long term side effects after the wreckage

being depressed for a long time

Especially in your formative years

Really messes up your brain.

Now that the battle is over

I have to rediscover who I am.

It’s like I’m living for the first time at 23.

I’m doing all of the discovering that I should’ve done in my teenage years now.

And it’s lovely but brutal

I feel so far behind

And I’ll never catch up to my peers.

I’ve excepted it

And I deserve this time.

I deserve however long the discovery takes.

I earned it  after defeating

The wreckage.

The hardest thing

Is that no one understands this.

I never knew who I was.

I was trapped in the wreckage

Battling my thoughts.

When I should’ve been exploring

And discovering myself.

I had no time to do that.

It was either sink or swim.

I chose to sink.

Not because I wanted to but because that’s what happens when you’re trapped in the wreckage with no map leading you out.

You look around and realize

You’re screwed.

This is it.

Until it’s not.

Until you find the map that leads you out.

For me,

My map was named hope.

I picked her up.

She was very tiny

I almost couldn’t read or see her…

I didn’t believe her.

But it was the only thing

That could guide me out.

So I picked her up and she lead me out.

Tiny bit by tiny bit

Until I realized a couple years

Later that I made it out from the ruins.

— w.z. t w o