Becoming, Lucy

I tried writing a letter to my past self today. I couldn’t do it.

It wasn’t that it felt too emotionally hard or it physically hurt, it was the fact I had nothing to say. I wanted to tell her that she was strong and she isn’t alone but when I think back to her, she was alone.

As I wrote, a moment flashed in my mind. A teenager, pacing her room, crying silently, unable to breathe as she fights the demons in her head, telling them to be quiet. The memory flashed in my mind as an observer, not as if I was reliving it but I was in the corner of the room watching her mouth speak the word ‘help’, but no sound came out. Her body slumped against the wall as she collapsed to the floor, broken, seconds away from submitting to the demons, but then she looked at me. Her bloodshot eyes met mine and for just a second, you could see hope.

She would eventually submit to the demons a few months later and attempt to take her life anyway.

I don’t remember dreaming of the future. I remember dreaming of being demon free, I remember dreaming of having dreams, dreaming of hope.

I used to picture myself as someone else, someone happy, someone who had a million dreams and went on to achieve them… Am I that person now?

I don’t feel like that person now. I have emptied some of my demons though. My mind used to be a crowded underground station, demons shoulder to shoulder. Now I can count the demons, sometimes there’s more than I can count on two hands, but it never gets out of control, it never gets too much.

Maybe I was right to have hope.

Maybe I’m not alone.

Maybe my demons are my hope.

Maybe my demons make sure I’m not alone.

My demons make me strong.

Thank you for staying with me, demons.