the fight

I am standing in this rain, again, waiting for a break in the clouds; it seems it has rained forever, that this torrential moment will never end. I imagine a dance between nearly-forgotten memories of sunlight, wishing for these withered seeds in my heart to become flowers. They have been buried so long, though, and I don’t know if they will ever have the chance to bloom. I feel forgotten, and I feel lost.

***

It is hard to live a performance of acceptable behaviour; the great dance of appropriateness, honing my own adequacy for consumption, constantly serving myself up in the most palatable fashion to those who will eventually devour me. It is my greatest challenge, my most significant success, and my fiercest shame.

I was given beliefs about my future, about my self, my brain, my mode of living. I was handed vague blueprints about who I am, before my path was ever clear. Like a Spanish fighting bull, our destinies are ordained by someone else’s supposition of our distinguishing traits and expected character. The calves are born to continue a line, with their fate sealed in one of three directions: for breeding, for the bullfight, or for slaughter.

Unlike the chosen novillos, I was not told I was a fighter. I was told I was normal, and I was told to hide everything that appeared not to be.

Hiding, masking, silencing: this is how I lost track of who I was very early in my life. Discipline stole my voice, and manners stole my character. Politeness and appearances were cruel override switches which erased my personality. Hollow, I was left to search for these essences through a lonely and painful adult wilderness, chasing the shadows of that little girl who laughed too loudly and talked too much, someone unrecognisably joyful, before she was labelled weird, odd, strange… 'just so different'.

I wish I had been allowed to fight. The stifled screams and explosive rages pushed down over thousands of yesterdays linger still, somewhere in my body, and I am reminded of them in my dreams. I will always hear a cacophony of voices shouting over me, in every area of my life. In the moments I catch glimpses of my real self, under the good-natured pretences, I continue to be haunted by the eternal scarring of should, and shouldn’t, mustn’t and must; the excruciating, lifelong, process of force-feeding myself my own discomfort so as to save others from their own.

It has been twenty eight years since I first visited a doctor to talk about the pain inside me. My heart, my soul, my body. Over the decades in between then, and now, I have lost track of which part of me is screaming the loudest. Sometimes it feels that it might be simply the words left unspoken that cause the most harm. It has been so long, and it seems that there are now so many buried conversations, murdered feelings, forming solid layers that choke me from within, from the deepest pits of my twisted intestines all the way to the top of my strangled throat.

There have been so many doctors since my teens. So many medications for numbing this saddened mind, or calming this anxious body - and so much therapy to cope with all the ways I tried first to manage within, and then escape from, this world. So many boxes ticked, or left unticked, and yet, so little care given.

***

Occasionally, when it is brought to fight, a bull will demonstrate exceptional skill, and in these rare moments, the animal is pardoned. Rather than being killed, it then lives out its life on the ranch where it was raised. Only through excellence can the bull circumnavigate the path chosen for it. That is how this life feels to me: if I can just excel, I might survive. It is not enough for me to exist as myself, I must be a version of myself that surpasses all expectations, shines brightest, achieves the most. Of course, this only ever created a sense of absolute desolation.

This is the price I pay to be a version of normal. A chameleon of continually-upgrading expertise, unfeasible but solitary and unsustainable achievements, continual dissatisfaction, unrelenting mental breakdowns, unmanageable cognitive processes, and an entire adulthood spent fighting the confusion of being almost certain this is not everyone else’s experience. Did you ever really meet me? I have acted for more audiences than you could either count or imagine.

***

Does the fighting bull know every moment of the conflict is leading to their great unmasking? Is he aware his existence begins and ends on the very brink of discovering his true nature?

I have asked myself if I can endure this fight to find myself underneath all the masks, the show, the pretence, the coping, the endless roles that satisfy the needs of others.

We die if we do not fight to find our true nature. I have to keep fighting, even in the moments I feel the most injured. I cannot give up because I am bleeding. I cannot give up because the crowd has stopped cheering.

I only have the fight left, because it is where my truth exists. I need it to be exposed because it is where freedom lies.

***

I stand here, rain pouring down my face, petrichor fizzing through my senses like some grand awakening, praying with a heart more open than ever before, that there will be better days ahead.