1\sep\2024
Tomorrow is my birthday & I keep telling myself not to think about it. Just get through the day. I’ll wake up, cut my hair, stare at my reflection for too long, put on a dress, smile when I should, and laugh when expected. I’ll eat the cake & open the gifts only for Mom, who loves to make this day worth remembering.
But I can’t stop thinking about how I’m still here stuck with the same questions & the same stupid ache I don’t even know how to name. I sit down to write, hoping I can spill it all out onto paper & make it make sense, but how do you explain feeling less than yourself? Like someone scooped me out from the inside, left me hollow & stitched my skin back together like nothing ever happened.
No one sees the stitches & the way I keep myself stitched together with carefully placed smiles and empty conversations. They don’t see the weight of it all. How I go to bed every night, wishing time would just pause just long enough for me to catch my breath.
I got invited to a house party as an after-birthday escape, & I might go after my friends leave. There will be gambling, and maybe for a moment, I’ll let myself believe in luck, in the possibility that life might play fair for one night, just once, & would convince myself that if I could gamble something more than money I would. If fate had a table, I’d sit at it & I’d wager every hollow part of me for something real, something whole I would trade my ghosts for different cards, different name, different body & different past, But who would I be on the other side? Would I stay the same? Would I wake up lighter, unburdened, carrying only the echoes of a life I no longer remember? Or would I still feel it? the weight of something missing, like a loss I can’t name but know is there.
But anyway, the night will pass like they always do, I’ll play the game, sip my drink, and watch the dice roll across the velvet table & when the sun creeps back over the city, I’ll still be me. Still standing. Still breathing. Still unfortunately here.
Because time doesn’t stop, the world doesn’t wait for me to be human again.
But tonight, I just want to forget that I exist, just for a little while.
Tomorrow, though, Tomorrow, I will be here again.
