You Will Get Through This

I’m 25 and what I can make out of my life is: 45 hours on skyrim without making anybody die. i have, like, a lot of followers on the only social platform it doesn’t fucking matter on. i guess one time rihanna, unknowingly, reposted a repost of my work on her twitter, uncredited, so that was pretty interesting.

sometimes, because of what i write and who i am, i get messages that read: i think i’m going to end it. i don’t need you to help me, i just need to tell somebody. and i’m not a therapist. but i’m a good talker. better at listening. and every once in a while, i get the chance to talk people down from things. sometimes i get thanked for it. more often i talk until i hear nothing. i lie awake wondering: oh god. did they do it. was i not enough for them. lord, are you listening? can you help me? can you protect them?

i don’t do a lot. i don’t know math. i can’t knit. i am allergic to basically all things. the world at 25 feels really, really fucking bleak. look at what other people are doing with their time on earth. look at what children are capable of. god, who am i? i am crumbling to dust.

but then i remember: i have two ears and one big heart. and i can listen. and i can read. and i can be there when someone needs me. no, i don’t know math, but i know how to help when someone’s been crying. i can’t knit but i know how to hold someone’s hand when they’re too scared to admit they’re panicking. i am still allergic to everything but it’s just made me appreciate that our bodies are not cars to crash. we aren’t broken, we’re rebuilding, we’re in the process of magic; we create even in the face of all that destroys, we have been destroyed and still we tilt our heads back and look up and keep going and say, fuck no, not today, death can wait; i don’t have a bucket list because who can live that long but i still want to know what it feels like to skinny-dip and no! i didn’t think i’d make it to 25 and i’ve wasted god, so much of this divine and precious life

but today someone from four years ago finally messaged me. hey. thank you for being there all that time ago. thank you for listening. i’m alive, i’m well, and i’m finally, thank god, healing

and that’s the answer, my beloved, my angels, my dragons - no prose or poetry or lyrics about it. we weren’t put here to rot, to stagnate, to unfulfill. we weren’t put here to answer the prayers of our parents or the gifted-child prophecies or read from the book of poor-kid-doesn’t-understand-anything. our lives aren’t made from milestones, aren’t made from birth-marriage-mansion goals, we don’t survive by the starter gun. we were put here, each of us, because we have one heart big enough to fit love. to look into the yawn of space and say, that makes me curious. to put cold toes in the unknown ocean and say she is my home. to look wolves in the eye and say oh, you’re me, and you’re mine. we love, don’t we, so big and wild that our smallness feels like erupting.

i looked into myself and i said: what have i done at 25?

Between wanting to hold on to something and letting go forever,

You feel betrayed but you still have hope that maybe things will change,

You sit in your room alone thinking that winter is beautiful,

But nothing helps because you feel cold within yourself,

Like someone or something has made your blood go cold,

But you still hold on to something,

You look for the sunshine everyday, peeping through your curtains,

You smile,

You laugh,

You try to love things that aren’t even your interests anymore,

All because you want to be happy,

Hours of looking in the mirror and seeing nothing but all your past mistakes,

Splashing water, over yourself, screaming,

Still trying to make things better by trying to find the piece you lost in the path of growing up,

You go on long drives, it makes you feel like there’s something more to your life than people who’ve left,

You think about yourself,

You feel like nothing is worth the pain you’re giving yourself,

You want to start everything all over again,

But the struggle of going through all of it again stops you,

You always have a little hint of happiness on your face,

When someone compliments you,

You laugh thinking how good you’ve become at deceit,

But you still love flowers,

You still talk to the moon,

You still call your best friend and help them through their problems,

You say you’re okay,

You feel okay,

But the feeling of being just okay kills you,

You are a person who is supposed to be great,

You’re supposed to be the sunshine to so many peoples lives,

But what do you do when your own life has come to a never ending eclipse is the question you ask yourself,

You don’t give up at anything,

Even if it counts to nothing,

You still live,

For yourself, most importantly,

And that’s what makes you a hero,

Because when everyone else gives up,

You’ve still held on to yourself,

And with time you’ll heal,

With time.

-afreen

the flag of the red, the white and the blue,

there’s a place for me and you

oh wait, not you, no, your eyes aren’t light blue.

hey, that’s not fair

and neither is your skin - it’s a battle you can’t win. the importance held within , to them it means nothing. it’s where you were born and how much you matter in our corrupt capitalist financial ladder.

it’s where you live and the love you choose to forgive. it’s what you believe and what you achieve, if achievement is even an option. you start on top and get higher , calling the beggar a liar, telling him to just work harder.

it’s the way she walks, the tight clothes she chooses to wear, how she talks and what she does with her own goddamn body.

it’s the hypocrisy of our lives, preaching pro-life and yet never speaking up for the lives of caged animals- wait i mean kids. yes the kids who aren’t kids who we keep in cages while we pretend nothing’s happening while they’re trapped and napping under blankets of tin at ages younger than ten.

it’s your religion whose precision avoids the brown lives who also matter.

because according to you all lives do matter, right?

but if this were true, you wouldn’t be calling the police when people are just living.

because maybe to you a sweet barbecue is a violation of the order in which a black family must be guilty. maybe when a beautiful girl is just keeping it fresh it must immediately cause a mess when the police becomes intense. guns are drawn while the rest of us hardly ever fawn at the daily news that no longer stimulates blues.

another day, another shooting, and a white teen who lost his mental footing is given more empathy than a black teen lacking sympathy who needed to feel empty and who used a quick 20 for 1. and as he sits in jail until he turns 60, 600 other kids will never return home.

it’s your gun or my life, it’s her life or its’ life, it’s his life and only after is it his. it’s your tradition or my decision, it’s your status or my labor, it’s your money or my time. it’s your lies or my vote, it’s my vote or his life, it’s your happiness or it’s mine.

america,

the red, the white, and the blue.

i fly, i fall.

like legends and lovers do.

upwards towards the sun, downward towards the sea.

on molted, golden wings and reckless abandon.

the sun will mourn for me, the sea will sing my name.

and my bones will line the ocean floor with misused wings.

like icarus,

i dont regret a thing.

( - is flying worth the fall? they asked him.

humans are fucking terrible and this awful world we live in will fucking kill you but if you are kind, if you are brave and clever and try really hard, you can defy it. you can impose on this bleak and monstrous structure something beautiful. even if it’s temporary. even if it doesn’t heal anything inside you that’s been hurt.  

it just requires that you be kind. viciously. vengefully. you fight back. you plant flowers. give to charity. play games. pet someone’s dog. scream into the dark. paint and write and dance, tell jokes, sing songs, bake cookies. you have been hurt and you don’t have to deny that hurt. you just have to recognize it in other people, and take their hand, and say: no more. enough. fuck this. no more. 

have a cookie.