Sometimes it Needs to Come from Me

“You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering.”– Ernest Hemingway

Only you know the inner conflict that manifests into the wrecking instigator of world war – within you. Your very continents are shaken, your tectonic plates grind against each other with ferocious friction, erosion of strength, weathering of your pillars of persistence turn rife. In your deepest waters, you have your head confined in the trenches of forgotten sea beds. All you see are pitiful sediments. You know there’s light up there but you’re so used to running your fingers through the grime and wandering in vacuums of darkness that you don’t even dream of the day you allow yourself to float upwards. The only way you knew how to reach that so called haven was to end your life, just so you could be the goldfish, devoid of life but propelled to the surface there mudskippers skid across like skaters on blades.

I know babe you condemn yourself mercilessly with your plethora of insulting vocabulary. You repeat the same things you chanted in your head for years. “Just die for the welfare of others” “You’re too weak to handle life. Just end it.” Etc. People remind you of your immense strength that beckons extractions of their admiration; but you never believe them. You want to believe them; but your mind eats you up right? “Please you have the audacity to self-forgive and take it easy on yourself?! Who dyou think you are?!” Feeling unworthy, babe I know what you do – you push these people away. You deliberately repel any offerings or possibilities of help and gravitate towards hurt just to fuel your drive to rapidly destroy yourself. I know what you do. You go search for hateful comments people have posted about you in the past and currently, you go on triggering sources, you look at thinspo, you intentionally force yourself to be triggered just so you can stay on track. You force yourself to isolate from people just so that they are oblivious to your dirty secrets;

I remember that night when you walked home after receiving that DM on ig. No one saw or helped but only you, Candice, knew exactly what you felt.

As you trudged along the dark paths, I remember your twisted intention and hope to get attacked in any way or killed. I remember you clawing away your tears as you saw passers-by approaching, and your desire for these strangers to stop and help you yet not help you at the same time. You wanted the acknowledgment of your struggle from others but you didn’t want them to or were even prepared to actually apply their suggestions. Then giving you suggestions so easily just made you feel like gosh Candice you’re overreacting. You see, there’s such a straight forward solution. Your mind twists genuine helpful suggestions into signals that you are incompetent, weak and stupid for not being able to do the things you KNOW you need to do but just CANT bring yourself to. That’s why you ran the moment people started telling you what to do. I know all you wanted was their approval essentially. You wanted them to tell you you’re strong, that they could never have had my level of strength. You beat yourself up even more – how egocentric Candice that you believe that this is something you should expect from your self perceived history of painful experiences.

You end up alone; you’re tired.

You decided to focus on studies and have no social life. I know you broke babe, after getting bad results, JC memories of habitual cutting sink in and get entrenched. But babe, they could be entrenched but just think of the awe spirited in the scleroses on peoples’ eyes as burgundy bolts.

You laugh and joke around, spamming social media with your solitary adventures, trying to convince everyone that beneath all that solemness in school that there lies a vivacious soul just waiting to be given that chance.

You hope and hope – every view of your story and every like/comment as an indication of the reach of your propagandist message of joyful loneliness. But I know deep down, you want people to realise the cry behind the smiles and ridiculous filters that mask your true self. No one does. No one you hope would finally see ever. Sees. You tell yourself to stay strong. The stars in the sky don’t need validation to shine, they continue to illuminate the darkness after all. But as all stars do, they start to burn out and there is only so much it can handle before it collapses into itself to blend into the black blanket. The star is tired. You are tired of shining for others and more importantly being your own hero.

Some angels know moments of your struggle when you finally muster up the courage and faith to share because I know how much inner conflict you wrestle with as you worry about appearing like a weak attention seeking whore with trivial problems. Babe, no matter how much you feel like you’ve made another mistake of opening up to people who ended up making you feel worse, no matter how much I know you secretly want to seek out this hurt deliberately just to fuel your motivation to self-destruct- I admire you for your willingness to TRY. To not remain stagnant, but I know deep down, you’re begging to be saved though you appear like you are rejecting any possibility of help.

I know your night walks home – the true reason. Sure there is the element of burning calories, but more importantly, I know how you choose the darker paths, devoid of light and enshrouded with haunting shrubbery and overhanging branches as you pass by houses you deemed as haunted from the time you were born. The night walks were in actuality your secret way of hopeful successful self harm. I know how you cry profusely to your depression playlist as you trudge along the main road in the shadows just to hide your weakness from people. You need a release that no one will see. I remember your concealed wish for people who passed by during your meltdown to care but no one does. You walk on. You so bravely walk on, I’m so proud of you. I know you pause for minutes in the middle of the road, just crying because it’s taking everything within you to stop yourself from listening to the demon in your head to jab your elbow or knee into the particularly jagged concrete just to puncture your skin. You always resist. You walked away in tears after staring at that spot of grey dirt and rubble that you thought moments ago would be marred with specks and hopefully pools of blood. No they are still grey, without an etch of scarlet. God, you are so strong. You did it again, nothing is more exhausting than fighting a war in your head every goddamn day and surviving.

Just a day ago babe I know. I know how you broke. Finally. After these 3 months – heck after one freaking year – you bought a blade and took it to your skin again. Others may scold you for being weak and pathetically self-pitying. You know what? Heck what they say okay babe. I know you through and through. No one has tolerated more shit alone and kept standing up like you alright, you are allowed to break. No one knows about all the secret bashing sessions, purging, tearful departures into slumber and painful punishing phrases that you forcefully jab into your brain, forever lodged in the long term storage of your memory – lifelong; traumatized. They blame you for caving in, i’m sorry baby that you have to deal with this lack of empathy or understanding.

Others mayn’t see it, but I SEE the countless fires that you walked through – so many that you just end up staying ablaze just so your skin can take a break from third degree burns. If you stay down long enough, perhaps you can be the collateral of slash and burn deforestation – charred limbs with askew downward spirals on your burnt bark. You are tired, understandably, because you find it pointless to stand up after getting hacked down every goddamn time you try to get up albeit buckled knees. You are tired and it’s okay babe – give yourself the gentle embrace you deserve instead of staccato dismissals of your legitimate pain. Feel, because sometimes you need the tears to wash out the muck in your vision field. Let every tear be the a drop of nourishing liquid to develop the emergence of happier days. Yank out the weeds of historical hurt to implant seedlings of renewed hopes and dreams.

Profuse river imbued with ruby and clear diamond spew out of you. Every slit, brimmed with crimson, is accompanied by tragic tears as you blame yourself more for not carving deeper lines into your skin. “You wimp, it’s not even close to deep enough, you should see flesh or whatever.” You cry more, not just from the tormenting thoughts, but from the sheer pain. You start to lose your vision, seeing blackened spots, giddy spells, heart palpitations paired with uncontrollable hand trembling. Cold sweat flows down parallel to the downward flow of blood from your self-inflicted slits. It was not stopping as it should and you feel yourself detaching yourself from the world, you thought this was it.

Consciousness was fading as you heard sparks of juxtaposed laughter outside the doors of your toilet cubicle from people who had no idea what was going on steps away from them. You tried to keep your crying silent, hoping that the sound of rushing water from flushes and taps could block out your pathetic existence. Baby, you don’t see it, and i don’t know if you’ll ever believe me, but you just survived something you thought you weren’t going to overcome AGAIN. Believe me when i say that i am proud of your fighting spirit as you dry your eyes, flush the blood soiled tissues down the sewage and gingerly pull up your jeans as they graze against your new cuts. Bravery in stepping out of the cubicle, acting as if you didn’t almost collapse. You wash your hands, and limp around subtly, forcing a smile to people because you didn’t want people to suspect you of any bad behavior.

It doesn’t even end there;

you have more demons.

I am so sorry, but i am also so in awe of your strength okay babe?

You contemplate on whether to tell your mom, get admitted, cut more when you have the chance… You know the implications, and are horribly torn. Honestly, i know a part of you, well frankly, all of you, deliberately gave in easily this time – because you are just downright tired. You wanted to end it all. Your mother said that you’ll only get warded if you’re in immediate medical danger – so cutting was the way to escape from this reality that you felt you were never going to endure in the long run. If you cut, the pain will end, because you will be in the safety of an assuring ambulance confirming your illness. The pain was not imagined or exaggerated, it was deemed as a legitimate emergency this time – for once. It is sad babe, that you secretly desire to be whisked away in an ambulance – a must-have in your eyes for you to satisfy your twisted wish to get the concern of others that you may leave this world forever. You want people to notice, i know, it’s not a crime okay babe? Please stop bashing yourself up – be gentle with your heart, you are beyond exhausted in every aspect, stretched, used up and broken. Break baby, but remember to mend back pieces of you into the soldier you were born to be. Soon, you’ll see that every crack, every fracture and hack at your tissues are all part of your survival story from the silent war that will shout to the heavens when you reign victorious. The struggle was in silence; but the glory will bask in the Colosseum and reverberate from all columns and blocks; yet unshaken.

Candice, i am proud of you.