Trigger warning: depression and suicidal ideation
It’s a modern kind of self destructive, and it’s hidden from all the smoke detectors and carbon monoxide alarms. It’s the same flippant lines, and it’s the same bitter smile, and it’s the same cocktails in my veins that make me wind up like clockwork and three piece suits. I’m not a spark, a match, a tinderbox, because then the smoke could reckon a warning: STAY BACK. DANGER AHEAD. One of those new electric lighters, maybe, that hisses alive, high voltage heat instead of conflagration but can do all the same damage with just that click. But just because I can burn and burn like someone thoroughly disposing of the evidence at a crime scene, I tire of this godly pedestal: I tire of holding myself up alone; I tire of resilience. After all, when will victim begin to sound like survivor? Yet as I’ve crept closer to ghost, a shade of the girl I used to be— of the girl I had to be— of the girl I always believed I had to be— I find I might want someone to love me with all my sharp edges and broken pieces and to say to me, yes, you are brave and strong and still fucking here. But I don’t just want someone else to fight my battles. I want to fight for myself. I want to want to fight for myself. I refuse to be a damsel in distress; I will be my own hero. (I just wouldn’t mind having someone who themselves wouldn't mind walking this path alongside me, occasionally taking my hand.) And there are so many of us riddled with cracks that we’re terrified may just pour out a physical, painful, tangible emptiness, not the light Leonard Cohen promised would shine through, and still, here we are, every goddamn day, damaged and surviving. Because living and lasting and loving, these are our acts of defiance, and, well— Perhaps. Slowly, carefully, I might one day allow myself to forgive the girl whose only crime was being born— so close to death at birth, so close to not existing at all, but here —born with faulty neurochemical transmission and epigenetic trauma and a heart altogether too forgiving and trusting for the ruinous world we live in. Perhaps I can forgive that girl her survival. Perhaps I can embrace that girl her resilience. Perhaps I can accept that girl all her faults and flaws and fears and— I don’t know that I believe I’m here for a reason. But I do think it’s time to determine one for myself because I find, surprisingly, I want to do so much more than simply persevere and endure this world—
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Straight from the heart to the hearts of others. So beautiful and moving, Maia
You have no idea how much this speaks to me! That’s all I can really say, but this is so special.