inkskinned:

writing-prompt-s:

If you’re over 25 and haven’t done something remarkable, you are hunted down and killed. Some people invent things. Some make cures for diseases. Others become established members of their community. You’re pushing 30, and somehow not dead yet, even though you cant think of a single thing you’ve done thats remarkable in any way. Why aren’t you dead?

i keep coming back to this conversation. i sit on docks or in hallways or in the bright light of panels i talk in and i say: okay. yeah, i have “published books” but they’re self-published, what does that count. yeah, i have pieces in many, many magazines, but online culture isn’t real, is it. yeah, i’m working literally-not-a-joke five jobs, one volunteer position, and two student leadership positions and i’m in grad school on a full ride. but i could have been a lawyer, you know. i chose to go into writing, how selfish. i always talk about my engineer siblings with my eyes closed, because i know the look that people get: oh but you turned out like this? just, what? an internet poet?

I’m 25 and what I can make out of my life is: 45 hours on skyrim without making anybody die. i have, like, a lot of followers on the only social platform it doesn’t fucking matter on. i guess one time rihanna, unknowingly, reposted a repost of my work on her twitter, uncredited, so that was pretty interesting.

sometimes, because of what i write and who i am, i get messages that read: i think i’m going to end it. i don’t need you to help me, i just need to tell somebody. and i’m not a therapist. but i’m a good talker. better at listening. and every once in a while, i get the chance to talk people down from things. sometimes i get thanked for it. more often i talk until i hear nothing. i lie awake wondering: oh god. did they do it. was i not enough for them. lord, are you listening? can you help me? can you protect them?

i don’t do a lot. i don’t know math. i can’t knit. i am allergic to basically all things. the world at 25 feels really, really fucking bleak. look at what other people are doing with their time on earth. look at what children are capable of. god, who am i? i am crumbling to dust.

but then i remember: i have two ears and one big heart. and i can listen. and i can read. and i can be there when someone needs me. no, i don’t know math, but i know how to help when someone’s been crying. i can’t knit but i know how to hold someone’s hand when they’re too scared to admit they’re panicking. i am still allergic to everything but it’s just made me appreciate that our bodies are not cars to crash. we aren’t broken, we’re rebuilding, we’re in the process of magic; we create even in the face of all that destroys, we have been destroyed and still we tilt our heads back and look up and keep going and say, fuck no, not today, death can wait; i don’t have a bucket list because who can live that long but i still want to know what it feels like to skinny-dip and no! i didn’t think i’d make it to 25 and i’ve wasted god, so much of this divine and precious life

but today someone from four years ago finally messaged me. hey. thank you for being there all that time ago. thank you for listening. i’m alive, i’m well, and i’m finally, thank god, healing

and that’s the answer, my beloved, my angels, my dragons – no prose or poetry or lyrics about it. we weren’t put here to rot, to stagnate, to unfulfill. we weren’t put here to answer the prayers of our parents or the gifted-child prophecies or read from the book of poor-kid-doesn’t-understand-anything. our lives aren’t made from milestones, aren’t made from birth-marriage-mansion goals, we don’t survive by the starter gun. we were put here, each of us, because we have one heart big enough to fit love. to look into the yawn of space and say, that makes me curious. to put cold toes in the unknown ocean and say she is my home. to look wolves in the eye and say oh, you’re me, and you’re mine. we love, don’t we, so big and wild that our smallness feels like erupting.

i looked into myself and i said: what have i done at 25?

oh, oh, oh, i just remembered: i kept myself alive.