In the room we sit: therapist and nut job, the knowledge and the one who lacks it.

The traumatised and the healed.

Silence seemingly unending as your eyes fix on me; my eyes downwards to the hole I wish could swallow me whole like the whale hidden in the stories of old. Stories of miracles and trials so unbelievable they could mirror the issues that brought me before you today.

How did I get here again?

How did I heal only to be shredded so soon after leaving the walls of this building for the last time just years ago.

Weight lifting from my shoulders after eighteen months sat in these rooms full of stories with a group of more trauma then anyone could imagine. I had healed. I was well. I survived and grew taller then jacks bean-stork. Stronger then hurricanes and braver then lions. I lived for the first time in memory; actually living and not just surviving.

I was able to feel without breaking and no longer on self destruction I got my degree and tried to fly.

Fly.

Fly away as determined as young birds leaving the nest for the first time, and just like them I

Could.

Not.

Fly.

It began to fail just when I believed I could finally be well.

My body became a vessel as delicate as glass. Pain overriding, joints ever shifting and fatigue that made me feel like life in quicksand would have been easier, more attainable, then mine. A small crack and before I knew it this body of mine, frail from years of abuse and mistreatment began to break.

Shattering.

Shattered.

Splintered.

Decayed.

How did I will myself to survive you asked.

How did I fight for help?

Why did I fight to live when everyone, EVERYONE, was against me doing so.

Why did I stick to my guns in a war I could never win; against doctors and family. Against reason and gaslighting and sexism.

Against everyone I knew and every reasonable view that the situation was too big for me to survive.

I cannot answer your question. I do not know.

I know too much to pretend that it was worth the fight to live. I know how heavy the guilt is when strangers paid to allow me to live. How much guilt can be carried when my body was fixed but my mind has been broken again to the point of despair.

It is too late to undo my surviving. It is too late to let my body die

It is too late.

So you and me have no choice but to fix these broken thoughts once more;

So that I am no longer numb;

So that

I

Am

Alive.