Living is an Extreme Sport

Living is an Extreme Sport
In the dead of night when loneliness reigns triumphant and the mask
crumbles, that's when it all hits. I am every version of myself that
has loved, failed and dared to rise again. My body is a map of the
life I've lived. Ink buried beneath skin telling a story in black
and white and colour. Needles etched my story deep inside of me in
ways my voice wasn't yet ready to vocalise. The scars on my thighs
may look scary and force you to avert your eyes but they're how I
invited the light in when the darkness took my oxygen away.
Pouring my next cup of tea feels as hard as climbing Everest and
eating feels like the strangest of acts
when your mouth is as dry as sandpaper. Folding clothes is now an
extreme sport and taking a shower is now officially an accomplishment.
I bowed my head and took the hand that life has dealt me with as much
gratitude as my broken heart could manage. Heavy footsteps have
laboured over the embers of hell as I walked through world's I wish
I never knew existed. My wings were clipped but did they do it or did
I? Was I so afraid to soar that I took away my own hope.
They study me now and see what they want to. What feels comfortable.
A job is now no longer a means to live but in fact it has become a
scouts badge of honour in their eyes. Achievement unlocked. She's
working, ten points to the hopeless girl. There's a car too, don't
forget her car. The vehicle that symbolises freedom, the one that
takes her to new places and finds great adventures. It's filled with
her passengers. Their names are doubt, pain and hate. Screams fill her
head, voices echoing her fears, so loud and unforgiving. Look at her,
she's going to work in her car. She has a job, isn't she doing
great?
She got dressed again today and her hair is always clean. If you
call, she will answer the phone. Twenty
points. The girl with the head full of trauma and a heart too scared
to beat is doing just fine. A scale
created by minds firmly closed affirms a lie the world wants to
believe. Ignorant, well-meaning advice
tells her to move a little more. Advisors who know it all do not know
how to move a body filled
with lead.
She's trying. She's taking her medication, practicing yoga,
moving, always moving, journaling,
talking, lather, rinse, repeat .. She's trying to follow the
blueprint created by... I'm not sure who. The
instructions are clear. Follow this and you'll be okay. Once upon a
time there was a girl who never
believed in fairytales or happy endings but then she tried yoga and
started some belly breathing and all
her problems faded away with each deep kundalini breath. Such wishful
thinking.
The problem with this recipe is that it's presumed that
everyone's palate is the same. That the same
ingredients will satisfy everyone the same way. The modern mainstream
narrative has found its way in to
our psychiatrists offices and into our prescriptions. The girl who is
too hard to diagnose, too hard to find
beneath the layers of trauma, is pushed from psychiatrist to
psychologist but at least she's leaning in to mindfulness. "Have
you ever read Oprah's book?" asks an earnest nurse. A model of
rehabilitation and hope copy and pasted into the pages of each
patient's file and placed neatly in a stack under the label
"healed".