Hold Your Breath

A scream trapped inside.  My skin buzzing.  Humming with barely controlled electricity. My face burning bright.  Hold your breath.  Keep it in.  Escape. Swallow it.  Don’t look up.  Don’t look out.  There was no end. Pulling into myself.  My world was on fire.  My heart soared. And it broke. My anger.  My pain.  My love.  Existed within a tiny bubble I kept inside. It has never made sense.  Even now when it should.  I can’t explain what happened, much less why it happened.  And I can’t even begin to tell you how I made it through to the other side.  The future wasn’t a real thing back then and the past was an antiquated fairy tale.  The only thing that existed was the present. And the present had been excruciating.  Daily cruelty dotted with occasional kindnesses that felt like the stinging slap of pity.  And somehow even I believed I had brought it on myself.  Like being different was a choice.  Like being someone else was ever a choice. 

In the end, I consider myself damn lucky that being someone else wasn’t a choice.  I’m not sure someone else would have made it.    But I did.  I made it and I’m still in one piece.  I can still love.  I can still hope.  I can still dream.  And I can still remember what it was like.  Someone else would have forgotten.  Someone else would have pretended it never happened at all.  And I don’t want to forget and I don’t want to pretend.  It was twenty five years ago and it was the hardest year of my life.  And I still remember it like it was yesterday.