Post Eleven

You sat on the floor of a dorm shower. You let the hot water, with lousy pressure, lap your skin as you sat there curled up in a ball. Dirty. That is how you felt. Your skin was encased with mud and dirt as dry blood sealed under your uneven toenails on your left foot. Filth succeeded in suffocating you.

You sat on the floor of a dorm shower letting the water lap your skin, skin that appeared to be clean. There wasn’t any mud clogging up the shower drain, just the balled up collection of long strands of hair from every girl on your floor. Your skin smelt like pomegranate and mangoes and your hair was dripping the residue of orchid scented conditioner down your curved spine. You were technically clean. You were never actually dirty at all, but no part of you felt clean enough. Dirty.

That is the only way you could express how you felt.

Correction.

That is the only way I can express how I felt.

---

For those of you who feel broken, this is for you.

I know the world seems to be moving so fast; life feels like a time-lapse. Everything is happening at an electric speed. Everyone moves with driven intention and such determination, and then there is you.

Stuck.

Every small task feels so much more challenging and more extended. Getting out of bed is a feat in itself; brushing your teeth sometimes feels impossible, and if you are like me, you can’t shower without ending up curled up in fetal position on the floor. Catching your reflection in the mirror is like getting stabbed, so you avoid them; looking at yourself, in your eyes, is directly facing what is most broken.

You feel as though you are surviving rather than living. Sunshine no longer is in your smile, and the stars are no longer in your eyes. Your laugh isn’t your laugh anymore, and those who love you most can probably tell that it isn’t. So you dye your hair pink, and you only wear baggy clothes as though it is the armor to protect you from the outside world. You want to control what you eat, so you ultimately don’t eat at all because controlling one thing is better than controlling nothing, right?

Apart of feeling broken is feeling numb. You don’t work the way you used to. The engineering of how you used to function is no longer how you operate. The fix to your problem is unknown, but all you want is to go back to the way things were. You want to hug the person whose heart used to be your home. You want to be held, and you want to be told you are loved, but even when you hear those words, ‘I love you,’, you question what there is to love. How? Why? Those three words that are meant to be the epitome of verbal care lose their meaning because you ultimately don’t know how to feel.

You are numb.

Correction.

I was numb.

---

There is no small fix. You kind of need to feel what you are feeling ~ entirely~ to fight your way out. Whatever it is that you are facing: trauma, loss, fear, clinical mental health issues. They might consume you right now, but they certainly do not define you. Finding the difference between the two is something that took me a long time to figure out. I write in second person almost as a coping mechanism to differentiate what I was versus what I am now. I believed my trauma defined me, and now I am learning that it is just apart of my story.

Think of it like this.

You are a dandelion. You are a dandelion being stripped from your stem, no matter how much you want to hold on. You end up floating away, being torn away from the different pieces of what you once were. Your scars and tears are now the seeds and water for the next million dandelions that begin to bloom. Once those wisps of you land, you will soon be able to find stability again. You will reconnect with the earth again and grow in different places, with a wiser soul and kinder heart. You are a dandelion. There is such beauty to what you are, even if it is sometimes overlooked. Your past and the places you have been are what make you the most beautiful.

---

You will feel the sunbeams come back in your smile, and the stars will soon twinkle in your eyes.

The breath that is in your lungs will soon become easier to breathe. There is plenty of air to breathe, and you would be doing yourself a disservice if you decide not to breathe it.

You are still gloriously you.

Correction.

We are still gloriously us.

---

Wish on a dandelion, Dandelion.

Have faith, hold on, and make a wish.

Love always,

G