Taking, trying, saying, changing.

Here's to a very high and healthy amount of happiness hormone levels this evening :)

I decided that I wanted to know what it felt like to be “normal.”

I wanted to understand what it felt like to wake up hopeful or

have one night where I didn't wake up wondering why I was still here.

So I take a pill.

Take a breath.

Take a sip.

Take a step back.

Take a look in the mirror.

Hope the serotonin levels in my body instantly climb my bones to find a home in my arteries and nerve endings.

Hope I can look past invisible scars carved on my face to find one beautiful thing about myself.

Hope I can chain up the thoughts of a foreign figure that can’t leave my brain for one single day.

So I try to be positive.

Try to find things to look forward to.

Try to meditate my mind and relax my body.

Try to be thankful for the gifts life’s given me.

Try to force myself to smile and eat.

Hope that I won’t see pictures of my father so my lips might forget how to say his name.

Hope that something bad might happen and I may not collapse by weights of frustration pressing down on my shoulders.

Hope that someone will ask me “How are you?” and read through the lies of my flushed skin and grit teeth.

So I say no to the shortcuts.

No to different pain to mask what I’m feeling now.

No to talking to people that will only hurt me or the people I care about.

No to making my grief somebody elses.

No to finding happiness in sweat and poison.

Hope that I can continue to control temptation that’s as alien to me as the way his door knob felt in my palm.

Hope to find gratitude in my self that I've been clinging to XY's to fill me with the past four years.

Hope to learn how to stop being such a screw up.

So I change my mindset.

Change the time my alarm clock serenades to me “A Land of Opportunity”

Change the normalcy of my fingers in texting out someone's name and good morning.

Change the pattern my stomach has become familiar to with eating.

Change the way I used to always allow negativity to trump a portrayal of bare teeth exposed.

Hope that I tell my fight or flight response that nothing is chasing me and I can stop and breathe.

Hope that I can walk to class by myself and that those three minutes don’t fill me with loneliness.

Hope that I learn how to say the word love without wanting to cry.

So I am here.

Taking, trying, saying, changing.

I say I love you, Brooklyn.

It’s unfamiliar not to hear an I love you too from a deeper voice inches above me.

It’s weird to think that somewhere deep inside some honesty has built a nest in those words.

It’s invigorating trying to control your life instead of letting chemicals and tears and fear control it for you.

Because I am tired of being helpless.

I am tired of being sad.

I am tired of being scared.

So I am here.

Taking, trying, saying, changing.

For now, I hope that’s enough.

For now, I hope I stay so driven.

For now, I hope that I can keep hope.
Is this normal yet?
Am I normal yet?
So I am here.
Taking, trying, saying, changing.
It's not normal to lose four father figures in one year.
So I am here.
Taking, trying, saying, changing.
It's not normal to be so scared and so desperate.
So I am here.
Taking, trying, saying, changing.
It's not normal to want so damn badly to be normal.
So I am here.
Taking, trying, saying, changing.
I don't need to be normal. I just need to be happy.