Regretfully, Yours Truly

You know how you feel about your favorite movie, your favorite book, or song. You study it, you envelop yourself in it over and over again, only to learn new things about it every time.

Do that with people.

Respect their complexity, find meaning in their confusion.

Become more than just someone who gives grace. Become someone who understands the power of it.

The opportunity to truly see someone—to give them freedom to exist without judgment.

That’s where humanity lies. And it’s been buried under the weight of this ridiculously heavy world for far too long.

I can only offer one piece of advice:
Don’t trust your own thoughts after 10 p.m.

I have a tendency to cry. About different things, but typically the same things, and honestly way too much about the wrong things. And when it’s late at night, I stare at the ceiling, ignoring the shadows that wander around in the darkness of my makeshift home. I know that if I begin to acknowledge them, they’ll tell me truths about myself I never wanted to hear.

When someone tells you over and over again that you’re not worthy of any form of respect or recognition because you’re ugly or different or think outside of the box. You cry about it. And when it becomes everyone—from lovers to friends, strangers, and parents—you start to believe it. And when it’s not just people anymore, but a pattern, a form of treatment, you internalize it. It becomes all that you are. It becomes your story and you can’t deny it because it’s all you’ve ever known. There are no more subtle floral truths, there are only objective facts.

And you’re very different from the rest.
That’s the harsh reality.

Positive affirmations don’t help. There is only reinforcement of everything you told yourself was wrong. It doesn’t matter which way your brain tries to rework every interaction or relationship or childhood memory. The thoughts are the same. The shame is the same. The fear and doubt begin to love your brain in ways that you can’t. And all that you are left with is lists of everything you’re not. Lists of every asset you don’t have, and all the proof that backs it up.

It becomes the only thing you can count on, the only thing you trust. Your shitty story and lack of self-worth are the one constant.

You are everything they say you are. You aren’t worthy of everything they don’t give you.

And so, you end up here, in this dark space. You meet me, and we side-eye each other because we both know why we’re here. Even if we would never admit it.

I’ll show you my heart. Watch as it works tirelessly every minute to keep me alive.
Watch as I don’t appreciate it anyway.

I’ll ask more questions about you than you’ll ever want to answer. We’ll share stories about trauma and why we hate ourselves so much.

And I’ll tell you that sometimes I wish I didn’t have a face. That you could read me and fall in love that way. I wish that I was words, deep and complex. But I’d be poetry, so you wouldn’t even care to ask why. You’d just know that this is how I am.
How I’m meant to be.

Even if I am convoluted, you’d respect me.
Because I’d be art.

I’d be your favorite piece.

This will become home. You and I, in this little crevasse. We’ll feel normal for a moment in time. Trapped, but for some reason, it feels easier to breathe.

I don’t have a way out for you.
I told you I only had one piece of advice, and that wasn’t a lie.

Maybe there is happiness outside of this space.
Maybe you and I can find it together.

Maybe I can show you parts of yourself you’ve never seen.
And maybe you can show me mirrors that only reflect my insides.

Take deep breaths.
Cry.
Start tomorrow again optimistically.

Repeat.

We did not choose to exist.
And yet today, and every day after, we’re choosing to exist.
You and I.
We have no other choice but to live in the contradiction.

Thank you.