It Goes Like This

Now.

This is what happens now.

It’s three AM, and you’re alone. You’re tired. It’s been a long, hard fight, but the end is finally in sight. Just one last push, you tell yourself, and the sun will rise.

Now is when they take you.

You should have known that it would be like this. They wait until you’re vulnerable, and then they strike. They surround you, circling. Hello again.

Worthless.
Pathetic.
Selfish.
Weak.
A waste of time.
Of breath.
Of love.
Everyone would be better off without you.
They’d only be sad until they realized how much unnecessary space you’d taken up.

Failure.
Promise-breaker.

Coward.

Do it.
Do it.

You deserve it.
You deserve to die.

They only have to wait. Exhaustion will bring you to your knees, and then they move in. Hands at your wrists, your hips, your throat. You can’t even scream. It’s cold. Freezing

This is what happens now.

There’s a blade on your dresser. You could give them something to appease them for a while. A hurt and a failure in one—Oh, they’d love it, and then maybe they’d at least let you breathe. God knows they play with their food.

This is what happens now: you fight.

You twist. You kick. You bite. The sky’s still dark, but there are birds waking up somewhere and singing to the sun. You hear them. Damned if you can’t have faith in the invisible, too. You fight. They’re too cold to understand a heartbeat. You decide what happens now. Shadows can’t exist without a source of light somewhere. You’ve beaten them back a thousand times, and they’re still stupid enough to try again? Not a chance. Not this time, and not the next, and not in every lifetime after this. You are a warrior.

Adamantine.

This is what happens now: you win.

Sure as fall turns into winter, they’ll be back; these battles are the price of seeing spring. But now, as night turns into morning—now, you’ve won.

What do we do when we need to rant? We write, we write, we write. So let me say this as clearly as I can:

Fuck your labels. Fuck your preconceptions.

I am not a hero and I am not a saint and I am not a Sad Girl and I am not a broken doll. I am not your answer. I am not your project. I am not your savior and I am sure as hell not your responsibility. I'm another stupid human. Go to hell if you're one of the ones who's told me I'm more. I'm not more; no one is more. I am a stupid human. I'm a perpetual student. I'm the one you call at three AM.

And let's face it. You're going to call me. Every time you do, you sing the same guilty song--"I'm so sorry, I feel so bad, you have so many people's troubles on your shoulders, I feel like I'm using you"--but you're going to call me. There's no one else you would call. That's not my hubris; those are your words. You can take that guilt and put in a sack and fill that sack with stones and throw it in the sea. Watch it sink before you pick up the phone. It changes nothing.

Take a deep breath. You're not the only one. This is a crime with multiple offenders and no victim. Really. I am not your victim. I am the one who loves. You talk as if my love is something finite, as if it will run out or wear thin if I have to spread it out over too many people. Believe me, it's limitless. In the depths of my despair, when I didn't have the energy to feel anything besides a crushing need to disappear, I have still loved, and the love was honest, and the love was my strength. I am the one who loves, and that is not my weakness. That is not what hurts me, though you seem to think it is. I am the one who loves, and that is why I'm still alive, and that is why I will never give up.

A lot of you want answers, and I do, too. I want to know why it is that nothing I say seems to make any difference. I tell you I'm safe, you're not hurting me, I want you to call me, I care about you, I'm here for you-- doesn't matter, apparently, even though I'd never lie to someone who's in tears. I tell you I know you'd pick up if it was me calling you-- "But you don't call. Would you call anyone?" I am the one who never calls anyone.

Character is destiny? Fuck that. Characterization is destiny; watch yourself become what they think you are. Watch them take the pencil from your resisting hand and write a new set of vices and virtues for you to memorize as you get accustomed to where they put you. See, it doesn't matter that time is kind to the courageous and I am courageous, opening like a flower on the clock face of the seasons, opening like hands and I'm learning to reach out with them, watching the slow, certain progress of the morning glories I've trained to grow up and along my ribs. Never mind that. I'm the one who never calls anyone.

I am perpetually fascinated by how many people think they're perfectly justified--caring, even--to tell me how much I can and cannot take. I don't want to say it, but I think I have to: When you tell me my chosen course is too much for someone like me, but stop short at offering even a single alternative-- when you all but drown me in torrents of guilt for calling me, but you still do...I can't help but think that all this remorse has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with you.

When It Gets Bad

I will not harm myself.

I will not provide a microphone to the stream of disparagement and abuse in my head.

I will remember that it causes others pain when I treat myself badly.

I will remember that this is temporary.

I will eat.

If I have the energy to fight, I will.

If I am unable to fight, I will at least hold my ground. I will at least not surrender.