The thing is, I forget that I'm my own hero.
I kept falling and kept having to eventually -after the period of laughing at myself while down - pick myself up again each time. Even if I got hurt, I had to heal. But somehow the very fact that I was always my own doctor cut open a wound of itself. A wound that maybe was always there for various traumatic reasons, but it widened and became more raw and festering each time I healed myself. I feel it right now; sometimes it is deep, deep inside, sometimes it's the very physical ache in my bones, or the way my chest tightens in a pain that is like having a metal vise around me. But the wound is always there.
Even still, I realize now that subconsciously I feel that the girl I was in the past was weaker and today somehow I am stronger to her. Maybe simply because I have endured this wound to date, and the latent knowledge of everything I have gone through has made me therefore better equipped by the very fact of existence.
But the funniest thing is that today I went back in time. And all of a sudden I was looking at this beautiful, happy, cheerful, positive, and err, cheesy bundle of joy -- and she was me. She was me.
But I look at that me: I was so happy. And yet that was a time in my life when I literally had nothing.
And I wonder, who was this girl who had so much courage? Was she really so brave, so hopeful? -- Or was she delusional?
I mean, this was right at the edge of a period where I was in a pit so deep and dark, it wasn't even a pit anymore. I was buried under the fragments of my life, and it was as if all the physical world was the burden of rubble atop me. I had nothing and no one. But I had myself.
I still had myself. And I dug out. I climbed out. Suffocating. Blind. Reincarnated. I lived again.
But being myself meant that I was the me that still had that everlasting wound. That wound was me. It festered in my old life, and it threw me into freefall.
Yet it also taught me to fly.
Today I find it so much harder to be that brave girl who could be so happy in the darkest of times. The irony is that I am not alone in the personal sense and yet in this knowledge I am so much more.
When I was in high-school, my motto was staunchly 'expectation is the cause of disappointment'. This was my internal warning to prevent any collision. Yet being human, how it could it have ever be prevented except in a vacuum? In university, the dude who eventually became my best friend told me that for the first year before our actual mutual acquaintancy, he had this certain impression of me because of the way I did what I had to do without any nonsense - studied, classed, worked out, socialized politely yet aloofly - and that I was some kickass tough girl. But really I was just trying hard not to give a damn lest I get hurt (again). But of course, I gave a damn.
Do I regret it? I'm not sure I do. In fact, I'm pretty damn sure I don't. I've gone through so many cycles of heartbreak and despair that counting is just nonviable. In each of these experiences the crux is not what I've learnt from them, but rather what I have learnt of myself.
Just for some context, right now my heart is broken over giving a damn - a bit too much of a damn - over someone who says they also do but their actions and words signify otherwise. To be honest, it actually is not their fault - yet it is.
But this time, I'm not going to let my heartbreak break me, or even define me. It's a tough battle because I want them to see and understand that I am not alright: that I am hurting and I am hurting because of them. And yet, I want to be strong - and if that is what they see they will find some solace in knowing that despite their actions and their behaviour, it's OK, that I am and will be OK.
But you know what? It's not OK. I'm not OK. However, a person who actually cares will know, or make an effort to really know, even if I seem OK.
I look back at the happy girl I was, even when I was the saddest girl inside, and it's me who really knows.
So dudes and dudettes, there is no holding back. I am my own hero.
All I have to do is look back at who I was and I inspire myself, to continue to be inspiring to the girl I will be.
Because I am my own hero.
