It started as something so small...an ache in the back of my throat and a whisper of a sob. I could still fly, though. I could still soar above everyone, despite my own mistakes and the voices I had chosen to listen to. I could still lift myself up and away from everything. I could breathe air some couldn't dream of. I could see the sunrise and every morning it still felt new. A new day. A new chance. New words to write and new people to observe. A new world every day, for better or worse.
Now, I live underground. I am buried alive. The sunrise is bleak and the light doesn't reach me. My will was my wings and they have shrank as I have grown bloated and weighted down by the words I now swallow. My stomach is full of them, so much that the pile has reached my chest, my throat and my brain. The words aren't the ones I want to write; they're the other ones, the ones that remind me how I got to where I am. They remind me that I dug this hole for myself. I allowed people to think about me in a certain way. I allowed them to hold me here. I allowed them to cripple me.
Cries too much, a teacher once wrote at the crux of my childhood. The first to say it out loud. She didn't know that I was so afraid of my grades being as bad as they were (and, boy did they tank after the divorce) that I was having a panic attack. Neither did I.
Now, I have panic attacks once every few weeks when before I could count the years between them. My brain is screaming that I'm alive as the world throws dirt atop my casket, ready to do away with me. You want no part of a girl who refused to stop breathing.
I'm done with this. Finished. I am through lying in a grave. This is not my end. This is nothing. This place is nothing. This town timidly imitates life as the rest of the world keeps spinning on and I will not remain stagnant.
This is my hand shooting out from the fresh dirt. This is my gasp for fresh air. This is a warning to the world.
I am not dead. My bones are not ash and my heart is thundering in my chest. I may never fly again but I am still moving, still crawling and climbing. My will still lives on in these veins. It's the rage that shines on in my tone and clenched fist. Electricity hums under my skin and asks me to remember what it's like to fight back.
Soon, I am going to walk. I am going to remember. And when I look up to the sky and shrug the dirt from my wings, know that I now breathe the words that once sent me crashing into the earth.
Know that I will still feel the weight of every moment and I will cry because I am not afraid to show my heart – the heart of the beast I've become, strong enough to pump the blood you, the whole wide world, have poisoned for so long.
Know that I will do anything for the sky to be mine again.
Know that this is the beginning of everything and I am coming for you.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
