Snippets of Life

Gasping[breathing]

Gasping[breathing]

I don't know how to write a letter
telling people I need to quit. I don't know
how to forgive myself for quitting, and for
walking out the door. I don't know how
to accept that I have to walk out the door,
I don't know how to tell someone without
being(seeming?) selfish and weak, because
this is not me. This is not who I am. This is not
what I am, a drowning girl who has lost the ability
to breathe so I am sinking on the land. Have I been
underwater for so long that I forgot what air tastes like?
Or have I been drowning this whole time, unaware
that I was going down? I can't forgive myself for the
hurt, I was not born for hurt. I was born for giving,
until my heart bleeds red and raw and my insides shatter
because I have given so much of myself away. I was born to
be a warrior; a fighter; a protector for the weak, because
I am strong. That is who I am supposed to be. But I am
also born to tell stories; to wield words like my swords;
to invent and to create. I am not born to be sad.
This must be true because people ask me why I am
sad and why I am not happy, and tell me I should
be grateful for everything I have, that it will
all be over soon, but it hasn't been for the longest
time. I don't understand. I was born to create, not to
sail shipwrecks in turbulent storms. I was born to love softness,
not to learn how to speak in earthquakes and tsunamis. I was not
born to create collateral damage, but to bind it together so that everything would
be okay. I cannot forgive myself for wanting to leave. I am not a quitter.
I was born to learn the language of staying, not leaving.
I cannot leave when it is written in my blood: stay, even if
it will cause you the worse pain you have ever known. Stay, because you are
not selfish. But I am beginning to learn that maybe it is not
selfishness, but an act of self-care. Monsters have slipped in through
my back door; I do not know how to be friends with darkness
when all I was taught was to be as soft as dawn. I do not know how to say:
I am leaving because I am exhausted. I am leaving because I do not
belong here anymore. I am leaving because there is no future. There
is no family emergency, nothing except: I can't do this
anymore. I cannot carry the burdens of a world I made
alone. I cannot speak in natural disasters but my heart insists on
causing them until I am the only casualty left, with shaking hands and
pooling eyes, standing in the middle of a civil war I created. I cannot even begin
to describe a strange omnipresent sadness in my mind that only ever
makes me want to write poetry. I am hurting and aching all over, and I need
to save myself/I can't save myself alone. I can't stay when I have the urge to peel
my own skin away. I can't stay.
I am gasping, I am breathing, I am learning the way of the
sad and the heart-broken. I am learning that darkness is not all sharpness,
but in the time I am aching and learning I cannot be here
anymore. And I am sorry, and hurting, but sorry.

Lol so this is how I am. And also the leaving here isn't about leaving life, haha. It's about leaving a commitment.  I don't know where this came from I just took a break from writing a speech and suddenly one hour passed and I had this whole thing, woo. Okie I hope you enjoyed this.

It was important to me.

Megan xxx