i've been so distressed lately that i've actually stopped biting my nails. my clothes are all musty and my room is full of garbage. my haircut is choppy and ugly, my skin looks almost grey. the dark circles around my eyes do not go away, i haven't put on eyeliner in months because it would look too severe. i've resorted to bringing my weathered old teddy bear with me every single time i leave the house, just to try and soothe my frayed nerves in a world that is expecting far too much of me. this is my rock bottom. i have no crutches, no art, no fixation to act as my north star. myself and my family are experiencing the lowest period of our lives, and it's a feat considering how historically fucking awful things have always been for us. i feel fragile and empty and angry and bitter and desolate and still fucking hopeful. somehow. i have to have hope that i can save this. i know it falls on me.
poor, pitiful me. i've been told before that i'm a natural leader; i trip and fall into those sorts of roles so often it's almost cartoonish, yet i have never bought it. i feel meek and unsteady by default. i tremble like a small dog when that first thunderclap comes. i pull the wool over my own eyes. i am still a child, frozen in the moments the worst things happened in, brought forward in time to now.
now, where the horror is not contained, is everpresent, is unyielding in its attempts to shatter me.
i see my younger self standing directly in front of me as i sort through old photo discs to pack. i stare into the world i once owned, at what this place looked like before. i see that little girl with crooked glasses, holding a bear with fur like spun gold, and i weep for how nobody could stop what i know will come next. i mourn that she had to grow up to be me.
in the mirror these days, beyond the pale and sallow, i see my nana's face instead. i understand all at once that i am her legacy, i am her "drag path". i am one of the few left behind on this earth who experienced her love, her compassion, her kindness, her desire to make things better. i'm the only one who remembers every detail. i'm the only one who received the gift of her preserved childhood wonder, a spark she nurtured within me and fed with her own as her spirit left without me. i am the only one who looks like her.
i have known it for years that she is the only person who ever truly fought for me, and now it's up to me to do it instead. i have to save myself and my family. i have to get us out of the hellish series of traumas we have been forced to endure over the last five years, twelve years, seventeen years, twenty years. i can hear the girl crying out to me at night. i have to save her, because nana loved her terribly. because i love her, too.
i am going to wake up on our twenty-fifth birthday with our bear in my arms. i will wake up in a room where it does not rain, in a home where it is not cold, in a life that is still going to feel like a battle but will clearly, unequivocally be through with the war. i will watch the sunrise. i will enjoy my passions again. i will hear my father laugh. i might even draw a picture. i will not die. i will find myself anew. i can try to embody how she taught me to live. i can try to emulate what others have said about me.
i can follow the call of the past as it leads me to the future, and i can lead us into the rest of our lives far away from this dilapidated house and oppressive form of survival. i can do both. i have to believe i can do both.
