LJ Idol Week 11- Run, Don't Walk.
This is me today. Well, yesterday. I took the picture yesterday. But imagine it was today.
In three days, I turn 21. It’s kind of hard to comprehend how I’ve lived to see this day. I’ve had alcohol poisoning, tried to kill myself, and almost been killed. I’ve been beaten, had an eating disorder, and had a life threatening disease. I’ve cut myself, fell down stairs, and almost run over. But I’m still alive, which is more than a lot of people can say.
So what am I getting at? Everyone keeps asking me what I want for my birthday, and all I keep telling them is that I want to do this or to do that. I’m turning 21 and all everyone, logically, is thinking is that I want to throw this big blowout party like I did last year. I was throwing up before 9pm.
That’s not how I live my life anymore. I don’t drink (much), and I don’t live like an idiot. Not to say that everyone does, but I want to live to see the day after my 21st birthday. I want to live to see my 22nd. I just want to live. As Jamie Tworkowski, TWLOHA founder, said “I like birthdays. I like them more for other people but I’m glad we celebrate them. At the heart of it is the opportunity to tell someone "I'm glad that you were born", which is also to say "I'm glad that you're alive." Those are powerful statements. The world would be a different better place if we lived that way, if we said and showed those things, more than once a year.” I feel like that’s how I am. I like my birthday, sure, but only because I get to see the people I love all together.
But I haven’t had the best birthdays.
When I was 13, my mom called me and told me she was, yet again, getting a divorce. When I was 14, my boyfriend broke up with me and started dating someone else. When I was 15, my parents didn’t say anything to me. When I was 18, I almost died from alcohol poisoning.
And now I’m almost 21. I feel like I’ve lived another life; as if I was walking along this broken path of destruction in that life, and ran the hell out of it to get where I am.
But the thing is, I’m still running, and I’m running on empty. I’m running on fumes that get me from one place to another, but I don’t have the gas to get to where I want to go, unless someone is willing to spare me some. I’ve lived my whole life running from things. I’ve spent my whole life blaming myself for Zach dying, blaming myself for my dad beating me. I blamed myself for my relationship with my mother basically being nonexistent. I blamed myself for almost everything in my life, and it’s hard to go from blaming everything on myself to learning that it wasn’t my fault.
I’m done running. I’ve decided to stop and face the things I’ve never dealt with. I’m going to miss Zach, but as much as I want to believe I could have prevented his death, I couldn’t have. I regret my relationship with my mom being the way it is, but it wasn’t just my fault. Things happen, life happens.
That picture up there? That’s me. I’m smiling. I’m tearing up my “Run, Don’t Walk” sign I previously had worn around my neck, and I’m going to deal with things the hard way, the right way. I’m glad that I was born, and I’m glad that I’m alive, and I think that this is honestly the first time, in a very long time, that I’ve said those words and truly meant them.