9-24

She calls it compounded grief, but I call it exhausting.

I don't want to talk about it anymore. I change the subject. She lets me. I'm lucky to have her.

I am a new person, with bright hair and new roles and a new life and things are good for me. Things are so beautiful. I am tired of talking about my grief. Fuck grief.

I have pulled hands from my throat. I have slept in a tent made of blankets in a rain storm. I have wiped human shit from the floor. I have struck out to defend myself. I have curled leather and metal in my hands as a weapon. I have thought I would die, once, twice, too many times to count, and I did not die, because I fight.

I don't care how much of my life's grief is compounding - I am sick of it, because this is no longer my life. Grief is nothing compared to what I have survived. Fuck my grief. I fought with words and with nails and with fists and with education and by shutting myself off to the words that were killing me and here I stand, and fuck it entirely.

Who would look at me and know what I have come through? It's hidden under a crooked smile and new white hair and a career and motivation and ambition and cool smooth words and I will keep it there, quiet, suppressed, until one day I forget who I was and where I came from and how fucking hard it is to sleep some nights with all of the ghosts that chase me.

I walk in the dark and I hate my smile and I hate my crooked eyes and nose and I pull the new words around me that I have been given. Special. Memorizing. Fascinating. They're beautiful words. I picture myself and my nervous crooked smile and they don't fit. I wonder if they'd seen me crouched over a body I knew was dying, wide white eyes, tense fingers, if they would think the same of me. If they'd seen me rage, throw bottles of pills, beg for an ending, strike out, fight, shake with fright and rage, if they'd call me beautiful words or if they'd recoil in horror or maybe pity or maybe both depending on the day.

Compounded grief. The weight of all of my life, crushing down now upon me. She's right and I hate it.

How fucking terrible. Now, when things are so beautiful and bright and I sleep with the light off without fear, and someone touches me with patience and gentleness and lets me pull away when I need to, and when people open their arms and I know I can go into them and it will be okay, okay, now this is when the weight of my horrible fucking life hits me?

Fuck it.

No, I carry on. This one stupid ridiculous blip in my violent urgent timeline does not define me. I pause and let hands linger, adjusting. I fight my fear of being touched and held. I lean into warm bodies. I listen to their beautiful words because I fought for those words. I fought to be more than nothing. I fought to be more than what they raised me to be and I have come so much further than they, than I, ever imagined, and I will continue on and on and I will grow until they are nothing behind me. Their hard hands and their cruel words are nothing.

Who am I? Who was I?

It doesn't fucking matter. I am now. I am me. I fight and I fight and I fight for the day I can rest.