If I Stay✔️

52

trigger warning: mentions of mental illness' (schizophrenia, bi polar 1, depression, ADHD, OCD) suicidal references, eating disorder (bulimia) and drugs.

L E O

It's said that demons appear to you in your darkest moments. That they consume your every thought, erase your every dream, and dispose of any lingering traces of hope you have left. How does it work if you'd always had these demons even before you hit rock bottom?

Staring at the ceiling of my new unfamiliar bedroom, I can't help but wonder if my demons will ever leave me. It's stupid of me to think that the voices will ever go, or maybe the stupid part is thinking that I'd ever truly want them to. In a way, they're part of me, aren't they?

Who would I be without them?

They control me, like a game of Simon says. They say, do this Leo, and I blindly follow with their commands. The voices say cut, I'll cut. The voices say smoke, I'll smoke. The voices say be silent, I won't speak. But what do I want to do? I don't follow my own words like I do theirs. I don't trust myself in the ways that I trust them.

Would I be a better version of me if they were gone?

Is it optimistic of me to think that I'd be a better version of myself, is there a better version of myself? Or is my optimism just another thread of useless hope? Maybe hope will work in my favour this time round. Maybe I'll get lucky. Maybe it's my chance to roll a double on the dice and make my first move, follow my own path, my own words, my own wants.

But what do I want?

Hope is useless, they tell me. And like always, I can't help but somewhat agree. This is my problem, this is my issue. They speak sense to me. They don't allow me to bask in the bliss of endless what if's. I'm entrapped by their words, stuck like a bug in cobwebs, tangled tightly in the sticky string of the unknown, and I'm scared that I won't figure out the right answer before my time is up and the spider comes.

I wish I knew my next step.

I wish I knew what I wanted.

I've gotten used to allowing others to make choices for me that were never theirs to make. Zac, my siblings, the voices, Marco.

I wish they'd all stop.

I wish they'd allow me the chance to think for myself.

I wish my choice was as important to them as it is to me.

I hope, I wish... Hoping and wishing have no difference between them. It's absurd of me to believe that the two somehow drew a line between their similarities. Wishing is another word for hoping, only 'wish' made it sound almost magical, like the happy ending in one of the many childhood fairytales I'd read. But life isn't a fairytale, life isn't magical, nor is it a fantasy. It's a mystery, a drama, a thriller, with small specks of romance and happiness in-between. It's fact not fiction.

We don't get to write the plot of our lives like an author would. I don't have a fairy god mother to guide me on the right path like Cinderella. I don't have the seven dwarfs to keep me from feeling alone like Snow White. I'm not sleeping beauty, I can't lay down and wait for someone else to come and save me. I can't hope and wish for a better outcome. Hoping and wishing won't change what's meant to be. I have to be the one to make my own story great. I have to be the one to save myself.

But what if I don't know how to do that? What if I don't want to be saved?

What if I want my story to end right here and now?