Screams crawled recklessly, restlessly under my skin, in every niche imaginable. And when I tried to hit myself where I swear I felt it, it'd already be gone, and a new one would rip me open somewhere else, leaving a messy painting of a moody girl, with no traces of tearing. I was by all means, ostensibly okay. And I wondered. I wondered how I'd walk without falling if I couldn't see my feet. I wondered how I'd talk if I couldn't hear what I was saying. I wondered if I was in some ghostly way, already on the other side where they fed me the lie that the grass was greener.
When they say you've got negative seconds to get your shit together, I stayed as still and unmoving as I possibly could. I didn't want to find my head. It was better off lost. I'd been looking for my heart, but I'm thinking I can't put everything into one as I ignore the other. The head and the heart. I need both. I need to know that I need both.
I'm still bad at this and still embarrassed about that and still angry about this and still insecure about that and still guilty about this and still regretful about that. But even with all those this and thats I carry around, I believe that these things will change. I'm not saying everything's all better now. Because it's not. It got worse and it got better and it got worse again. But hell, that's life. And if it's not quite so hard and terrifying, I don't think it would be quite so worth it.
And the craziest thing is, you find that the kid next door's battling some unwonted terminal illness and has only got a few days left, and that girl you've had a useless vendetta against for the longest time drinks away the pain on school nights and downs stolen pills on the weekend, and the beggar on the street is a con artist with a roof over his head but no food for his two year old motherless child. And the world goes on like it doesn't care about sad stories but you start seeing things through beautiful perspectives and you start seeing people in more than ephemeral glances.
Then, when the moment comes, you find that you go on too.
You find out that you've gone on too.
But I think the world does care, not that your stories are filled with the sad, but that your stories are filled with living and loving and meaning and moments, even though the sad will always be there.
I believe in being here. I believe in you and I believe in me and I believe in us. I believe in you and me and us and being here and doing good. We've got fire inside of us. We can be embers. We can be raging wildfires. But one minute to the next, the fire's burning and sometimes the flames will tease you and sometimes you'll dance free and it's okay. It's okay. Sometimes it will hit you unexpectedly that we'll all be ashes soon enough. It's okay.
Life is a beautiful uncertainty. A spectacularly, splendidly, beautiful uncertainty. But ask me tomorrow what I think of the four letter word and my answer might be different. Ask me in an hour and it might change.
