Truth | Poems & Short Stories

Game On

During any interview, they ask you questions about you. During any personality test or quiz, you select a box, marking your answers. They have limited answers, and you are forced to choose just one. That's difficult sometimes. Even on my part. My doctors ask me, "How do you feel about yourself? Are you very satisfied, satisfied, okay, dissatisfied, very dissatisfied." The question they ask me comes with a very complicated answer, it's not so easy to respond as I don't know how to put my feelings in words, or I'm just not very good at it. My answer is an option that you would mark as other, with the space where you can just write your own personalized answer in just a few words. My answers are never just a few words. During a personality test, they give you a random question, even if it's about what you like to eat. The question, replaying in my head, over and over again, is always the one that taunts me. The one that sticks out to me. It's not even in those question choices you find in an exam. It's not one of those questions that a nurse or doctor asks me. It's not one of those questions that you just find in a simple personality quiz you find on the internet.

"Is it worth the fall?" Echoes in my head, haunts my thoughts, hunts down my entity in my dreams.

There are many things that it can refer to.

It can be falling in love. It can be making a simple joke that may be offensive to others but something you find funny, not knowing it's offensive while not wanting to offend the people around you. It can be debating whether I should wear this to a party or go with another option, or even if I should attend the party at all.

When I think of it, I think of life. I think of fear. Anxiety, trauma, depression, love. I think about the rollercoaster that is my life, as well as everyone else around me.

It can be falling in love. Falling in love is a maybe, as you don't know the person you are falling for entirely. They might be a narcissist, as you are wrapped around they're little finger, allowing them through the walls you built to protect your heart from breaking, as they go in only to break it using all your weaknesses against you. The gaslights, the guiltrips, the "never enough"'s just coming your way all at once and you weren't prepared. At the same time, it can be beautiful. It can feel like the butterflies in your stomach aren't just fluttering, but your organs become the planets and everything else is space full of the beautiful twinkling stars we admire every night, as they soar through the universe that we live in. Living through those good moments, having the time of your life, while maybe the significant other might just be depressed and having an extremely strenuous time. It might even be both sides just having a hard time and hiding it from one another instead of simply trusting each other like people do when they are in love, but it's so hard to trust because that trust has been deceived by many others before the current one. You might just feel so lonely that you will go with anyone with a pulse, no matter how toxic, no matter how torturous it will be for you as they tear you apart, limb by limb, all your flesh turned into ashes with a simple snap of their fingers.

It can be just trying to be someone else instead of who you are or want to be, just so other people can "like" you. Girls wearing layers and layers of makeup. Guys wearing a sports jersey. When in reality the girls might feel suffocated underneath all that makeup, all the pores opening up and them just starving themselves to look skinny, when they already were beautiful exactly how they were before they craved that attention. When in reality the guys might just hate sports and maybe just want to read books, draw, or be with another guy. It can be so tiring, and tiring to change for someone who doesn't even actually care, while you are the only one who cares because you're the one trying. Those girls that you try to be like, are probably not even wanting to be that way either but they have the pressure of another person on their shoulders, forcing them to act the way they are. Those guys probably just hate sports, the guys we try to be like, and gush on and on about, might just admire the nerds.

It can be anything. It can go on endlessly, it can go on countlessly. The list goes on and on and on. It is infinite.

We're all different, and it's frowned upon to be different. It's the being exactly the same that should be frowned upon. Being similar and exactly the same are two very different things. We look, we act, we are all different human beings. Nobody is above one another. We all stay on the grounds or the surface of the earth we live on.

I'm happy I'm different. So then I can fight for who I am, just as well as anyone else should.

Is it worth the fall? The question that taunts me, day and night, wide awake and deep asleep, in my memories, in my dreams, in every image I see, hear, smell, feel, taste. In everything I am. It's worth the fall being who I am because when I fall down I get right back up, no matter the weight being put on my limbs.

Hold me down, come at me with all you have. I don't care. Just try. I'll get up and I'll laugh in your face as if it's just a board game we play on our game nights. As if I'm the pawn you are moving in this game of Sorry. Just one thing, I'm not sorry. In fact, game on.