a real hero

I will try to put myself into words, physically and emotionally.  This is, as it goes, not the easiest of things, especially for someone who can put anything into words but himself.  However, I feel compelled and I think it may be slightly cathartic every now and then, so long as it does not cross over into self-indulgence.

Presently, I am twenty-two years old.  I am wearing a grey t-shirt with a black cardigan over it.  The cardigan is slightly torn along one of the seams near the top buttons from my youngest sister jumping on me and pulling at my clothes whenever she sees me.  I have hazel eyes and dark brown hair.  A curious thing about my hair is that I have several white strands.  Not grey or shiny, just pure white.  They are prominent enough as to where most of the time you can notice a good deal of them when you are close.

I haven’t slept in what is a little over twenty-four hours now.  I am not sure why.  I am not overly concerned with anything or stressed out, nor am I depressed or lonely or anything, really.  I just haven’t been able to fall asleep at all.  I’d like to get to the bottom of this!

I grew up in Arkansas with the typical broken family.  Sad as it is that the term “typical” can be applied to a broken family just because of how common it is, but, so it goes.  I spent most of my childhood being hurt and feeling like I did not belong because I was so much different than my family, I did not care to be tough or prideful like my father or my brother.  I liked to read and write, I liked to ride my bike and I liked to tease my sister.  I was always very strung out and very sick feeling a lot of the time, but as a child I did not know what these things meant so I just kept going on.  Years later, when I would bring it up, it was met with mocking and scorn from my father.  It was hard not to feel ashamed for not being like he was, like he wanted me to be and sometimes I still do feel that way.

I have always found it very hard to put any of myself into something I was not interested in.  I had a difficult time with school, as you are not really allowed to pick and choose what you would like to invest yourself into, so I would end up attending those classes that interested me and just skipping out on the ones that didn’t, the maths and the chemical sciences to go to the library and read or finish some story I had been working on, or just sneak out and go for a drive by myself or with a like-minded friend who just needed a break from class that day.

I have also had a hard time really relating with people, feeling like I belonged in any one sort of group or situation.  I think these are the remnants of my upbringing and how it affected me.  It is not that I am distant - I am not.  I used to be quite shy, when I was younger.  I have come out of that and find it very easy to talk to people and to be charming and accomodating even though I never really use it all that often.

In my middle years, or, really, the years I am occupying now I would shoot myself.  It would end up just above my heart in my chest as I would decide that I would very much not like to die.  Disregarding everything else, it really hurts to be injured like that.  I am not even talking in the physical way, as it happened quickly and instinct took over.  When I’m lying there trying to go to sleep and I think about it I can still remember exactly how it felt, how cold the air was and how everything went silent, how it just felt like not existing for a few moments.  I closed my eyes after it hit and there was nothing.  No thoughts or presence, no guides and no love or light.  From that point forward until I woke up after carrying myself to the ambulance outside, everything just felt like watching a dream.  When I think about it, it gives me a cold feeling inside of stomach, the feeling you would get like if you were at a large store or a mall or a park and you lost your mother and thought for a few seconds that you’d never find her again and were lost forever.

That part above, that is not the whole of me.  I am not a suicide or a depression, nor am I the love I have or the relationships in my life.  I am all of these things and I don’t like the thought of someone reducing me to one singular thing, even if some areas may stand up.  I am a bunch of pieces put together, you cannot just take one piece and call it me, no more than you could take a continent alone and call it the world entire.

Overall, I am mostly happy with who I am and what I have become.  I don’t think I am always the kindest person and I can be very short and blunt with my feelings, but I don’t mean things in a malicious way and I always try to balance it out with absolute acceptance and care for people I really love, despite anything.  I’m an easy-going person.

These days, I feel a lot more free.  I love and I’m loved.  There aren’t any complications or things that are pressing.  I live here now and later on I will live elsewhere, I will leave my friends here and see other friends in different places and I will live.  I don’t think there’s any such thing as a persistent state of happiness, it’s just moments and short periods of time.  It’s waking up with someone you love or driving with the windows down through some deserted street.  There are a lot of terrible things that happen in the world every day, and even more that you can never, ever do a thing about.  There’s no reason to cry and scream and bemoan what has happened, I think you just need to let go and realize that your life is yours and the good thing to do is to just live it and feel okay, without worry of whatever the current standard is for what your life is worth.  You can cry and be sad and that is okay, you can yell and be angry, you can smile and be happy or you can just stand there… when all of that is over, you have plenty more ahead and it all belongs to you.