by Meirah Johnson
if you could go back to any moment in your life and relive it, change how it happened, change who you lost, what would it be? I can still feel it sometimes. The guilt. Logically, I know it's not my fault. But that doesn't help how I feel. If only I would have noticed the signs. Maybe if I wasn't so easy to coerce. If I had just grabbed my hand back and told someone. But, that wouldn't have done anything. Because I'd still be there. In that room. Not physically, but your brain is powerful enough to make it feel like that. It feels like every physical experience is going to be tainted with him. Someone who was supposed to be on my side. Brothers are supposed to protect you from these kinds of things, not be the cause. I try to think of him then and now as two different people. I tried to convince myself that I had moved on and everything was fine. We're supposed to be a picture perfect family, right? I didn't want to cause drama or reopen wounds. Because if I have been taught anything, it is that everyone else comes before me. Because what are people going to think and who am I going to bring pain to? But what about me? What about little baby Meirah? She deserved so much better. And she still does. But I can't give that to her. I can't give that to anyone. Because i'm still there, in that fucking room. I never left. Everyone moved on, or at least that's what it feels like. My mom says she will do whatever she needs to protect me. And I know she will, but what she thinks is best for me is what got us here in the first place. And I don't mean that it's all her fault. Just that she doesn't know me. She thinks I am still who I was. I would agree that sometimes past versions of me make an appearance, but I am more. I want to believe that. I can't help feeling stuck, though. In a hole, in the same patterns. I'm losing my grip and it feels like I can only get help enough to partially regain that hold. I just want to scream and remind those around me that i'm still down here. Hanging over a bottomless well of the thoughts and emotions egging me on to let go. Because they understand me, they are me in a way. What am I hanging on to anyway? That room? Him and our "game"? If I let go, I'm not there. I dont have the vivid sensations or the screwed up vagina. I don't have to spend my days avoiding mirrors and wishing I was anyone but me. And while i'd love to think killing myself will solve all my problems. I can't. I hate when people tell suicidal peers that everyone would suffer if they died. Don't you think I know? That possibility consumes me. But why can't my death even be about me. Is it selfish to wish that thinking of others wasn't the automatic solution to my mental health struggles. Because it just so happens to be a cause as well. My whole life has been taking care of others. Thinking of other people's feelings and opinions. And if I dared to express my own, i'm being selfish and making everything about me. When you condition me to be a people pleaser, you relinquish any right to tell me putting the weight of the world on my shoulders is bad for me. How do people survive in this world. I'm supposedly accomplished, but I feel like i'm constantly failing to win.