“Unraveling” (2022)

I am raw-feeling, polished yet unkempt, and alone. Woefully alone. Loneliness is relative - more like a floating organza cloak: slow, impending, soft, suffocating. The friends I thought were friends haven't been so friendly; I wonder just how many tomorrows any of us have left. I started to look at love with a little more than a side-eye and see it as hopeless again. Not hope-void but "less" than I had before. I ended 2021 knocking down my own Tower this time and I now sit in the rubble. Not quite singularly, as I know there is much more refuse to come, I'm awash with the ashes of my past. Is this how the newborn feels? Empty, but like Level 1, not Level 10 with everything lost needing to start again. I feel reborn but there's little rejoice. I am my caretaker now. Nobody gave me the tools. God granted me the wisdom but my "past life" is still visible in rearview. I am disgusted, feeling disgusting, yet still so divine. So why does depression still speak so loudly to me? When the truth is cast clearly and I can now walk away, why do I feel like a villain? Every virtue I ever had seems so squat now. What are the rules? How do I make them? Where is my energy? Where is my reward? Why is it still all on me? Even they asked young Jesus to make the wine for the wedding. What exploitation, what "abuse" of power under the sake of obedience. I didn't want to be my grandfather's secret anymore than I wanted to be my parents' therapist. Yet we're here now. 25. Dysmorphic views due to child abuse; anxious mentalities thanks to domestic violence; depression and shame for taking two decades and five years to have it be clear. Gratitude to finally understand. Fatigue from having to be my own hero again. Bitterness for still acting as everyone else's. If I died tonight, who will save who? If I died right now, who ever tried to save me?

I have so many feelings. I understand why nobody "intervened" but now I'm like this. Damaged. Ruined. Unsure. To think I suppressed and repressed so much, exemplifying precisely how amazing I'd be if trauma were not a factor. Now who helps me sift through it to be better? It's all on me. It's all on any one person isn't it? I've never had the luxury - the Birthright - of a concrete tribe, support team, "family" if you will. I found out young what the price of wanting one is. Your body, your mind, your morals, a nonconsensual loyalty.

I don't know how much has been blocked, I just know the parts I remember are now no more a secret. I know I finally have a little support (God said I can't do it all alone). Though that support will be the final undoing (the final salvation?), maybe it's all I need to be freed. For real, finally. Maybe it's what will grant me a new life or a peaceful death or simply just my way to carry on. Move on. Move.

In this moment, patience mocks me. I want to cry but no tear dares escape. I want to cut but the New Year asks something novel of me. So I write, searing in deep pain physically, mentally, and emotionally - a trifecta. My muscles are swollen and burning, a metaphor of sorts. My life truly is tender to the touch right now.

It just all makes so much sense! Why I don't like me, why I fear my own body. My own beauty has been a weapon against me - I've never even known it could be. Betrayed by my own light; ransacked and bagged up like a body meant only for its meat. Not the mind, not the movement of heart, no magnificence. I thought I was ugly; I was only blind to myself, not the actions of other's against me.

Against me. I try to block the flashbacks and now I understand why I'm mentally ill - there's been too much against me. I tried to survive by making it okay. Laughing it away. Praying it away. Crying, "okaying", reasoning, writing it all away. In a way, I made a way, but the wrong ways still found me. I haven't been right in a while.

Exhaustion. Excuses. Energy-vampires. Enlightenment - I've been seeing the light a lot more clearly. My eyes hurt, but it is better a pained sight than lies towards a softened collision. That impact won't stay gentle once the history gets reported. I digress, if God be merciful, the "rest" will not hinder or hurt me like it has for most of my life.

I guess, I just want to know: can I live now?

~nxw