This is Not My Redemption

CW// SH, SA

I’m not writing my redemption. Let’s be clear about that. This isn’t also not a comeback story because there is nothing worth returning to that won’t cost me more than I can afford to pay. This is me on the backside of forever ready to tell you the truth. And the truth is that I decided it was time to get in on the violence inflicted upon me. I remembered that life isn’t a series of events done to me but I could also have a hand in the doing. I wrapped myself into a knife and I’ve been trying to wash clean of the blood ever since. 

I imagine started wailing after she left. I never stopped. But my inside is a gutted carcass and the void swallowed my voice whole. It also swallowed the pills. And the abuse. And the memory of him, breaking into me. It inhaled childhood tears, scraped elbows, and ears nipped by the frost. It devoured adolescence. And rejection, regret, and loss. All this language, lost in translation. This scream caught in my throat. There was so much to scream about my god my God I swallowed more violence than I could digest and I started courting death until that night five years ago. 

Yes the rumors are true: I took a knife to my arm and severed a nerve. 

I wasn’t trying to die. I swear. 
I was just trying to get a break from all this living. 

Sometimes it’s easier to be a victim of yourself than it is of others. 
Sometimes the crazy catches up and it’s welcome. 
Sometimes the worst day isn’t the first but it’s all the days you learn to blame yourself. 

And there were many days. Days where my friends loved me so hard I didn’t want to let go of life. Where the pastor told me I should be ashamed and I listened. Where my teachers let me sleep in class. Where I would wrap around my knees, imitate a fetus and my dog would curl up next to me under the covers and stay. Days where I recalled my surgeon died and I didn’t feel bad because he put his hands on me and I was too scared to say no. Days where doctors were patient and my wounds started sealing. Where I tilted my head to the sun and my tears still fell. Where the sky poured down and I was okay. Days and days of life. 1, 824 to be exact.

Sometimes the past hurts more than the break. 
Sometimes apology isn’t enough.
Sometimes it’s all you can give yourself. 

After the shame came the grief. And during this grief I try to bargain for forgiveness to come but I'm not sure what it looks like. All I know is I imagine myself tender, touching my scar, thanking it for holding my skin together. I imagine waking up, and not hating myself for all this violence I enacted on my own body because of violence I was forced to move through. I imagine a pool of grace and I am submerged but not drowning.