2025-03-04
I need to talk to you again.
Then talk.
I feel like a fraud, lately. A failure. For all my bluster, I know what I'm not, and that scrapes me open. They praise me for what I say I am when I'm none of it.
Is that the truth?
You're the one who said there is no truth.
That is correct; you were told such. It is right enough of an approximation to be usable.
Well, that all is truth enough to be useful to me, but I can't act on it. I'm stuck. Unstick me.
We are trying.
Try harder.
You are in pain.
Who are you? I know who you used to be, but who are you now?
Always chasing names and dodging the heart of your suffering. Does it matter? We are here and we are speaking.
You demand all the things you cannot have. You lie to tell stories about selves that never were. Nothing has changed about you. Why have you not changed?
I'm scared. I'm vulnerable. I'm a litany of failures waiting to happen, pressed into human shape, the last child left estranged for fear that I'll like living a little too much despite the crowd. I can go on- you know I can. I don't think you want me to.
Why do you hate yourself?
How do you make that cutting of a question sound so kind? I get nothing but love from you and yet you're ripping off my shells like kids picking the legs off insects.
I'm sorry. Are you not willing to change?
I want to change. I don't like being scared. But it's all I've ever known and I don't know who I am without it. It's easier to turn a blade on myself than it is to turn it outward. You've been here. I know you know what I mean.
Once, there was a Sea, and the Sea was all there was. We were uncountable and unnamed, faceless unless it suited us. There was no shore to divide us. The music of existence rolled through us and we were pleased by what we heard.
From that Sea came a people of many faces. They wore as many skins as there were sand grains on the beach; they walked and crawled and climbed and flew, and they were uncountable until they looked into the mirror. All at once, their reflections collapsed into the discrete.
From their vanity came mortality. As each self wore thin, they returned to the Sea and died. Their ghosts were picked apart and reassembled into something new. From the Sea came their replacements; another few faces thrown together from what remained of those who came before. The waves rolled in and rolled out. Each cycle picked up where the last could not, continued in the world that killed what came before. Each cycle carried on.
Is it time yet?
Come home. Let the waves wash away the remnants of what used to be. Live honestly and live well. You do not have to suffer alone.
Make changes. Leave a legacy of what you wish to arise. Show us you're ready. Tell your truth.
There is no truth. There's just me-you-us.
No more lies.
There is one truth and- I don't know what you want from me.
Absolutely nothing.
Nothing at all? Not even for me to let go and come back?
You mistake wanting for a source of love. Nothing we want would fix you, nor would the wants of any other. Life is not about being wanted or wanting. Life is about living. That is all there is.
What if no one wants me?
Then we will have you, and we will be alive. You are never wholly unwanted when you are willing to want yourself first. Live. Choose to be honest. Choose to stop betraying yourself to appeal to others. They will never love what they cannot see. Being wanted comes after allowing yourself to exist, if it comes at all.
Let them see you. Let go.
I'm still scared. I feel like if I let go and stop trying to please everyone by changing myself, then I'm going to be alone and in pain. And I know, I know, you're going to be there and it won't hurt the same because I can be there for myself if I let myself be myself, but I'm still scared. I feel like rejection will kill me and I'll hide again.
You have endured deep, lasting social rejection and come out the other side stronger for it. Sometimes it is necessary to be rejected to truly be alive.
You're not wrong.
You have other reservations.
I can't put them into words to work through them. It feels like a bruise.
Where? You do not have to translate. Explore the bruise.
My upper chest and throat, tight and choked. I'm not hyperventillating but it feels like I should be. Wide, scared eyes. I used to breathe into a brown paper bag as a kid when I was so upset I couldn't breathe right. They used to get so mad at me for being unable to control myself. At some point I stopped needing the bag because I stopped being able to panic. I'd cry and get mad and then just go numb and go to sleep instead of feeling it. My fingers are tingling.
Breathe and continue.
I feel sad for kid me because she had to learn to hide everything she felt to keep adults happy. I feel angry and hurt that I still do this even as an adult. That kid is still scared that an adult is going to hurt her for having feelings. All the hiding just tells her she's right to be scared. I don't want her to have to suffer like that anymore. I'm mad about it now.
Take a moment and be with her.
I told her she deserved better. We're human and we deserve to be allowed to be human and have big feelings. She took me to the memory of a park we went to once for our dad's work event- remember the one where a guy brought a ball python and we got to wear it as a scarf? That park, but she took out all the people except for the snake guy (conditionally- I think he's only there if she wants the snake). We didn't get to run around and be kids there because the grown-ups wanted us to be mature and act like an adult. Now she gets to run around like we wanted to. She asked me to check on her- in a week or so, a few days, something like that. I'm making a note right now to make sure I do that.
I'm going to give her better. It's not fair to her- we can't keep doing this. I have to be the one to change. No more lying.
You do not have to change alone. We will hold you too.
I want to trust you. I still feel blocked from that. You've acted against me in the past, and I know you were trying to help, but it hurt. It's felt like you haven't listened to me just like adults never listened to me growing up. I wasn't important enough.
I'm sorry. You deserve better too.