B*tch, I'm whimsical.

The thin, unkempt hair. The grayish skin. The dark circles under my eyes. The emptiness inside them.

Truth be told, I’ve been seeing it all every day for years, but I never really looked at it. If you have to drive past the ruins of an old house every day on your commute to work, chances are that you never stop to picture what it would look like rebuilt. It just becomes a part of the landscape in all its colourless, derelict insignificance.

I became that old house over the years. Walking past myself every single day without a sliver of acknowledgement as I went through the motions. I gradually gave up on the very thought of living and became content with staying alive. Thriving was something that happened to other people.

The thing is, to me, thriving has always been something that happens to other people. It was deeply ingrained into me, from a very young age, that survival was the only goal. Dredging fiercely through shit with grit and determination, until spite was the only thing that kept me standing. Wishing for happiness was shallow and selfish. Achieving it was a moral failure.

And thus, I fell into ruins before I was even done building.

I was proud of it, too. Falling apart yet still standing was my identity. I was never meant to be anything but broken, and I was quite good at it. The goal was to survive, remember? And I was surviving – sometimes barely, which only added to the achievement. But most importantly, I wasn't happy.

I wasn't miserable either, don't get me wrong. I was always very grateful for what little I had, with a commendable amount of guilt about having it when others didn't. To alleviate that guilt, I urged myself to struggle harder. To achieve more with even less. I didn't deserve what I had, so I had to let it go, but the goal was still to survive, without ever falling into the turpitude of thriving.

I took illness in stride the way I took the rest – yet another thing to live through, if I could. And if I couldn't… Well, it wasn't like I would be there to worry about it. I was 22. I watched from the sidelines as lupus began to chip away at the only thing I ever had in abundance – my health. Kidney failure was another thing to survive. And I did. The pain, the thinning hair, the tired look became badges of honour. I would never get out of the trenches, but why would I want to? They were my domain. My home. I didn't need anything outside of them – I was still alive, wasn't I?

During my very repressed teenage years, I was haunted by a single fear: that of dying without having ever lived. As I grew up, I thought accepting that I would, in fact, die without ever living, that it was alright, that it was a good thing, even, was a sign of maturity.

It was not.

It was quiet-quitting on life.

And to that end, I developed a new skill I quickly became quite proficient with: fading away. Taking as little space as I could. Being overlooked as much as possible. If I fell through the cracks, I could build a nest there that no one would ever want to take away from me. And to ensure that I was an afterthought to everyone, I made sure I became one to myself first and foremost.

But the thing is, as long as you survive, there is something left of you. And whether it be the ruins, the trenches, the cracks – wherever you go, you take yourself along. And when you devote your entire existence to not existing, the company you keep for yourself isn't the most pleasant. And one day, just as I did, you look into the mirror and find the person you see in it insufferable to live with.

For the very first time, I looked at the emptiness in my eyes and saw it as a space to inhabit.