then I feel super weird about that. This one doesn’t have my body in it though. In this photo, a piece of paper reads “Most Adorable,” above a misspelled version of my name. It’s from the speech team mock awards. It’s kind of cool that snapchat can show me the exact moment I became a flanderization of my Self.
That’s the same year I became bulimic, which is almost a real confession. Now we’re talking. This is the stuff autofiction is supposed to be about: “girl stuff.” sex and eating disorders (except the eating disorder is supposed to be anorexia). I’m compelled to grab a third sheet of paper and try to confess something I’m actually afraid of, one final time. I do the most embarrassing thing you can do. I start to write a poem:
sorry I missed your party, I’ve been dealing with girlstuff.
girlstuff is
blood and puke.
girlstuff is I can eat whatever I want and stay the same
because I’m penitent, by which I mean I’m bulimic.
girlstuff is dming the 30 year old man who tells me my bulimia is “spiritual masturbation”
and he’s right
girlstuff is there’s not a single bad thing I can’t puke up girlstuff is confessional poetry because
girlstuff is confession because
girlstuff is all I have to do is confess
girlstuff is researching astrological wounds on the internet do u get it yet?
girlstuff is
the unreality of time and consequence girlstuff is “depression hair” so matted that if
i were a dog or a child it’d be a definite
sign of neglect;
girlstuff is calling myself dog and child in poetry but, actually,
I’m supposed to be responsible for myself.
Girlstuff is
I’d rather fetishize my flaws than eliminate them girlstuff is
good doll good girl good pet
girlstuff is
I wish I was a doll.
I wish I was an American Girl Doll
so i could be sent to the American Girl Doll Hospital.
In my dreams,
I get sent to the American Girl Doll Hospital
and come back with a new head, like the old head, but with pretty hair and I don’t know a thing about it.
Meme idea! Meme that says:
“I got lobotomized at the American Girl Doll Hospital”
girlstuff is time travel
yearning for the pre-feminist “ironically,” longing for lobotomy girlstuff is
take this brain and all I will take are the consequences
(and not the blame) girlstuff is begging
take everything from me take all of it
and I will take the consequences, as long as I can say
it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault
it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault it’s not my fault
it never is
