Sunday, February 21

Things don’t always happen all at once. Sometimes they come so slowly, inching into my life until one day I look back and am surprised to find that it hasn’t always been like this.

I have vague memories of myself as a kid, sitting on a windy beach in a small tent and asking my mother if it’s going to rain. The sky was grey and the wind was so strong that it whipped my curly hair into my face; of course it was going to rain. I hated the feeling of sand in my bathing suit, but it was always worth it if it meant swimming in the ocean, catching moon jellies in a little bucket, collecting seashells. I felt the rain slowly start, little pinpricks of cold on my arm. I didn’t want to go inside, so I didn’t tell my mom that the rain was starting. I think I could’ve sat on the beach and let the storm take me away if my mom hadn’t noticed soon after. But I remember that quiet moment before she noticed, where I sat, frozen, with my arm outstretched just beyond the tent, feeling the rain on my skin and staring up at the grey sky as the wind whipped my hair into my face. I felt soft.

Maybe if I finally let the storm take me away, I’ll become that kid again. I no longer feel soft; I feel rough. I feel encased in stone; I feel like someone could break from a touch of my skin. But I know I’m still soft under here.

The past few days haven’t felt real, but I could say that about the past few years too. Truthfully, I don’t know the last time I felt real.

There are so many stories I could tell. I just don’t know how. Everything feels like it happened seconds ago, everything feels like ancient history. I can feel Al’s hands heavy and hot on my body and bite marks on my neck, and I can’t even remember his face. How has it been only a year? I remember what it was like to lay on the stairs of my house, tears dripping out of my eyes, telling my mother that I wanted to die, but all I can really remember is how the sun casted rainbows on the carpeted steps I was laying on. How has it been four years already? I found my hospital bracelet the other day, and yeah, it was four years ago. I feel like the same person, but I can’t even recognize myself when I look in the mirror.

The waves never stop; they crash against the rocks over and over again until they’ve become soft sand. It never stops, it never stops. When I reached my hands out to touch the rain on that beach, I didn’t know that a blink and 14 years later I’d still be waiting for the rain to let up.

I, too, have become unstuck in time. Because one moment I’m four years old and on that beach before the storm comes, and then I’m eighteen years old and nothing is the same but everything is the same, and then I’m sixteen years old and it’s New Years’ Eve and one of my friends has pulled a knife on my other friend, and then I’m ten years old and my mother has shoved me against a counter and is screaming in my face right before school. And then I’m eighteen again, and I don’t know how to tell this story because it feels like so much and nothing at all.

Am I out of the storm yet? Will the rain let up soon? Does it ever?

I have things I should be doing, because I’m eighteen and I have things to do, but none of them feel real right now. I have class, I have homework, I have friends and family and oh god I can feel myself descending into this storm. I’m not ready yet. No, no, no, I’m not ready yet, I’m ten years old and getting chased around on the playground by boys who want to kiss me, I’m twelve and getting called a crybaby for showing emotion, I’m thirteen and dressing as a boy for the first time and crying but I don’t remember why, I’m eighteen. I’m eighteen and it’s time to face the storm, but I’m scared. Oh, I’m so, so, so scared. Can’t someone face it for me? Can’t I go back to being four and hiding inside the tent, with my arms outstretched, forever?

The storm whispers, no.

The wind howls at me, screaming listen to me, listen to me, listen to me.

And my small, soft, four-year-old self prays that this isn’t the end, as I drop into the abyss.