Have you ever heard a song and felt it in your bones? How could this complete stranger understand exactly what I am feeling? Yet, those closest to me can not.
One of the problems of being someone trapped in survival mode for nearly two decades, is time and time again people remind you the only one you can truly count on is yourself. No matter their intentions. Some people I don’t have to speak, they just know what I am trying to say, when I truly need a hand to reach out. While others, don’t.
I have been enduring one of the hardest years of my life and this week has nearly broke me. If I didn’t have my best friends I honestly don’t know if I would have survived this long, or if I would even be alive today. One, offering to take care of my child for a couple of days so I can get a much needed mini vacay up north to see another of my besties. One showed up on my doorstep with a bottle of bourbon and a few hours later another showed up with a jar of her apple pie moonshine. I am so insanely lucky to have these people in my life.
I don’t know how to find the words to make it clear what I want or need for those who just can’t understand, to not only understand but put action to it. Sometimes a girl just needs to be heard and sometimes a girl just needs to be rescued. When you’re not actually Wonder Woman, there is only so long you can rise to those sort of standards.
It had been a long time since I have felt so hollow. When life and people again proved my cynical jaded pessimistic viewpoint as what is and always has been true, how the hell am I ever going to change it? I am not enough. Not enough to change it, not enough to deserve what I need or want. Not enough to be the parent I want to be, friend, spouse, daughter, sister. I fear I am not stronger than my depression, my anxiety, my nightmares. At least not to be a whole person, if that was ever something I even was as I may be that good of an actress. Fooling all of you and even myself.
Don’t hug me and say you’re sorry, I love you too and I already know. Words are not enough, if that wasn’t clear.
When I say step up or step back, it is because I am breaking and trying to breathe under water. Water no one else can see and perhaps doesn’t actually exist. What I want, is for you to step up in all the ways I did say but you couldn’t hear me and if you truly cannot do that than what I need is you to step back so I can get one last breath to fight, to live, to survive.
This is the song in my bones.