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1% Battery Left: What Are My Final Words?

Is this really the end?

Source AI

A note to the girl who might survive me.

The battery is at 1%. I am not panicking. I am not crying. I am just sitting here with the cold spreading through my chest like it has always belonged there.

I am young. Too young to be writing something that sounds like a goodbye. But here I am. And the strangest part is I am not scared anymore. I was scared before. I touched the fear before. I fought before. Now? Nothing. Just quiet. Just the glowing screen and my thumbs moving like they belong to someone else. Panic? maybe, I don’t know.

That is the thing no one tells you about dying young. The fear leaves before you do. It gets tired of you. It packs its bags and walks out the door, and you are left sitting there with nothing but the hum of the phone and the echo of your own heartbeat. And you realize you have been living with that fear for so long that without it you are just empty. Just a body. Just a girl who never learned how to feel safe.

If you are reading this, it means I survived. Or someone found my phone and decided to read my last words like a stolen diary. But it’s not for them. I am writing this for you. The future me. The one who gets to wake up tomorrow or next week or next year. The one who will open notes app one day and find this and pretend it was written by a stranger. Do not ignore.

I need you to know something. Something ugliest. Something I have never said out loud.

You and I both have been so cruel to the younger version of us. The little girl with brown skin that is beautiful, but we never believed it. The one with the deep voice that did not sound like the other girls. The one who smiled before she learned how to fake it. The one who believed people when they said they loved her. You abandoned her. Again and again and again. We called it survival. Called it growing up. Called it healing. But it was neglecting. It was just us running away from the only person who never ran away from us. What a cowardness and cruel.

She is still in there. The little one. She is not gone. She is just buried under all our numbness and all our excuses and all the times we stood in front of the mirror and could not stand the sight of our own face.

Do you remember what we did every morning? Every night? We would stand there. Staring. Picking apart every inch. Skin too brown. Voice too deep. Nose not right. Hair not right. Nothing right. We would blame. Accuse. Tell we are not enough. Not pretty enough. Not light enough. Not soft enough. Not feminine enough. Curvy but not slim. Too gullible. Too trusty. Too understanding. Too soft.

“I hate you! Hate you so much that I can’t stand it!” Yet we forgot, in process of saying it to ourselves, we were saying it to her too.

We forgot that these words used to haunt us, yet we did what coward people do, blame. And then walk away and do absolutely nothing to change except hate ourselves harder.

That was not honesty. That was abuse. And we gave it to ourselves for free.

I am sitting here with 1% battery and I finally see it. All the times I could have been gentle. All the times I chose to punish **myself instead of hold myself. All the times I looked in the mirror and looked away because I could not stand the sight of someone who kept failing. We said looks are nothing yet look what we’re doing. That was not strength. That was us* hurting the only heart that never stopped beating for us.*

I don’t feel much anymore. That is the truth no one wants to hear. Love feels like a word other people get to use. Like a language I forgot how to speak. I am not angry about it. I am not sad about it. I *don’t feel *anything about it. And maybe that is the real punishment. Not *the dying. The not feeling while still being alive. Walking around with a chest full of numb and calling it fine*.

So here is my final word. My last confession. My 1% truth.

If you live. If you are reading after years from now on a full battery with dry eyes and a busy life and people who call you by name.

Please be gentle with her. The little one with the brown skin and the deep voice. The one I kept locking outside in the cold. Go find her. Apologize on your knees if you have to. Hold her like we should have held her all along. Tell her she was always beautiful. Tell her, her voice was always beautiful. Tell her the mirror was a liar, and you were the one who taught it how to lie.

Don’t abandon her again. Don’t make her wait another decade for someone to say I see you. I am sorry. You were never the problem. You were never too dark or too loud or too much or not enough. You were just a girl who learned to hate herself before she learned her own name.

I have 1% left and I am giving every last bit of it to her. Not to fear, to regret, to the people who left. Not to the love I never learned to keep. Just to her. Just to say I see you now. I am sorry I waited until my phone was dying to say it.

If I die tonight. Tell her I tried. Even if trying looked like failing. Even if trying looked like silence. Even if trying looked like this. A cold hand. A glowing screen. A girl who learned too late that the only person she needed to save was herself.

And if I live. Let this be the last time I ever write something like this. Let this be the apology that actually means something. Let this be the day I stop abandoning her.

The battery is blinking now. The screen is dimming. I can feel the dark creeping in at the edges of my vision. I am not scared. I told you. The fear left hours ago.

I am just tired. I am just young. I am just a girl with brown skin and a deep voice who spent her whole life running from herself and ran out of road.

Battery is gone now.

Goodbye.

Or see you tomorrow?

I don’t know which one scares me less.

Maybe neither.

Maybe both.

Maybe that is the point. I am numb and I am tired and I am finally telling the truth. This version me is signing off, yo—

Letter by Fatehana.

Credits go to Pari Sharma for such a beautiful prompt. She said she would snatch our comfort zone and she really did :) Tagging amazing writers: Arshi Naaz, Rashida Beal, Annaya Mahale, Safyre, Britto Abraham.

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