#existentialism?

i'm still getting used to publicizing my writing, my hobby that has never stopped beating, that's gotten me through pain and professionalism and everything in between. i've gained friends and lost friends through this powerful little thing that i have a degree in. i have a substack. a play. a novel that will never see the light of day.

please feel free to join me on this ride.

To be grown up and made up.

So big and so small.

In a world full of others just like you, all perfectly made up.

Play acting at life just like everyone else.

But in your warm kitchen I imagine you have your lives down perfectly-even though I know that’s not true.

It’s all just missed staged directions and fumbled lines, passed off as ad-libbed acts of genius.

I know it’s all made up. All so perfectly made up in all of our collective consciences.

But we are not like the kids who know it’s all for show.

We say our lines over and over in the mirror and when we cross the street and we swallow them whole.

Until we know they’re real.

Is the porch light real? Is the snow real?

Sometimes if I stand very still and think about nothing but my feet on the ground I can be real, but most of the time I am made up.

I question if the summer was real because the air is just too cold now.

The kitchen table and the alcohol- sitting across from it from boys with dark eyes who only know me as I carefully made myself up.

But my laugh was real and unrehearsed.

My thoughts came right out of my mouth.

I spoke about imporant nonsensical made up things and made my friends smile very real smiles.

A shiny gold real in a landfill of made up.

Almost everything will be made up forever until we die and alone-everything will be real.

As we die our children-even if we’ve had none will begin to wonder about porch lights and snow- they will be begin to wonder if they can ever really know.

I didn’t ask for this.

Who could ever want this?

This is a tightened chest, a hardened heart. This is a skittering gaze and a fighting stance. This is 24/7 fight or flight. This is trauma at first.

This does not go away.

Because it’s been almost a year since I‘ve thought of it with any sincerity. It’s been several months since the incident that had me pulled from my bed at two in the morning. I think I shouldn’t be affected at this point.

That’s the thing with trauma. It doesn’t go away.

Images stick. Sounds echo. Memories repeat.

I see red sports cars and feel my heart clench in anxiety. I hear footsteps in the hall, a knock at my door, and I’m filled with dread. I am afraid to let people know who I am.

My trauma—I’ve only recently learned to call it such—isn’t life ending. In the grand scheme of the world and all the problems that exist in it, my trauma is insignificant.

But in the world which is my life, my trauma has impact. And I know I will not die from my trauma and I know that I have to believe I can beat it in order to beat it, but I will not diminish the impact it has had on my life.

I am scarred.

I think all of us are scarred in our own way.

I think that’s okay.

(I have always had scars, physical and emotional. I have been prone to scars since birth. Take it from someone who knows: it’s okay to have scars, no matter the shape they take)

Scars are old wounds healed over. Scars are struggles and traumas that have impacted us, but have faded with time.

Scars are permanent; scars can fade.

There will always be a mark, I will always know it’s there, but it will fade until I cannot see it.

It will take years for my trauma to fade into the lightness of the scar you only see when you look for it. It will take years for me to stop turning at every red sports car, stop panicking at every knock on my door. But it will fade.

I have to believe it will fade, I have to hope.