exercise in courage
i've already paid for all my future sins
about three years ago, i felt a brick to the back of my neck. i was trying to make it to bed.
i plummeted and landed on the ocean floor.
a lot of my memories are corrupted. feelings without visuals, scent, or sound.
haunted. hollow. empty.
others are so real my entire body tenses up.
it starts with my heartbeat. irregularly steadfast. like it is running away and i’m about to be gone.
cold sweats like when there’s a death in your dreams.
my hands shake as if i just heard the gunshot that marked my life forevermore.
my injured back turns stiff and hard as cement to protect me from the hatred of my dad’s mother. as if it’s happening right now, again.
unsafe, in my body.
therapy, medication, a chiropractor, and the loving support of my friends wasn’t enough to help me overcome.
cookies do help, please send them my way.
i struggled at night. every night. sometimes i wrote through it.
my friend lauren had moved overseas a few months prior to my mental health crisis, and felt badly she couldn’t be physically with me. she’d check in often and force me to take selfies from outside; keeping me from being a recluse.
one sleepless night, married by opposite time zones, lauren instantly responded to a poem i’d share in my instagram stories for close friends. she sent me a voice message instructing me to watch “i may destroy you” on hbo and take a writing class with a hot blonde named carly.
“make something out of what happened to you. use your words.”
i obliged and met my destiny.
i wrote a short story about three kings day, one of the few days of the year my brother and i got to experience joy.
one sentence, three words.
i hadn’t ever told anyone other than doctors or therapists that i’ve been terrorized by monsters in my sleep, well, always.
writing it, reading it to myself, and then to others didn’t kill me.
like i’ve always been, even when i didn’t know it.
i’m ready to remember.
i don’t really remember the arrangement or how we came to be there. we were always happy happy and safe come january. we never asked for anything but we followed the rules: the night before, you get your shoebox and go find some grass for the camels. i mean, the same kings that honored baby jesus upon his birth are said to come and bring us gifts. definitely no nightmares. the northern star leads to happiness.