A WEEKLY WRITING CHALLENGE BY HEARTLINE PUBLICATIONS

I Keep Meeting Myself

Proof that my coping mechanisms are just Disney plots

pinterest

Some days, I am the pristine scaffolding of Cinderella before the midnight chime, obsessively sweeping the dust of everyone else’s expectations into neat and polite piles. I carry an audacious humility, holding my breath so fiercely inside a glass slipper of compliance that I forget my own feet are breaking on the ballroom floor. But the clock always strikes, and the abrupt spilling over of my composure rips open at the seams, spilling into a feral dissonance where the carriage becomes a pumpkin, and the elegance dissolves back into the soot from which it came.

Some days, I lock myself away like Elsa in an ivory fortress of my own manifestation, convinced that safety is a landscape carved entirely out of peremptory stillness. I wrap my arms around my chest, feeling the lub-dub of a heart that tries to freeze its own blood, practising a form of premeditated accidentalism where I pretend that isolating my spirit is the same thing as protecting it. I watch the frost web across the windows of my cells, staring into the quite quiet, assured that if I perhaps refuse to touch the world, the world can never find a way to bruise me, hurt me, ever again.

And yet, some days, imma Ariel staring at a surface I am terrified to breach, drowning in abyssal shallowness as I barter away the very voice that makes me myself just to stand on a shore that might reject me anyway. I am caught in a desperate oscillation between the ocean depths of who I truly am and the shallow ledge of who I think I need to become to be loved. I collect the trinkets of public smiles and ruptured assumptions, storing them in the weeping corners of my sullen sepulcher, hoping they will palpably add up to a whole person.

Some days, I possess the terrifying gentleness of Maleficent, standing at the edge of the celebration with a crown made of thorns and a heart that hoards its old injuries. I look at my reflection in the still pond water and see the sharp cheekbones of a villain I never intended to be, a face that exudes a comforting discomfort because it is easier to be feared than it is to be fragile. I spin silver webs of panic around my own body, warning the world to stay back and black, blind to the truth that the wall I built to keep the monsters out has trapped me inside with them.

Some days, I’m Belle, lost in the suffocating comfort of a library that isn’t mine, hiding behind the heavy, leather-bound thoughts of dead poets because my own reality feels unendurable to inhabit. Imma living a tragic comedy, reading the same lines over and over, trying to find an impeccable chamber for a heart that refuses to follow the rules of a predictable schedule. I look past the edges of the page, out at the wild, untamed woods beyond the castle gates, wanting to run into the dark but keeping my fingers glued to the tidy margins of the text.

Some days, I am the Beast pacing the length of a ruined ballroom, a creature of deep loud voice and heavy limbs, screaming over the whimpers of my own vulnerable flesh because the adrenaline of anger feels safer than the ache of surrender. I treat my own body like an enemy territory that needs to be conquered, slamming doors and breaking mirrors, furious that my will cannot simply force my humanity to comply. I sit in the ashes of the ruin I created, watching the petals of my potential drop one by one, waiting for a grace I am truly stubborn to ask for.

Some days, I’m Rapunzel, weaving a ladder out of my own heavy thoughts, spending hours spinning a brilliant trap just to hang it out the window. I live in a state of liberating confinement, calling out for a rescue from a tower I could easily step out of if I just learned to let go of the very things I use to protect myself. I wait for a Eugene, someone reckless enough to scale the walls of my carefully curated isolation, sharp enough to see past the alias I hide behind, and willing to pull me into the blinding, unscripted world outside. But I look down at the grass, paralysed by the infinity of the horizon, terrified that the moment my bare feet touch the earth, I will shatter the fragile illusion of my high-altitude security.

And some days, I am Mulan staring at a reflection that feels like an insult to the strength women carry, wearing an armour of expectations that suffocates the features of my face until I don’t recognise the eyes looking back at me. I am an animate monolith of compliant defiance, fighting a war on a battlefield I never chose, pretending that if my public smile is strong enough, the private breakdown won’t matter. I drag my heavy hands through the performance, waiting for the moment I can finally lay down my weapons, strip away the gender, and softly whisper to the stranger in the mirror, “Welcome home, soldier!”

Okay, but wdym nobody warned us that being a recovering Disney girlie would bring me weaponising different fictional characters to cope with daily existential dread? This whole piece is basically me calling myself out for building entire fortresses out of my own anxiety. If you also alternate between wanting to isolate in an ice castle and fighting invisible battles in full armour, congrats, we are the same flowers of adversity.

pinterest

Huge thank you to Debadrita Majumder and Annaya Mahale for the prompt, and to everyone who stopped by to read. 🩷

Tagging a few icons to see what they think: sita Aditi Sharma Fatehana WordsInWilderness Harshit Anisha🍀 Apeksha Apte Bhavya Raj Ankit kashyap Nade I. Paulia Dianz ❃

Become a Writer at Heartline Publications🤍

[embed]Welcome to Heartline Publications A Home for True Storytellingmedium.com