The date is literally the day of wishes, November 11th, and all I can feel is how incredibly sad I am. It’s the heaviest kind of sadness I have ever felt. I used to think it was cliché; all of the grey poems about how someone couldn’t breathe because the wind had been knocked out of them. Yet, I’m sitting here like I’m climbing into the thinning air of Everest and I cannot catch a breath deep enough to satisfy my lungs enough to convince my mind that I am, in fact, not dying.

Because I fully believe that I could be.

Now let me say this: I am not saying that from a standpoint of “I’m in danger of hurting myself or someone else”. I’m merely saying that from the edge of a cliff that’s being battered by violent waves, and I am painfully aware that if I take one wrong step, my existence becomes a memory. I am suffocated by the danger of my situation, and I am treading through fire with gasoline soaked through my clothes.

If I’m being honest, I’m pretty disgusted with how the cliches really weren’t cliches at all. I’m so just….devastated that a sadness so deep can exist. Equally, though, I am amazed that the human body, spirit, and mind is capable of surviving it, though it feels like death may be a favorable alternative. So, logically, it would make sense for me to believe that with a sadness this deep, it has to be reciprocated by a joy that has to be just as phenomenal. I just don’t know if it’s necessarily meant for me specifically. I romanticize the idea, I flirt with it and take it out every once in a while, but what can I say? I have pretty impressive commitment issues. The concept of a euphoria that is so great that it makes this pain seem so minimal compared to the reward…how could that be meant for me? Not to sound like “oh poor me” but from a very matter-of-fact pillar, happy endings don’t happen for me. I survive, I do okay. But I cannot, for the life of me, remember the last time I was truly happy. And as therapy so productively pointed out, that’s on me. So how do I possibly unlearn…everything? How am I supposed to believe that I can plant bountiful gardens when all I know is fire and smoke? It’s truly a great concept, but all of this feels like I’m looking into a foggy mirror; I see something, I feel something, but I can’t quite make out what it is. I don’t necessarily trust myself not to destroy it either.  Yet, I still feel a nobility and honor that comes with saving myself. There’s still a glimmer of hope when I think about it; like maybe I can do it. It is an incredibly minute ray of white light, but I am human enough to admit I, at least, see it. But all poetic descriptions and metaphors aside, I don’t want to do the hard things. I want to be shielded. I want to be protected because I am scared. I am in pain and I want to be taken care of but I’m showing up for myself, even if no one else does. Bleeding, scratched and bruised to hell with the life beaten out of me, I’m here. I’m showing up and doing all the hard things, and feeling all the hard feelings. I see me, and I am worth showing up for. They were wrong about me. Every last one of them. This is healing, and even though no one told me it’d feel a lot like dying, I am human enough to feel that too.