I take a deep breath, filling all the air in my lungs and picturing it flowing down through my feet and into the cool floor tile. I hold it, squeezing my eyes shut tighter and feeling tears roll down my cheeks and nose and landing gently on my shirt. When I exhale, not-so-silent-sobs roll off me and my shoulders shake with the force of their intensity. My mind runs on a loop and my entire body burns with the effort, but I can’t seem to pause.
Knocking rattles the door and I hold my breath. “Hello? Is someone crying in here?” I pretend not to hear the interruption and continue to sit in my misery, because the moment I open my eyes and speak a word then it means it’s real, someone really saw me on the closet floor curled into a tense ball of tears and I will never live that down. The door opens and the voice blurts out “I can see you, ya know.”
I feel someone slump down next to me, and the hair on my skin stands with attention at the fear of our closeness. Not touching, but close enough to feel the warm radiate from this strangers skin. I’m not sure what I would expect, but the next moments shock me to my core and my eyes fly open and connect with a girl, looking right back into mine. She’s crying, just as ferociously as I was just a moment ago. She doesn’t wipe away her tears or try to hide them, and her hazel eyes shine green as the red seeps in, making each color more vibrant.
I don’t ask, and neither does she. The shame that flooded me just moments ago is gone, and before I know it she’s touching me, pulling my hand in hers towards her and as we sit here, wordlessly shaking with sadness, things start to feel different. For the first time, nobody’s yelling Cry Baby in my ears and I don’t feel so alone anymore. I don’t know what’s brought her to tears, but I know that I’ll be here, waiting to comfort her on the floor in the darkness. This stranger leans her head onto my shoulder and I inhale once more, this time feeling like it’s a little easier. For the first time, I’m not alone.
My dearest Krysten,
I am writing you this letter that you will never read because I need to say how I feel without worrying about how it will hurt you. I am sorry that my intense mental illness has been causing you to feel depressed and anxious around me, I understand that you are probably avoiding me because of that. I am trying to learn what makes me feel better when I get to this point, but I’m really struggling with my intrusive thoughts. I have been reacting without awareness and letting my hurt control me. I want to hurt you, Krys. I want you to see how I feel and I want you to cry, I want you to understand that wether or not you did it intentionally, my feelings are hurt and at the end of the day that matters. I’m violently angry with myself because my broken brain has decided that anxious attachment will make people stay, but every human who has come and gone is proof that I can not control your decision to love me. I’m furious that even after all the tears I’ve been drowning in, I want you to be the one to lift me up, wipe my tears away, and smile your beautiful sunshine over me. I have grown so much since I’ve met you and I think that’s a huge reason why I’m in love with you. I feel like when I’m with you, I start to become a better person. The person I want to be. Or at least, as close to that as I’m capable of at this time. I can’t do this alone anymore. I can’t keep living life with my mind the way it is, always working against itself and self sabotaging every ounce of joy. I have been trying to ask for help, but I don’t have the words and when I try, nobody listens. I feel like I’ve tried to tell you what I feel or what I need so many times and you always tell me that you will do anything you can to make it better, but that isn’t a promise you’re able to keep. You’re human, the same as me, and you’re going to make mistakes. I want to scream and cry and beg you to stop lying to me, to just say what you’re really thinking even if it hurts me, even if it kills me. I’m in so much pain, and I have to take accountability for that. I knew that I wasn’t ready to bring you into my life, and I did it anyway. I knew that connecting you to the other people who are important to me would mean I lose them, or that I could lose you. I just filled my body from head to toe with nothing but hope, and when the worst case scenario happened, I was crushed. The life left my system and I feel debilitated. I keep thinking that things can be different as long as I am different, but it doesn’t work like that and I need to shut down my delusions before they completely consume me. I know you don’t love me. I know I’m not a priority to you. I know you thought that you wanted me until you got bored of my overwhelming chaos and you tolerated me because you already promised that you’d stay. The same way I promised I would never push you away. If I don’t break this promise then I’m going to lose myself in you and let you continue to hurt me until you are finally ready to throw me away. I feel so used, and I told you about how other people have used me, you saw the abuse and you called it out but now you’ve become a hypocrite. I don’t think you understand why you want to leave, you just know that you don’t like the way I make you feel. I am so exhausted. I’m tired of being the person who is too much for everyone around them. I’m too much for me most days. I love you, and I know that I chose to let you in, I chose to let myself get carried away by your beauty and depth, and I chose to choose you, no matter how much it hurts me. I know it’s time for me to change my decision and chose myself, but I don’t know how to do that when I find myself so shattered. I don’t feel like I’m worth the trouble, and logically I know that isn’t true, so I’m trying to realign my head and my heart. I don’t want to lose you. I love you so very much and I want to lose myself in you, but I know it’s not fair to ask you to carry the weight of my weakness. I’m so sorry for loving you, I hope that some day soon I can learn to love correctly and I won’t hurt everything and everyone I touch.
Please forgive me, The person you’ve already forgotten
I was buried alive. When something bad happens to you, people tend to use a million different niceties to dance around any description of the event, as if not talking about it will make it all go away. In fact, people get upset with you when you talk about trauma, because talking about it makes people afraid. I want you to be afraid. If one more ignorant slob asks me to go camping with them, I’ll scream. I don’t enjoy the intrusiveness of dirt, the way it clings to everything and seemingly multiplies like an inorganic parasite. I can still taste it climbing down my throat, inserting and packing itself into every opening of my body. “Hey there Delilah, are you still with us?” I blink fast and try to remember how to inhale and exhale. Several surrounding smiles sink as I fall to the floor and put my head safely between my knees, careful not to touch the dirt beneath me as I crouch. I stare down the earth, trying desperately to see it as it is now and not as it was all that time ago. “Delilah? Are you okay? You don’t have to go camping with us if you don’t want to, I didn’t mean to overwhelm you… What’s going on?” I dig my nails into my fists and squeeze my eyes tight. When I’m sure I’m ready, I stand and spit at the floor. Turning my eyes back to his, I dig daggers with my gaze and smile sweet and soft. “No. Thank you. I’m not a fan of nature.” I spin, ready to be done with the conversation when I feel fingers twist around my arm, holding me tight. Too tight. “Why not? What’s wrong with you?” I taste blood. I feel it coating my skin, inside and outside all at once. “Have you ever heard that no means no?” I cringe as he sculpts his face into a pout and puppy eyes me, as if we aren’t grown adults, as if I wasn’t clear enough. I genuinely can’t tell if he’s just so stupid that he simply doesn’t realize what he’s doing, or if he’s pushing me on purpose. What about my body language says I want this? My words don’t paint a picture of some hidden desire to follow him into the woods, I don’t know how to make him understand that I don’t want to do this. I can’t do this.
S N A P.
“Ya know what? Fine. You’re right. I’ll go.” Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. “Yes! I knew you were cool, Delilah!” Time passes, my blood boils, life goes on around me as I solidify myself in place. It’s not okay, I’m not okay, nothing will ever be okay unless I make it okay. “Delilah, live a little! Don’t look so glum! It’s camping, not life in prison.” I choke on quiet laughter until it bubbles out of me and pours off my lips and down my throat. “There ya go sunshine. Keep that chin up!” I wait. I’m patient. I screamed for hours while my lungs filled with dirt, and I survived. I can wait, just a little longer. I don’t remember how we got here, but I feel sun on my cheeks and smell the sweet perfume of summer flowers. I feel present, finally, and it’s just the two of us in silence, watching the wild together. I hear my pulse and remember I’m alive as I use my delicate fingers to grab hold of his thick neck and squeeze. I look into his eyes and smile, hard, until real, warm blood spills from my grinding teeth. I hide my sins in the sand, letting the dirt pass through my fingers and over his body, and nature finally loses its grip on me, it finally lets me go. Maybe camping isn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe, the secrets I’ve buried in the dirt are what will keep me sane. Maybe karma finally worked it’s magic, and this is how it tastes, of blood and dirt and tears. Finally, I let go.
I’d like to think that life is about enjoying the little things. Nobody ever talks about the wildflowers, how they emerge in the strangest places like yellow drops of sun, with their only focus being the spread of their beauty. I wish I had time to say hello, good morning, I love you, to each and every dandelion I find resting in patches of grass or growing out of cracks in the pavement.
Sometimes, it feels like humans ruin everything. What’s the big rush anyway? If life is so precious and short, wouldn’t you like to spend it doing things that make you wiggle, not worry? Why would someone skip a morning walk and a chance to wave to the sun just to isolate themselves to a screen and brew drinks that scorch their bodies with glorified dirt?
Speaking of dirt, I love it. I used to avoid it. I’d avoid picking it up with my footprints and carrying it with my everywhere I go, leaving a trail and covering anything clean in my wake. I had to learn that when you give into the dirt, and stop focusing on someone else’s definition of how you should act, look, or feel, you start to realize that dirt is what connects you to the earth, and it sets you free.
She was my person. She was more than a warm bed to lie in and a gentle hand to feed me, she was my world. I loved her so deeply that I told myself I’d be okay attending to her needs and ignoring my own. I did everything she wanted, when she wanted, because her permission meant that she trusted me enough to let me live the life she thought would suit me best, even if it meant I couldn’t make my own choices. Even if it meant I couldn’t choose how I interact with the world around me. She will always be my mother, and I will always love her most.
But love isn’t always enough, is it? I want to dive into every pond I see and let the water wrap me in its warmth. I want to make friends with everything and everyone I come across. I want to expand, and to grow, but she’s taken up all of the space. Sometimes you have to choose your happiness over someone else’s, because at the end of the day, they’re not the one living your life, you are.
Leaving was the hardest part. How can you tell someone that you love them, but not enough to stay? The planning and preparation took time and effort, but I did it, despite of her. If I was supposed to stay, why was I so relived when I left?
She cried enough tears to fill an ocean when I left, and I will never forget the sorrow in her eyes as she watched me make my escape. My kind and controlling mother, who was everything all at once, wasn’t able to keep me still in the end, and as I watched her heart break I learned how to nurture my own.
My face is plastered on every other poster, along with my name and the details from my former life. Maybe some day I’ll return, and she will see how much I’ve changed.
I love this world. To me, there’s no such thing as happy little things now, only big things everywhere I turn. I spend my days by the river, hunting for food and playing with butterflies whenever I please. Every time I lay down to clean my paws, I think of her and her role in getting me here, and it makes my tail wag.
At the end of the day, you can’t put a leash on a dog who craves the universe.
Your shoulders Carried the weight of Their world, The world that tells us It’s wrong to be a woman; Your body, mind, and soul are Sinfully shameful, And we owe Every inch of ourselves to The people who Created us. Every time you were Judged so Ruthlessly and Broken down by a Broken system, You stood your ground and In your shadow I Found my peace. I owe you forever for Teaching me that It’s okay to Love who you are, And you are worthy of Every dream that Whispers your name. My sister, my sanity, I love you for Exactly who you are.
