I could color my hair lighter.
Make sure my smile’s brighter.
Wear my skirts higher.
Ignore the fact that you’re a liar.
Spend longer on your desire.
Ignite your lust, like fire.
I’d lose you anyway,
wouldn’t I, fighter?
I can’t make you stay.
I can’t make you see it my way.
On the last day,
hey,
it’s okay,
I knew, I’d lose you anyway.
–S.
Hold on, Henry.
Remember, when it was once upon a time, Henry?
From dusk until dawn, Henry?
Is that fair, Henry?
Do you not even care, Henry?
Is this the end of the line, Henry?
Were you ever even mine, Henry?
Were we just passing time, Henry?
Hold on, Henry.
–S.
Was I too much or not enough?
Scared of vulnerability, did I act too tough?
Emotional, did I deliver it all too rough?
Walking ultimatum, did I call my own bluff?
Love like quicksand, did I make you feel stuck?
Loads of insecurities, did they make you not give a fuck?
Was I just not built of all the right stuff?
Well, was I too much or not enough?
–S.
I’m the loneliest,
the onliest,
girl in the world.
I know you only just,
left.
I’m the loneliest,
the onliest,
girl in the world.
I know we’re only just,
friends.
I’m the loneliest,
the onliest,
girl in the world.
I know you’ll only just,
forget.
–S.
Sigh a little,
cry a little,
die a little,
without you.
I lie a little,
to survive the middle,
without you.
I try a little,
to survive the middle,
without you.
I get high a little,
to survive the middle,
without you.
I sigh a little,
cry a little,
die a little,
without you.
–S.
He is 9.
I am 22.
Tonight, we laid intertwined in our parents’ bed. His legs over mine. My left arm under his head. The fan blowing cool air over our rumpled clothes clad bodies. ‘I Heard the Party’ by Gem Club was playing through the computer speakers.
Tears run down the sides of his face. He told me that he remembered this song. I’d played it weeks ago in my room and when he heard it for the first time, he cried.
It makes him sad. When I ask him why he is crying he tells me that he doesn’t want any one of us to die. That he wants us to always stay together.
I promise him that we won’t die.
I don’t want to crush his innocence tonight. I just want him to be able to feel whatever his heart feels while he listens to the song. I know that society will soon try to shut down this emotional side of him. But he has a very big heart. I hope that it always comes out on top.
The second time we play it, tears run down the sides of my face. Although we are not necessarily crying about the same things, we are one. We are feelers. We get deeply connected to things. Our happiest moments seem to be lined with a little bit of sadness.
And we don’t have to talk about it.
We just let the melody and the lyrics of the song do that for us.
Even though we’ve barely exchanged four sentences the entire day – in this moment, we are closer than we have ever been.
Both mourning something that has yet to come and that we cannot explain.
–S.
The twenty-third year of my life was about swimming in an ocean of mistakes and coming back onto land to take chances. Both unfamiliar territories for me, for the record.
There is really something to be said about making mistakes that send you rolling into a gutter. You’re flat on your back. Everything hurts. Something might be broken. Your feet can’t carry you any longer. Some people in the gutter look up and see a pitch black sky. But if you look into the eyes of the others, you see what looks like a million shining white dots.
Stars.
And it’s in these eyes that warriors are born. I’d like to think that after everything that has happened up to this moment, that I’ve fought harder than ever to maintain my view of the stars. To still believe in the good. To not turn off their light. Even when the night almost consumed me. That I stripped away the layers of myself that died in the comfort zones I surrounded myself with and gave birth to a warrior.
A warrior ready to attack life because it’s going to attack right back. I’ve laid in quite a few gutters in the last year and I anticipate that I’ll lay in many more in the years to come. But the stars always light the way for me.
–S.
I don’t really remember running.
I’m sure I did as a child, and was forced to during the annual fitness test, and for certain gym class activities.
But you know your brain can block out traumatic experiences, so I’m sure that’s what happened.
I always saw it as something only ‘skinny’ people could do, so why bother?
I walk at least an hour every day now and it never fails that I see at least one person running.
For a second, those old feelings hit me:
You can’t run.
You’ll never be able to run.
You’ll never have a runner’s body.
On and on they go.
Lies that I tell myself that I’ve collected over the years – I don’t even think half of the statements are true.
So, I called bullshit today.
I’ve known since last night that I was going to attempt to run today, so I stalled all day.
Around 5p, I was hitting the – yeah, I’m tired of working out every day, mood, y’know – good old self-sabotage.
Then I walked half a mile to the Elementary School behind my house – skinny women in sports bras, flat stomachs showing, everywhere on the track.
The Universe must hate me.
And then my feet hit the pavement, and something happened.
I ran.
I really believed that I couldn’t – wholeheartedly.
Like I really thought I’d make it about 5 steps and pass out. Roast in the Texas sun like a glazed honey ham – only to be found in the morning by a bird taking a shit.
I ran a total of .75 of a mile.
Something big happened.
Something shifted in me.
I thought of every time that I said NO to something because of my weight without even trying, but today I said YES to a future of trying.
I’m not a runner. Nor am I skinny. Nor do I have a runner’s body, whatever the fuck that is, but I ran today and felt alive.
–S.
As a child, my parents would say hurtful things about my weight. They never flat-out said that I wasn’t beautiful or that I wasn’t worthy of love, but I took the words they did say and basically felt as if I heard them say I wasn’t beautiful and that I wasn’t worthy of love because of my size.
This became part of my identity at a very early age.
My entire identity wrapped itself around these false statements that I gave power to.
I imagine growing around these false statements like your body tissue forms and grows around a breast implant, or a bullet fragment, or a donated organ, or an injury.
They became a living, breathing, part of me.
They became true for me.
But, I was wrong.
So fucking wrong.
They were, and are, false statements.
There is no way that I am worth less than the person standing to my left and to my right anywhere on this earth. There is no way that I am not beautiful.
Today, I choose to give different statements power as I unwrap my identity around these false ideas I have carried about myself for over two decades.
I imagine the tissues dying off as their blood source is taken away.
Today, I made myself breakfast.
I packed my lunch for work. I did an entire skin-care routine.
I made my bed. I am going to go workout after a closing shift.
All this time I thought that I didn’t love myself, but I did.
I was just showing it with unhealthy coping mechanisms that didn’t look too much like love, but I think they did look like someone who was desperately trying to move forward while believing that they were less than.
It looked like a losing fight.
I did these things today as a healthy form of self-care and self-love.
I’m only able to do these things because I actively love myself and want to care for myself.
I am reinventing myself. I am leveling up.
Like a 2.0 version of myself.
I’m taking apart all of the false ideas and negative thoughts that I had about myself to find out who I really am.
I’m coming for all of the energies taken from me.
I’m focusing on turning all of the losses I took into wins.
I’m coming for all of the love I wasn’t given and giving it to myself.
As for weight-loss – I’m going with what feels good.
The idea of an ideal weight, I’m scrapping it.
When I was 16, 170 pounds was my happy space.
I have no fucking idea what my happy space is at 28.
I snatched my weight-loss board off of my closet door.
I ripped up the reward system that I wrote out for every 7.5 pounds down.
I’ll know my happy weight when I fucking get there.
I’m not rewarding myself for weight lost because I’m not going to tell myself that that’s the only reason I deserve to be rewarded.
I gave so much power to so many things that were so wrong.
I was so wrong about everything.
I realize that it is totally okay for an idea you had about yourself to not be true. It is okay for you to realize that it was total and utter bullshit. It’s okay to say you were wrong.
I feel
naked,
afraid,
nervous,
excited.
I’m having to step into who I really am now and it’s terrifying and it’s beautiful.
I could never truly be me because I was always carrying around the dead weight of the dead tissue with me. It weighed me down.
So much of me was wrapped up in lies.
Today, I am more me, than I ever was before.
Like – WILL THE REAL S PLEASE STAND UP?
I don’t know why the hardest person to forgive is yourself. Probably because you’re the only physical – living and breathing – entity on this earth who knows who you really are – you’re the only person who knows who you are at your core. You know every nook and cranny of your mind, heart, and spirit.
So, when you’ve let yourself down, it is like a million hearts breaking.
But the first step to get to the point of forgiving yourself – is to acknowledge the wrongdoing.
Cheryl Strayed wrote in the book Wild –
“What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I’d done something I shouldn’t have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I’d done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn’t do anything differently than I had done? What if I’d actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn’t have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?”
This quote always stuck with me and I finally figured out why.
Because I was so very fucking wrong, but I could still be forgiven.
I did what I did out of survival.
Emotionally eating. Being hyper-critical of myself. The men I dated. The friends I kept. The money I spent.
I did what I did because it was the only thing I knew.
But I can still be forgiven.
So, I forgive myself today.
Because I didn’t know better than, but I do now.
I always loved myself, just not in the way that was best for me.
But it was the only way I knew how to love then.
Today, I know better.
Today, I am forgiven.
I imagine that flowers are now growing in the places where the tissue died off.
–S.
Excerpt from a recent birthday card to my friend.
This day – today – is our BEST day.
Yesterday is gone. It’s never coming back.
Tomorrow isn’t promised.
So, we can plan, write, hope, dream, wish, and fantasize about the future, and that’s all good and well, but all any of us really have is the 24 hours in front of us. And for some of us who woke up today, we might not get to complete our full 24 hours.
Some people didn’t wake up today. Some people lost a loved one today. Somebody was raped today. Somebody miscarried a child today. Somebody found out their partner fell out of love with them today. Somebody’s son was shot today. Somebody’s daughter was kidnapped today. Somebody was handed divorce papers today. Somebody found out their husband was cheating on them today. Somebody found out their wife is pregnant by somebody else today.
So, we need to really start counting our blessings. What we DO have versus what we don’t.
We need to practice gratefulness daily.
It’s obviously easier to have an attitude of gratitude when you feel good about yourself, when you’re happier. But through times of sorrow, of grief, of pain and heartache, we have to maintain those things that we are grateful for.
I know I’ve said – I understand why someone would not want to be here anymore, but I DO want to be here.
Sometimes it gets so dark, and the light is hard to find. It feels as if it might never shine on you again, but we have to realize that the light comes from within. That we are the light. We are the answer.
You’re so beautiful. Don’t roll your eyes or laugh, hear me out here. People tried to break you down. They used you. They manipulated you. Your giving heart and your kind spirit, they took advantage of it. But you persevered anyway. You stayed beautiful inside. You never switched up. You never let the losers and the cheaters and the beaters and the abusers and the fraudulent souls change your light inside.
Did the flame flicker? Yes it did. Does it shine as brightly as it probably should? Not always. But does it shine? Despite all the odds stacked against you. Your spirit is unbreakable, that’s one of the main reasons you are so beautiful. Your resilience.
A TRUE Queen.
–S
The Messy Middle 🖤 