I can’t tell you how to survive. I cant even tell you why I did.
I remember seeing videos of people claiming to be former prisoners of war. I took notes, though I knew better to know that’s not how I survived the first time. Nonetheless, I was convinced I had continued living wrong, because I had no longer known the pain I had once felt.
This is a physical pain. Not so much a mental one. Not one that is not derived from physical circumstance, anyway. Others say they felt filthy despite fleeing. I say I was untouchable before, and now I feel nothing on it at all. I like to think that if an oldworld therapist dug around my brain enough and plucked out all the parasites, I’d be better. But I will ever occasionally look at myself and realize that I do not want someones filthy fingers having any hand over my thought. Trading trust for pain is pointless. I know I should feel something, but I do not. It is a fact that I can sit with. Something I ingrained in my memory for so long only so others can forget. I can forget now. But I won’t. Because forgetting is the day I decide I am not real, and that I am not worthy of my own life.
Scars remain on the tips of my fingers where I clawed out through the loose dirt of an old shed. My hands were splintered by chips of wood from the wall, old, broken glass, thorns from the tree above, the serrated edge of a bottle cap, a rusty nail, over the course of days. It was hot, and I still feel shame for the days I didn’t claw and only laid there. Nothing more than an insect, captured and left to rot whenever I wasn’t entertaining. Wriggling around on my back, pulling at my limbs, biting until the day I was struck head first into the wall. I hadn’t cried until that point. When I was exhausted for days after the fact but had convinced myself that I would die if I slept on an unnursed concussion. I believe it was delerium that made me abandon my escape hole. I’d jumped between fearing sudden death to calling for it sooner enough that eventually I’d followed both.
I wont tell you how i did it. Not on the first page. It still makes me bite my cheek to think about. But I ran. I ran down the dry dirt path while stones and thorns dug into my bare feet. I did not care for living. I cared for spite. I flipped countless latches, releasing every other body trapped here. It was quiet at first, other than the blood pumping in my ears and the sync of my feet hitting the ground. Then it was louder. People peaking out, hesitant to flee. Then more foot steps. People yelling. Others begging to be next. The sound quickly drowned out the distant cicadas. A girl with grown out blue hair joins me on the other row, prying open doors. I didn’t think I could feel any more adrenaline until she cursed out crying. Despite myself, I looked back. Even stupider, I stopped when I saw her in the dirt sobbing out agonizing noises while those she previously freed ran past her. I don’t remember the thoughts going through my head, but I gravitated towards her. I felt an odd disregard to myself or anything that would happen after this. Inside the door she sat trembling in front of while spewing a slurry of broken curses was what used to be a man. I grabbed her shoulder, then her arm, trying to get her to stand. She pleads to save him. She swears he’s alive and deserves a chance to make it out, but the only life I see are the buzzing wings of flies. Nonetheless, I had argued too long to care. I’d die ashamed and useless if I left her and die being nothing but stubborn if I stayed. So I lifted an wretchedly stenched arm over my shoulder and we dragged the obviously rotting corpse to freedom.
