I will not melt down. I will not break into tears. This is my fucking time and I aint gonna let anything steal it from me. Not the landlord, not the neighbours, not the cravings, not the memories, not the losses, not the PTSD. I'm done being beaten up.
I’m 28 years old and I can’t tell you the story of my life. I tried. People either break down halfway through and beg me to stop, or straight up call me a liar. So I won’t. But know that a lot of stuff happened, and they left scars that will never fade.
I left my country a while back to try again. Leave it all behind, start from zero. Turns out, you can’t. All you can do is find new stuff to add to the old ones. So here I am. In a shitty hotel room I can’t afford. With an empty bank account because I spent it all on other people’s needs. Wondering what the hell I did wrong this time to get that amount of shit falling on my head.
I write, I try to do so for a living, but I can’t focus with all the bullshit going on around me. And besides, without a Wi-Fi connection I can’t post my stuff on Patreon. I can’t upload my photography or artwork to my merch sites. I’ll find a way before the end of the month, I owe it to people. I do all I can to keep going but it’s really fucking hard. The world is burning, and my house is flooded. I have nowhere to go, no place to hide, no money to buy the minimum of human dignity that would make me want to fight another day.
But you know what? Fuck that shit. I survived 11 suicide attempts. Rape. Incest. Medical errors that could have cost me my life if the doctors had taken merely an hour more to figure shit out. One of my best friends' suicide. At 18 I was working and studying to be a legal assistant, providing for my incestuous depressive cannabis addicted dad who was fighting his 3rd cancer. He lost by the way, leaving me traumatizes, homeless, and broke at 22. I got my mom out of the toxic abusive dangerous relationship she had been in for 15 years. I bought her furniture. I gave her back her dignity. I started my ex’s career in comics. I made another ex the owner of a damned awesome apartment. I made a whole indie press to publish others and give them that first experience in comics or short stories. I fucking paid them. They get royalties. I get nothing. I single handedly made lives.
Now it’s my fucking turn.
I’m fed up with sacrifice. I’m no martyr. I don’t care for revenge. I don’t want to be rich. I don’t care about fame. I just want the respect I fucking earned, and to be able to buy myself a pair of New Rocks once a year.
So I’m working, and I’ll keep on working. I’m fighting, and I’ll keep on fighting. But man I’m sick of fighting alone.
I have an average of 3 panic attacks a day. And I bear them with a big ass smile. The only sign of it is the shaking of my right hand, and even that is hard to spot unless I’m holding something. I have nightmares and flashbacks every single night, every single shower, every single meal, and have for the last 10 years. Nobody knows. I’ve become a master in the stupid art of hiding pain.
Every day I choose to smile and laugh and help people, when I could understandably be the worst bitch alive. So don’t you dare call me nice, if you don’t want me to drop the smile. I’m not nice. The only other option is complete and utter devastation. It’s about time people realised that. If you get kindness on my part, it’s because I will it so. Because I fight the urge to reduce your overblown ego to pieces. Because I’m perfectly capable of sending someone rolling on the ground, in tears. With one sentence. And you have no idea how hard it is to keep myself from doing so.
The landlord who leaves me without hot water for weeks, who doesn’t do a single thing to help me, who rents me a roach filled bedroom in the shittiest building I’ve seen in a long time now threatens to evict me because I dared ask my boyfriend for help when my bathroom was flooded. He thinks I’ll let it happen. No, you bastard. I’m leaving on my own terms. With all the money I gave you. Dare threaten me again.
People seem to believe that me being small and a woman makes me an easy target for bullying. They have no fucking clue. I’ve been through Hell and back so many times. I lost almost literally everything so many times. I’ve almost died so many times. I’m not afraid.
The panic attacks come from social anxiety, not fear. From PTSD, not fear. I can’t go eat at a restaurant unless I’m on the terrace outside not out of fear but out of survival. Their survival. Easy way out, easy to run away. Else, the whole fucking restaurant burns at the first weird look I get. Do you think you know how much self control it takes to not flip a table when a waiter gets all condescending on your ass? Triple it. That’s how much self control I have. And I’m losing it.
Run, bitches, if I slip just once we’re all in trouble. I’m out of patience. I’m out of fucks to give. I’ve said it twice and I’ll say it once more: it’s MY fucking turn.
I have merch. Go buy it. I have a Patreon. Go support it. I have a Ko-Fi. Go prove to all the assholes who have tried all my life to destroy me that I’m worth so much more than them. Because damn it, I am. I write bedtime stories for children. Short stories for people who don’t have the opportunity to read full length novels. Blog posts to help people understand mental health and feel seen and heard. I make wholesome art to bring a bit of joy to people. I take pictures all the time and share it so people can see the world without having to pay a plane ticket. I’m not an angel, dude. It takes effort, it takes willpower, it takes energy. Don’t diminish that. Lift it up like I lift others up.
Lift me the hell up because right now I’m this close to drowning and I won’t allow it. I put my pride aside, my dignity, I had to beg for help just to pay for a hotel room because my place is unlivable, and I don’t deserve to be forced to stoop so low. I’ve fought all my fucking life. I’ve always put others’ needs before my own. I’ve done my damndest to not leave anyone behind. And I refuse to be the one left on the side of the road while they walk a golden path. I. Am. Done.
I know this is far from my usual content. I won’t apologise for it. I have way too much on my mind, weighing me down, and I need it out. I need someone, anyone, to read this and understand. To reach out. To help. I am my mom’s mother, and the entire world’s big sister. My dad treated me like a wife, a maid, a mother, anything but a daughter. I taught my brother to walk, to read, to count, to think. I raised myself and my family. I was there for my mom when she struggled with anorexia. When she needed someone to listen to the Hell she was going through. I was there for my dad when he couldn’t even go buy his own cigarettes or fill his prescriptions. I was there for my friends when they were heartbroken, when they were sick, when they struggled.
Only one person was ever there for me. She saved my life. And I failed to save her best friend’s. My best friend’s. I failed to get my mom out sooner. I failed to protect my brother from the toxic environment he grew up in. I failed to save my dad’s life. That’s why I’m there for everyone, friend and foe, lover and stranger. I survived thanks to the kindness of one person. I hope to help someone in my life the way she helped me. But to do that I can’t protect my heart, I can’t put on armor. I need to be vulnerable. And it fucking hurts man. So much. And I’m so done with pain.
I’m rambling a bit, it’s late, I’ve had another interesting day. I’m low on food, low on sleep, low on hope. I’m trying to hang on to something I can’t see. You. All of you reading this. You are my only link to sanity. So once more, I beg. Please. Help. Be the family I wasn’t allowed to have. Be the safety net under the rope I’m walking on. I won’t fall if you’re there to catch me. Give me the chance to exist fully, for myself, to thrive, to succeed. You have that power with a click. Use it.
I know I’m asking a lot. But even knights had a whole team of people around them, to help them fight the villains. Even fairies move in groups.
Let me play my fucking turn.