dark in pastel.

One day it just hits you like a train. That you’ve spent actual decades unlearning traumas, falling into seen and learned behaviors, morphing your personality to fit whatever level of hell you’ve gotten yourself into because chaos is the only life you know. You convince yourself you’re a new person every couple of months because that’s when your life flips again. 

You have hundreds of incomplete hobbies. Some you’ve poured months into and some you bought all of the supplies and never started. You’ve had multiple friend groups for YEARS and dedicated your life to them wether they were good for you or not. Kept a few and lost dozens. You’ve ebbed and flowed yourself into a goddamn oblivion just hoping that one day you’ll fall into yourself. Like some version that you create will be THE ONE. Whoever the fuck that is. 

You spend so much time finding the new outlets, doing the new things, learning and unlearning and re-learning the things you feel nostalgic about. Seeing the days as both gifts and burdens and persisting anyway because there is this pull in your soul telling you that there needs to be something else.

The present is never enough. The present festers in a brain that’s never felt complete. The present is a mirror with a rose-tinted finish that can only see the chaos behind you as a friend you can save and the future as limitless possibilities.

And one day it hits you like a train.. that the present is every version you’ve envisioned for tomorrow and reflected on today. The present is the friend, the hobby, the gift you’ve given yourself every single day without realizing it. 

Today is the day I begin again. Yet again. Again for the second time in six months. Again for the millionth time since I was ushered onto this earth.

Since birth, I have been plagued with the ability to adapt. I still don’t know if it’s a gift I arrived with or a survival mechanism I was forced to grow like an extra limb. I’ll never know. I’ve stopped asking.

This time is different.

I have endured twenty-nine years of beginning again. Of living out of black trash bags. Of shuffling between homes owned by people who wore compassion like a costume, who paraded me around as proof of their goodness. Look how caring I am. Look how strong I am, taking on a case like her.

I learned early that love had conditions. Forty-eight hours to be perfect. To heal. To behave. When pretend love failed, the bruises came, and I learned to wear long sleeves in the summer. I learned how to hold my head and call it strength where love should have been.

I didn’t play with toys. I played with emotions.

I learned the volatility of humans the way other kids learned multiplication tables. I learned how to armor myself, how to silently plead for the pain to stop while still enduring it. My younger sister was always with me. There was no time to consider my own safety. Even at five years old, I knew this wasn’t right. Someone had to take the fall. So it was me. Always me. I could take the beating. She never should have. I’ve known that forever.

And so began the cycle of beginning again. Again. And again. Like fucking clockwork.

Every few days, weeks, months if we were lucky. Trash bags filled with things we loved but could never call ours. Temporary was the only permanence we knew. Nothing stayed. No matter how hard we loved it.

But I kept her. I kept her safe. I kept her loved. I kept her shielded from the worst of it, even when it hollowed me out.

And one day, she was strong enough to fly. And she did. She soared. She built a life so beautiful it feels untouchable. She is married. She is happy. She fucking made it out and I am so proud of her it vibrates my bones when I think of her.

But I stayed.

I stayed, and I rotted. I stayed and had nothing but my son, and we fought our own wars. I lost him when I lost myself, buried too deep in pain to be the version of me that could win against an army. I was a fucked up kid with no family, screaming for help beside hospital beds, having already lost the only parent I ever knew. I was fighting ten thousand people with nothing but loneliness and a broken heart.

I got him back. Then lost him. Then got him back. Then lost him again.

I survived on temporary homes, temporary vices, temporary versions of myself that kept me breathing until morning. I’ve had countless jobs, countless restarts, countless attempts at ending my own life. I’ve built rooms into homes and lost them. I’ve started over with furniture, and I’ve started over with nothing but the clothes on my back and a brain that wants to devour me.

Today, I begin again.

But today, I brought all my beginnings with me. I stacked them like books in a library and used them as scaffolding instead of weight. Today, I didn’t have to beg, plead, lie, or manipulate just to survive. I didn’t have to disappear quietly into the night with the fear of my life wrapped around my neck like a noose.

Today, friends showed up.

Three cars. One small room. People who dropped everything to help me move what little I owned, not because they expected anything back, but because they love me. People who gathered around me and built something that feels like the family you see on screens. There is no requirement here to be perfect. Or quiet. Or small. There is no blade hidden in kindness, no demand that I be stronger than I am to be worthy.

Today, I am enough. As I am. And they love me anyway.

They love my son. I love their children. We are a misfit community of strong, broken, loving people who built a family from scratch. I never thought this kind of love was real. I had prepared myself to do this alone. To white-knuckle existence until I couldn’t anymore. Until one of my many self installation attempts finally worked. Until the lights went out.

Today marks the day I begin again.

At what point does truama leave your body?

At what point are we no longer the armor we have forged while living for just survival? Will i ever know what's real and what isn't? Was it ever survival? Was it ever truama? Is my reality truly as dark as my mind tells me it was? Is this all a giant ruse I've created to garner the attention I craved?

Reality is discussed as if it's linear. That reality is understood and can be defined in a way that insinuates a baseline. "This is what is and what isn't."

I dont think it's that simple. I think reality is ever flowing, ever growing, and ever misunderstood. The hastily slammed locker room door is a sign of excitement of the games that lie ahead for some, to others is a warning shot, a sound that echoes from the walls with the knowing that war is about to begin. Two people in wo different realities.

I think of if those two realities met. I think of how my reality mixes with those of different realities. If I could ever fit my fear of slamming doors into the secuity of someone who revels in its song. Its almost chemical, the way water and oil don't mix. That's how I feel.

I am everything and nothing at the same time. I am fearful and hallow and joyous and optimistic about the future yet don't understand if the armor ever came off. If it ever will. My reality feels isolating. It feels that connection is only as deep as I froce it be as I gnaw my way into their lives and slowly turn them away because something inside me is broken. I think I meant to be temporary.

I don't know if I want to be temporary. I also don't know what to do if I wasn't. I have never been permanent. I have never been kept. I'm not entirely sure I've been wanted outside of the ways I could help. If that ever changed...? Well, thats why I'm always building new lives with old lives out of reach every time. Everyone I am closest with now, I have only known a few months. My old life feels like a fever dream. So does the life before that, and before that, and so on.

Each time I am someone different. I take on these new lives as if they're a completely different person. What's weird is how I cherry pick the parts of me I want in that new reality. Personality traits, mannerisms, mentality. I can become anyone.

I came from pain. Deep, generational, bone-level pain. I learned how to survive before I ever learned how to rest. Love was something dangerous, something that demanded pieces of me until there was barely anything left. I didn’t know safety was something you could feel instead of chase.

There were years I barely survived. Years where my body carried the cost of staying alive. I thought that was strength, enduring everything quietly. If you’re quiet enough then you can fade into the background. Like a wallflower that would only be the victim of shrapnel from a shattering plate aimed at someone else rather than the pinnacle of rage you did not create. The cuts and bruises would be bandaged with apologies laced with explanations of why the violence was justified because hurt people hurt people; and, this time, it wasn’t meant for you. So that was to supposd to make it okay to them. To your war torn body.

Strength looks different now.

I found people who don’t ask me to bleed to belong. Friends who gather around each other instinctively. Lost souls with hearts beating loudly in a houses and group chats that feels like home. We celebrate, we grieve, we grow. We listen. We stay.

I found love that doesn’t hurt. Arms that don’t require perfection. Safety without conditions.

Freedom used to feel fictional. Something reserved for movies and other lives. But it turns out it’s real. It’s quieter than I imagined. Softer. Stronger.

This is what being alive feels like when you’re finally allowed to just exist without constantly having to prove your presence is worthy or useful.

Not the me who had laid before you in this life- whose memories feel like perhaps they belong in a time long before we took our first breaths. Not the me whose bike tires kicked up softly paddled dirt along the paths of schools we entered once the sun had gone down. Not even the me who laid before the men that damaged me in ways I've come to know are irreparable.

A different me.

The same bones and familiar skin that you had known before.

This one feels different. It feels... hardened. Not hardened like diamonds but hardened the way boulders sit stone-faced in the wake of raging waterfalls and yet remain so still. Soft, even. The waters rage and with every rush a piece of her is taken along the for ride and etching out the reminders of what she has supported. Some pieces may travel miles and miles and others will turn into the sediment that is crucial for her foundation. Reminders of her unwavering stillness and providing the guidance the water needs to run the course of it's meaningful journey and cyclical destination of nowhere and everywhere.

I want to be the water.

The boulder feels like it will one day be eroded to obscurity. The water feels free. Both have important roles to play so why would I hate the mainstage role I have been given? Or moreso, the role I have given to myself by remaining still and stone-faced and guiding the waters around me knowing I am unhappy.

ive lived a million life times.

ive always been in the throes of curiousity to know what it meant to live eternally. to be like the vampires and everliving creatures i read about in my teens. i guess i dont have to think about it much anymore.

i have lived a million life times in the ways that i have been everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.

i have loved and been hurt.

i have been loved and have done the hurting.

i have traveled and viewed the world as my personal explorational feat.

i have traveled because i had no choice and felt the suffocation of the chokehold that inoption had on me.

i have laughed.

i have been laughed at.

my life feels like a never ending conundrum.

i dont understand it but i want to. i want to know what it takes to love and be loved and to feel like the life i was given, that everyone claims is such gift, means something to me. to live life in a way that doesnt feel like a constant struggle and tug of war with happiness and survival.

i might never find the answers.

i might be stuck in the loop of a never ending cyclical battle between reason, pain, and the attempt to understand what any of this means.

if it means anything at all?

i want the answers but whose to say that even if had them i wouldnt question them as i do with everything, all the time?

i over analyze.

"You complain about the same things."

I write and post and scream and yell about the parts of my soul that are being torn to shreds. I vent in places where I am unknown to the world and where reality can't reach me. I scribble and scratch and gnaw at the wounds that I didn't create. I am a tortured soul living in a world where shutting up and moving on is the normality of the day to day but how I can recover from something I cannot grasp?

I don't understand what "moving on" is.

Am I supposed to forget the trauma? Am I supposed to wake up one day and the world be painted in un-thorned roses and lilac skies? Am i supposed to pretend that the body I walk around in every single day has been untouched and unscathed by the vile things it's endured?

I can't view the world in the ways that the renowned writers and the successful survivors do. I admire so much that they were able to manifest their pain in ways that touched millions. I am in awe of the strength that it gave them and the inspiration they were to so many.

But they are not me.

I am not them.

I am me. I am me in the ways that pain haunts my bones like graffiti on abandoned buildings. Stark reminders of visitors that have had thoughts, feelings, or their own pain that had no escape and they have decimated the things around them that had no way to speak for themselves. My body and mind are littered with reminders that I am not the only one in pain because as the saying goes, "hurt people hurt people."

So what is it about me that felt so welcoming to those looking for a release?

Just as those who have repeated the cycle of pain I, too, will continue a cycle they could not break. But rather than hurting those around me, rather than destroying something once untouched, I will write and post and scream and yell until I feel that release that may reach those that it needs to or give me comfort I need to discover what "moving on" means.

Sometimes I feel like I am on top of the world. I feel like it all makes sense and I am living my life to it's max capacity. If I full send my life in a way that brings me joy in that very moment then that makes the entirety of my life worth it. If, while knowingly being fleeting, I can forget all of the pain and all of the loneliness that maybe I can find some type of purpose in the same second that I'm breathing that I can fool myself into believing that it truly isn't all bad.

But the alcohol wears off. The drugs fade. The next fix becomes the fixation because the moment they wear off is when reality sets in.

A reality I cannot face.

I have tried therapy. I have tried talking, hiking, self help apps, rehabs, throwing myself into work and relationships, hobbies, podcasts, writing, painting, art.. the list goes on and on. My inability to find stability is not for a lack of trying. I have tried it all and found more heartbreak where salvation was promised to be.

So what if it's me?

What if I am the cause of my own destruction? What if I am so far gone and so deeply broken that I beyond the grasp of help? What if I don't even want help anymore and simply want to succumb to the numbness I have grown so accustomed to? What if the darkness within me has become the only tried and true friend that I can truly count on?

I never meant to be this way. I didn't want to find these coping mechanisms that feel more like love than the love I've scoured the depths of my shallow family pool for. I found solace in the isolation of my pain and connection in the false relationships I've created with those who drown their pain in similar ways that I do. People that I only see when the sun has long kissed the mountains goodbye.

We all seem to hurt in different fonts but no one will ever confront those demons when they're playing in our minds when the substances wear off.

We can scream and yell and cry and drink and drug and cut and wallow in the graves that we're digging for ourselves. Ultimately, it has nothing to with the way we numb ourselves. It has everything to do with the way we cannot accept any form of love that is not painful. To accept love is to accept that we have never received care in ways that was needed when we needed it the most. To know that anything that is not toxic and painful will soon become tainted by our own volatile actions and behaviors.