I want to have a good life

I want to make my parents proud and have deep friendships, a successful job, a smiling family photo on the mantle

I want to be a woman after the very heart of Christ, pulling Scripture from my pockets as a lantern in the dark

and I want to travel: see lots of beautiful places and meet lots of beautiful souls.

 

yet here I lay in bed,

cutting my wrists and desperately searching for the end.

 

How can that which has yet to begin, end?

 

I am only 19 years old. I have yet to love.

my life is school—it has yet to evolve.

my joy is shallow—it has yet to be grounded.

my feet are clean, for I have barely walked.

 

I have yet to begin.

 

I am a merely a “once upon a time…”

there is still space between me and my “happily ever after”

 

But I have within me boundless oceans of possibility (why do I wish only to pull the plug and drain them?)

I have so much inside that it drowns me, tosses me from wave to wave, fearing that it will all come to nothing.

 

I am so afraid of my oceans evaporating that I consistently drain them myself because, somehow, in my diseased brain, it is better to quit than to fail.

 

I don’t want to mess up my life, so I’ll just end it.

but what of my wants? (I am not ready to give up my white-picket-fence dreams for fear of failure)

it is true, I could end my life whenever I choose:

I do not have to live.

I do not have to go to school.

I do not have to please my parents.

I do not have to love God.

 

but I dream of mountains, not anthills; of flowing lines, not stagnant dots.

 

my wants overflow.

my oceans roll on.

and my mattress just gets soggy.

 

I have not made it yet, but I want to.

and sometimes, that is enough to keep the blood in my body

and the final curtain from being pulled.

 

Because I want to have a good life,

and I have only just begun.

bL