Hopes

[Tyme Knight (RebeccaBlankenship)]

Nerdfighters,

 

It’s been so long since I’ve loved, and it’s not like me to feel this way. I’ve been very protective of myself, of my heart, my feelings. I’ve been careful not to let my head get wrapped up in new ideas or in plans that might not come true.

My life is pretty much just this long, drawn out nightmare, and sometimes, I’m able to let glimpses of light pass through, make me smile. It was incredible that I kept the light that you, my readers, know as Erik, for as long as I did. In a seventeen-year-long nightmare, a year of sunshine was fantastic.

As a child, I grew up knowing that the world was full of sickness and death, and that children like me were plagued with troubles that they couldn’t overcome, no matter how hard they tried. A child born with disabilities to her legs, I couldn’t walk. Confined to a wheelchair, I begged at the age of 11 to have God take my life. I screamed and cried and hollered. Even at the age of nine, my mom took me to see a psychiatrist. I only went once before I couldn’t take it anymore.

It was bad enough that I spent my childhood as an adult, and now my teenage years are being spent trying to figure out how to sort my actual adulthood out. What college are you going to? What are you majoring in? What career are you looking into? Are you employed?

Because I spent my childhood in hospitals and confined to a house, unable to play outside or run around at recess, I’ve spent my teenage years as a child. I’ve acted childish, unable to take serious matters seriously, and my nightmare continues. High school was torture: and one more year of it is going to kill me. Another year to add to my nightmare, and yet, I don’t mind. If a nightmare is all I’ve ever known, how can I wish for a dream?

When I wheeled myself into my high school that first day, I didn’t even think about the bad things: I was just glad to be away from the hell-hole known as my middle school. My young teenage years were spent crying myself to sleep and wondering if I’ll ever be pretty. I didn’t wear my first pair of jeans until 8^th grade, and even those had elastic waistbands and couldn’t really count as jeans. Other than that, I didn’t wear jeans until halfway through freshman year of high school.

I didn’t wear a really pretty dress until Homecoming a year ago. Even it was dark, a perfect reflection of me: black and silver. My dark mind and childhood and soul, yet I know somewhere deep down, somehow, there is a silver lining. A silver lining that I have not yet found.

Part of me knows that some day, I’ll find this silver lining and embrace it, and it will consume me. It will take over me, and I will be happy.

But now, the definition of happiness is blurred over and unclear in my mind. Just when I get used to happiness and feeling great about myself, something happens. My mom mentions my weight, I remember my old therapist that I fired when I was eleven, or I remember the times where I had to step in and be the adult of a family of four. I had to grow up in a matter of seconds and take on something that I shouldn’t have had to take on.

My whole life has been spent this way, going back and forth between hurt and happiness. Joy? I haven’t felt joy since I was young. I haven’t felt pure happiness in so long. I have been sad for months now, wallowing in a darkness that is pure and simple to understand, if you have a pessimistic mind and forgiving heart. I do not have the latter.

When someone breaks you down, makes you feel like you’re worthless, scum on their shower wall, it’s all you can do to not take your life. I’ve tried. For those of you that wonder, yes, I’m a cutter. I am to this very day. “Pain demands to be felt,” and it does. Pain is something that I’m familiar with, that I know so well, and it’s fantastic. Pain is a part of me, something I can’t live without. I grew up with pain.

I’m addicted to pain and sadness. I am addicted to things I can make myself feel, and I purposely make myself feel this way.

Does this make me sick? Yes. Does this make me crazy? Yes. Am I? Probably so.

I’m a monster, and I hurt myself because I don’t want to be hurt by other people.

I’m trying not to let myself get too happy, because that would be an awful thing to do.

 dftba

-TK