30 years doesn’t seem like an accurate estimate of my age, honestly. I have lost family members weeks apart, had depression since I was 9 years old, attempted to end my own life at 11, been on the brink of re-attempting it numerous times as my trauma grew along with me. I have seen pain firsthand in the people closest to me. For years, I’ve been haunted by the knowledge that each person in my family who died suffered before they were gone forever. And there are things I don’t wish to go into detail on over here. Just know that they involve witnessing rage in its most terrifying, threatening form as a child and denial of that rage by those poisoning my small world with it. There’s been so many places torn from me, an endless revolving door of people I will never see again. To put it quite simply, I’m not almost 30 in the sum of people, homes, and time stolen away. I’m closer to multiple centuries by now. We could call it a 730th birthday, give or take. 30 is more difficult to believe if you’ve seen the kind of things I’ve seen.
With that dubious age right around the corner, I’ve found myself parsing the evolution of who I am, what shapes a human soul. What I’ve been through is still remarkably ugly, but it’s given me something beautiful just the same: my identity. Self-actualization in spite of how many times I’ve been broken. I’m still learning how to navigate life. After so many attempts at rebuilding, I can’t say I’ve gotten used to it. The needs of each situation change each time alongside the urgency. I am still in the trenches and it looks like that’s the default for my life. 3 decades of being pulled in and out of hell’s forges to emerge a fiery new version of myself. All I know for certain is that more time will pass until the mortal coil allows me a shuffling-off. Am I to live it to its natural closing, or will I follow Ophelia to the waters someday? I may wish for the latter, but perhaps my strength has surpassed my darkest designs towards myself. I’ve survived this long on increasingly crueler turns of fate. Some would call me fortunate for having reached 30. I can’t abandon the people I’ve grown to love in these 30 years to the same hurt I feel. The one that would pass to them in my wake. I cannot succeed Ophelia, no matter my wishes.
I will have more to say on this later. I just needed
to get what’s on my mind into a tangible form to mark this point in time. It’s
the start of a new chapter. I write this
to remember my mortality, so to speak. I’ll be watching the storm clouds over
the Southwestern sky, waiting for them to clear or intensify. Reminding myself
that the next Debbie may be a happier girl. I find this moment in time
bittersweet, almost. More pages to fill. Art projects to realize. New things to
learn. Places waiting for me to venture out. Interspersed with the same grief
that has been with me for as long as I’ve had memories. I hope clarity finally
waits for me in the next 3 decades. I don’t know what else to cling to.
