No one Told Me I was Allowed to Want More Than an Ending

On surviving a future I never allowed myself to imagine.

Photo by Tania Malréchauffé on Unsplash

When I was young, I loved sad endings. I did not just tolerate them, the way people say they can “handle” a tragic movie. I sought them out. I wanted the girl on screen to die at the end. I wanted the book to close without anyone getting saved.

I remember feeling something close to relief when a story refused to give me hope, because at least then it was honest, at least then it matched something I already believed underneath everything else.

I do not know exactly when it started, the wishing. I would daydream about accidents happening to me. Not planning them, not wanting to cause them myself, just imagining them arriving from somewhere outside of me, like weather.

And when I actually did hurt my arm, some small strange part of me would feel almost excited, like my body had finally caught up to something my mind had been carrying for a long time. I never understood why. I am still not sure I fully do.

What I do know is that I never pictured myself past eighteen. Not because I planned anything, not because I wanted to end things with my own hands, but because some quiet certainty in me had already decided I simply would not be around.

I never let myself dream about a career, or a future, or who I might become, because why build toward a life you do not believe you get to have. I was not afraid of dying. I think I just assumed it, the way you assume the sun will set.

And now I am twenty three. I am here, in a life I never let myself imagine, doing things I never planned for because I never thought I would need a plan. There is something strange and almost dizzying about that. Existing past the point you quietly expected to stop.

I am writing this down because I do not want it to just live in my head anymore, circling the same shape over and over with nowhere to land.

Maybe if it is out here, on a page, I can finally look at it instead of just carrying it. Maybe that is what moving on actually looks like. Not forgetting it happened, just no longer needing it to stay so heavy.

I am still here. I did not know if I would be, and I am.