Live and Deal, or Die

The horrors may persist, but so do you

I’m trying to find a way to navigate life and the people in it. I’m trying to make room for these people I love, and my emotions, and my flaws. I can’t seem to give any part of myself that’s important up. I can’t give these important parts of myself, for anyone. Not even if I love you. I can’t breathe if I sacrifice peace. I can’t breathe if I sacrifice sanity. I don’t know how to reply to things I don’t agree with without being insensitive. I don’t know. I’d love to reply, and say something that would change their lives, but I can’t. And I hate to feel sad. Yet that’s what I am, all of the time; sad. So, I can’t afford to be around copious amounts of sadness. I just can’t. And I don’t understand how people can. I live my life at a pain level of seven, consistently. I don’t know how to navigate. I don’t know how they navigate. And that is my fatal flaw. That is what will be the death of me. When I was fourteen I decided that my sadness was my problem. I decided that I needed to come to a conclusion. Would I live with the pain? Would I live with the aching of the chest? The panic attacks? Would I live with the death and the fact that I have no one to tell? Do I live with these nightmares where I always die? Do I live with waking up in sweat, and feeling like I’m being watched? Do I live with thinking my heartbeat is a murderer walking up the house steps to my room, and as my heartbeat gets faster, his feet go faster, until I pass out and have a nightmare where he does in fact come into my room and kill me? Do I live with the paracosm that’s slightly pathetic; the entire new, better, life I’d created for myself? Or do I die? Do I live despite it all? Or do I just die? I asked myself on the floor of my bedroom at fourteen if I was going to live and deal, or die and see what was on the other side. I asked myself that genuine question. She said she’d live. She said she’d deal. She said she’d live and she’d deal, and she wouldn’t make it anyone else’s problem, because everyone’s going through their own thing. I went to no one. I still was being killed in my dreams, I still was waking up in sweats. I was still feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I still couldn’t talk to people even when they talked to me. I learned how to live on my own. I know that is not by any means the best way to live, but this is my point: You need to decide. Decide to live or to die. And when you choose to live, live. Live and make sure you understand that even if you’re feeling crippling pain, everyone else is also feeling some version of hell. Everyone. When you ask yourself, “to live, or to die,” you already know the answer. Because to ask yourself means that you already have so much to live for. You have the trees, and the sun. You have the laughter and the people. The most important thing: you already exist, so you might as well. The horrors may persist, but so do you. So, now that you’ve decided to live, it’s time to deal. And of course you can go to the people you trust, I don’t think you should be like me in the way that I avoid the help, and hug the horror. Though, just make sure you realize that everyone else also chose to live. And when they chose to live, everyone else also chose to live alongside their horrors. Not just you.