#7 - Hay que seguir
Sometimes I get tired of telling nice stories. Of making delicate, “sweet little drawings”. Of telling things from the perspective of resilience. You're lucky. You've been so lucky in life. I won’t deny it, but if I could, I’d throw up that sentence.
Sometimes I want to scream when people tell me I'm brave. I don't want to be brave. I want to live a normal life.
Spend a night without nightmares. Go grocery shopping without suffering a panic attack. Be twenty-nine years old and not still depend on my parents for food.
Sometimes, I wish I could stop laughing. Go back to that moment when I was blind and shake myself, get a good slap on the face. ‘For God's sake, stop smiling!’ Because laughter was everything. It hid everything. Justified everything. You had your hands on me and I was laughing.
And at night, when I close my eyes, I see nothing but that. You and me on the railing. You and me in the park. You and me in secret. In innocent secret. I'd like to vomit everything about you and me and all those people who never stopped telling me how lucky I've been in life.
“Is that what lucky means to you?
This is the last time I look back.” ¹
Sometimes, I just wish objects could become objects again, rather than symbols. I wish a city could be just a dot on a map, rather than the source of all my misery.
But I found the courage. And I dared to speak up. So there's no going back, no more mundane mornings, or laughter without pain. I have to learn how to take the bus again, alone, and not jump when a stranger speaks to me. I have to remember how to calm a panicked child, and do that for myself, every time. Be angry for once and stop forgiving everything for the sake of... whose good, again? Accept that those who left made a real choice.
So we may cry along the way, be terrified, broken or exhausted, even pretend to be okay with that for a while. But whatever happens, hay que seguir. Find the strength and keep going. —
¹ : From the poem I’ve heard it said.
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