Alone again

Alone again. Walking outside. Noise.

The headphones over her head weren’t drowning out anything. She moved, one foot in front of the other, the screaming moments stabbing in her ears. Again, again, again, she reached the end of the road like a cheer, and the corner shop howled out at her in a circus of blazing sounds. More people slid by, nearly see-through, yet the monument of their conversations hit her like a never-ending carousel.

She did the usual, to mark the scene. Didn’t things used to be easier, she questioned herself, surely there was a time when this wasn’t quite so bad? That was a lie. The sweetest of them. The hopeful words got her to pause her monologue for a second, and blink back to the hypothetical simpler time that she could return to. That she could shine in. The time that felt like herself. But there in the sweetness, was the sour delusion waiting to arrive. No, it has always been this way. No, she wasn’t what society portrayed as normal.

Society’s ‘normal’ had hated her since she was a child. It shot out to scold her faster than the greatest offenders could concoct a sparkling excuse. Too quiet, her classmates spat at her. She needs to engage more with the class, but she’s a pleasure to teach, her teachers sang, so pleased to tick her off their exhausting list. They always coated their lukewarm assessment of her in sand, so it stuck to her afterwards, like a label, and she would be left itching away. Picking her faulty self apart. There was something wrong with her. She didn’t even recognize herself in all their swirling, suitable words.

They said she couldn’t talk. She thought she could. She knew she could. They were making her uncomfortable, now she felt like, perhaps, she couldn’t. Stealing her space, snatching her soul, her heart broke under their impossible mold. Her identity collapsed, crying and growing into their own creation. Her- the ‘problem’ they would never tolerate. She- the problem they made. So quick to diagnose and dismiss. You’re this. We don’t like you. Have fun. Alone.

Maybe she could embrace this. The isolation. Her headphones blared the darkening music, her legs could sprint until she was clean and free…away. Wasn’t she? But she was back round at the start line, back and over the bridge she had tried to tear herself away from. In fleeing she kept her captors, in constant chase behind her, and she ran the same circuit, pulling all their favorite stunts.

And somewhere along the way, she had gotten lost. In the maze of the same, in the rays of hate, in the clouds of her anger, the girl had forgotten who she was. And what was really wrong with it…

It was like the sky held her face when she looked at it, the pink swimming in the fading blue, the crackling of the cars shaking in the background.

I’m me. And you are you. This happened. I’m allowed to live. And so are you. I’ll shake your hand. You may not accept me, but now, I do.

Then she knew, creeping in slowly, like magic…

I’m enough. Because I still try, even when I fail. I haven’t given up on the world, and I haven’t given up on myself. So, I’m enough. I always will be.

Sometimes when the world is all bad, we start to think that it is the only thing we will ever see. The only thing we deserve. Even when it is so wonderful that we have made it so far. When our life itself is a miracle that can encourage others to be the same enduring starlight. Such a strong fighter, you can lift up others that will in turn lift you. Others have generalized and dismissed, but let’s not dismiss ourselves. Let’s give ourselves a chance, the way you have done for everyone else. Don’t confine yourself to the prisons of others, the world was never designed to be easy, run, and find freedom in yourself. You are more divine than art. You are more beautiful than anything their cages could create.

Thank you, forever, for being alive.