The Girl On Fire

Last night, I did something I hadn’t done since I was about fourteen or fifteen. Back before I became self-consciously aware of how cliched my teen angst was. That’s the upside to being too old to blame things on being a teenager: you can do things for your own reasons. So I indulged my melodramatic side. I shut off all the lights and lay in the dark. Then I turned up wailing, angsty in music loud in my headphones until I was drowning in it. The outside world faded into the background and I let my inner chaos surge to a crescendo. It all washed over me: the self-doubt, confusion, anxiety, loneliness, fear, anger, sadness. And for once, I didn’t try to cover it with a performance of self-deprecating cool. I didn’t shove it back and try to convince myself to “get over it”. Neither did I try some calming, yogic meditation or focus on the good. Actually, I opened my arms wide open and embraced the dirty, messy, sharp and painful grossness of it.

This isn’t a pretty post. It won’t be funny or sarcastic and it probably won’t be easy to read. I’m not going to tell you that it’s okay. It’s not about coming through the mud and feeling cleansed and whole. It’s not catharsis. It’s the mud, and it just is. I turned up the volume in my headphones until it hurt, until it pounded into my brain. And then I let myself feel all those ugly, messy things that aren’t allowed to people desperately trying to seem normal. I put on the song, OUR song, that alternately lifts me up or makes me fall to pieces at the mere hint of the opening melody. I dug deep into the archive for a song that used to make me wail over the first guy I loved to the point of pain. And I let it all unravel.

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