Dear Life

Seriously I’m hanging on by a thread right now. I’m really struggling. Fuck you. Fuck you because I said so. Fuck you that I’ve been working this hard for this long and feel like I’m getting nowhere. I know that will change. I know this is temporary. But for fuck’s sake when can you please stop throwing me curve balls?

I mean come the fuck on. Enough is enough already. As if I didn’t already know what I was doing, you just keep lobbing shit at me like I should just hit it out of the park. But guess what? This isn’t fucking tee ball anymore. No, it’s the big leagues, and it’s fucking life.

I just can’t. I’m sick of being alone, so I spend my time distracted with friends to still feel alone. I want to scream and get it all out but that does nothing but echo the sound of the silence in my own head when no one is around to hear. I wander off into the forest almost every day to leave my troubles in the woods that so willingly carry my burdens, and still it’s not enough. I work harder. I work longer. I sleep less. I care more. I keep my head down and my nose to the grindstone. And for what? What, exactly?

Life to keep trampling all over me as if the shit I’ve already been through wasn’t exactly enough? To keep running me over to the point that I just want to run away to go nowhere and be no one to anyone anywhere? For what? I can’t run. I don’t even want to. There are people here who depend on me and I’m so ever fucking grateful for that because right about now is the time that I get in my car, throw the top down and just drive. Drive. To wherever I can get that is anywhere but here. But where? Four bald tires don’t seem to be taking me anywhere but home these days and I suppose, for the first time in my actual life – despite what I’ve said or not said before – this IS home.

Fuck me that makes it harder. I can’t run away. I don’t even want to. But fuck me, when do I ever get to stop fighting? When do I get to lay down my battle sword and just breathe? Sleep. Be. When does anyone ever fight for me?

Breathe. Just breathe. Anna Nalick plays on the Bluetooth and I remember all the things from my past where I remember that life’s like an hourglass and I know better. And yet I still always fall for the wrong people at the wrong time, believing the potential they show me is who they will ever be to me knowing all the time that no one will ever fight for me the way I fight for us and I resolve myself to knowing that I will always be a warrior. I don’t know any other way to be.

Perhaps my battle sword, or my knife always at my right hip this life, is just my ongoing battle scars and broken hearts protecting itself life and life after life and lie after lie after lie that I know that the only way to cut through to the truth is to fight for it, and fight for yourself, and for those you love.

I come at face value. I am what I am, no hidden agendas, no underlying goals. I tell you who I am from the moment you meet me right until the moment you throw me away. I’ve never changed that way, even when I grew up always being the throwaway girl. Someday I’ll write a novel about that – the throwaway girl who had her confidence broken at every turn. The black sheep. The odd one. The loner, always surrounded by friends never letting anyone close. Hi. That’s me. In a lot of ways, I’m still her.

But in a lot of ways I’m different. I didn’t let the world break me, even when it tried. Even when it felt like the world was falling apart and the earth was crumbing beneath my feet – even like right now – I can sit alone on my porch and be grateful for all that I have and all who love me. While I still sit here, alone.

Fuck you, universe. Fuck you. When is this enough? When does someone ever stand up beside me? Fight for me? Say hey, this girl, this woman isn’t a throwaway anymore. She matters, because she cares. Because she has heart, and soul, and a belief in magic that belies her past and the shit that she’s lived through? When does that happen? Because to be honest, I am losing this fight right now.

That will change, I know. It always does. I am forever the warrior. For fuck’s sake I have truth and justice tattooed on my back in Latin. Let’s be honest, it’s just who I am. I am hard pressed to remember a life where I haven’t been a warrior of some sort, always fighting for something, or running away. At what point when I am no longer running – right now – do I get to stop and breathe? Just breathe.

Dear life, I hope you know. I’ve fought down every battle of this road. But I’m so sick of fighting I just want to lay down and sleep.