I sat on the swing and allowed the currents of the wind to sweep me away. In my ears, the music played as I closed my eyes against the blurred images flashing across my mind. I could hear the voices singing in my head but I shut them out and allowed my mind to reach a state of complete blankness.
There was nothing I saw but darkness and my heart slowed with each impending beat. I tried to run away but no matter where I ran, I could not escape it. How does one run away from her past? How does one begin her first steps to recovery?
I don't know.
Some part of me believes that I will never make it and a huge part of me agrees. It's funny. They always say that the mind is at conflict with the heart and when choosing between the two, the heart is always the right choice to make.
But what do you do when your heart is the one that tells you to cut?
What do you do when your mind isn't in conflict with your thoughts?
What do you do when every part of you thinks you deserve this self-inflicted punishment?
It's difficult sometimes. It's like 80% of my mind agrees that cutting is therapeutic and that it will help me in the long run to live longer. I find myself comparing cutting to a sport. It's just another way to destress and I actually have myself convinced, and I do it again.
Again and again,
until there is nothing in me left.
And now I cannot tell the difference between cutting and me. I can no longer see the boundaries. What exists before this habit? What exists after this habit? Is there even a me?
Looking into the mirror, staring at your reflection and you're just wondering: Who is this girl? I don't recognise her. She looks different. She looks disgusting. I hate her. She is not me. She is not me.
She is not me, but who is me?
I flipped open my past photo albums and I stared at the girl in the photo. She was smiling at the camera, her untidy teeth on display for everyone to see. I saw her and I didn't know who she was. I should know her. She shares the same features as me. She has my exact eyes, my pimple scars, my out of shaped eyebrows... She has everything that made me me but I still did not know who she was. I just knew she was not me...
A strong gust of wind sended the wisp strands of my hair directly into my lips. I licked them and they were salty. I did not know it but my body was crying and the tear tracks were drying on my face. I hated it. I hated the sight of them all for they reminded me that something was wrong and I hated it, so I screamed. I screamed loud into the trees as my trembling hands gripped the metal chains of the swing. I screamed until I could no longer hear myself. I screamed until the voices in my head were muted beneath the fog.
It did not stop the tears from pouring but it kept me from breaking. Then, the silence returned. My mind was blank again and darkness greeted me like a familiar friend. It was all silent until bit by bit, I could heard the swing groaning beneath my weight. I did not know it then but touching the cool surface of the metal chains that were holding the swing in place, it felt very much like my scattered thoughts that were jumping across my brain. It was breaking under the pressure and its demise was only a matter in time.
I knew it but I did not bother. I knew it but I could not bother. The thought of it scared me, that something that was regarded so sturdy by others could easily snap within the next minute, that something that was so strong on the outside said nothing about its inherent strength.
More importantly, I was scared because I knew that the swing was me and I was the swing. I knew that I was breaking, that it would just be in a matter in time before the chains on my mind broke and I would drift away.
It was scary but something in me told me to hold on.
It was not a flaming passion of hope. It was not even a spark. It was just a word but it held me through the rest of the night. It was faith.
The wallpaper on my phone that spoke faith.
And I could not say a word in reply. Everything was shut within me and not a single word escaped me. I was feeling so much at once. I had so much anger, so much frustration and just so much sadness at that single word that it infuriated me upon looking at it.
Have faith?
My mind would scoff at me. My heart would laugh at me.
Have faith? As though all the problems in my world can be solved by a single word? Who was I kidding? If I had so much faith at the start, I would not have ended up like this, crying to myself in the middle of the night like the pathetic girl that I was. If faith could solve me, I would not have broke in the first place.
If faith was for me, it would have helped me.
If faith was with me, I would not be who I am.
If faith was in me, I would not have lost it.
If faith was even allowed near me, I would have been much much more stronger and I would have won against all the temptations that the devil has thrown against me.
And the battle in my mind just raged on and on and the voices in my head just grew louder and louder till I could not take it anymore and I opened my mouth to scream again because I did not know what to do or even how to react to a situation like this so I just screamed and I screamed and I screamed until I exhausted out all my tears and my voice was tattered and torn as I laid in the shattered pieces of my emotions.
I screamed me out and my fatigue self stared at the lit screen of my phone.
"Faith"
And then, something clicked. That was just it. I cannot explain a feeling like this to you. It was just it. It became everything I was looking for and in that instant, everything just made sense to me. The pieces of the puzzle just fit together in one solid click. The chains stopped rattling and the tears stopped flowing.
"Faith, it was faith."
I cannot describe it to you if you have never felt the same way as me before, not if you have never allowed yourself to sink into despair, not if you have never felt the despair clawing away at your heart until there is nothing left, for how do I explain hope to you when I can scarcely find any words to describe the feelings that I felt that night?
It was just a little tiny spark but for my dried battered heart, it was fire and it burned me alive. It sent my soul shaking and my heart quivering. For once, I was alive. I was not trapped or confined or even fighting with myself anymore. I was free. It was just a second in time but it was everything I needed.
Finally, finally I found out who I really was.
It wasn't the past and it wasn't the present.
It was the future and the future was me.
I am not the cheerful girl from the past and I am not the depressed girl in the present.
I am the girl with hope and I am a girl battling for life.
I am me.
And though the epiphany moment went away as quickly as the wind, it was more than enough for me to fight the temptations away for one more day. Underneath me, the swing still groaned under my weight. Beside me, the chains still trembled to hold the swing up.
But above me, the moon was smiling and it was guarding me from afar.
It isn't going to get better now but it will get better eventually.
It was faith.
And faith helped me through another night at the swings.
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