Elisabeth Writing

(TW: brief mention of suicide and addiction)

Today I found myself musing on self sabotage or, as I frequently find myself calling it, self destruction. I think a lot of my life has been dictated by these perverse behaviors, and anyone that has known me for a long time would no doubt agree with that. I’ve healed, but I’m still healing. I am imperfect and flawed and oftentimes a mess. And a lot of times… I am the one to light the match of my own wildfires. 

I’m a runner. Not marathons or 5k runs, or even a jog around the lake reflected with purple clouds. No. I am the woman with my suitcase packed and by the door, just in case something goes wrong. The first time I ran away I was just a little girl, maybe 5 or 6. I can’t even remember now why I ran away, maybe a fight with my sister or with my parents, a particularly bad day; I have no idea. Regardless, I sniffled and wept as I packed my pink plastic suitcase with the essentials: a few dresses, some socks, candy I had hidden in the drawers, a journal and a pen so that I could draw. I dramatically tossed my blonde curls and walked resolutely across the street to the tiny wooded area across from our house. I huffed and puffed as I dragged my suitcase behind me, staining my red dress and pink cheeks with smudges of dirt. And then I sat there, staring at the house, waiting to see if anyone cared about me at all, or if I was truly alone in the world.

(Did I mention that I was always dramatic?)

My parents tried to swallow their laughter as they approached me, asking me if I would please come home. I refused to meet their pitying gazes until, finally, I was won over. I let my father pick me up in his arms and I put my head on his shoulders, sighing contentedly. Mom made her famous peanut butter fudge that night, and Lex just rolled her eyes and ignored me, which was fine by me. 

Thus, a runner was born.

Running away and self destruction are intrinsically linked; at least for me. Whenever I became afraid, or overwhelmed, my first instinct was to run away. I ran away from conflict, I ducked my head at school and pretended to be invisible, I begged to go back to Ohio, or Florida, or back to Ohio, or somewhere else entirely. I ran away from hard things, and scary things, to my own detriment. 

I ran away from love. Many, many times. It’s a joke among my friends that my version of breaking up with someone is to end it and then immediately move, so that I no longer had to think about their flickering eyes or the dreams I left, suffocating in our pillows, or the way their tender smile had become a cruel smirk. I wanted to tear at their mask until I could find their love again, but I feared it was already gone, and there would be nothing, nothing at all, behind the paper and paint. 

Oh, but that was only part of my self destruction. 

I know what it feels like to be a shooting star, dust particles from a comet that burns as they come too close to the earth, glowing before we become nothing, nothing but a streak and a memory. 

I know what it feels like to be the fist that broke the mirror, how it felt creating the bad luck in every sliver of silvered glass, feeling somehow disconnected even when the blood that spills is your own.

I know what it feels like to be an addict staring at the gleaming bottles offering promises of glory, bravery, blessedly dream-free sleep, an endless forgetting that I once drowned in. 

I know what it feels like to look over the side of the bridge and wonder how long it would take to drown, and how cold the water would be in the icy November rain, how my own lungs would betray me. Perhaps I’d have Lana’s song “Hope Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have” on a loop, my own letter without any answers, and somehow, still, all of them. 

There are days, weeks, and months when I have to convince myself to stand still. Not to take the train to somewhere, anywhere, else. I watch the Greyhound buses, shaking with the need to disappear, to become someone new. I can be a better me in a new city, with a new name, a different dream. But that’s not true, is it? Your problems follow you, shadow self slithering. 

My shadow is like a Beast that lives in the trunk beneath my bed. I wear the skeleton key around my neck. Sometimes it will lie still, tucked in and quiet, and I am at peace. But some nights it growls and shakes, demanding to be let out, snarling and calling me names that make silent tears trickle down my face. It doesn’t seem to matter that I am the one saying these things to myself, not anyone else. They are like a thousand claws leaving their invisible markers on my freckled limbs. Many times I need to take a bike ride, ride or write out all the awful things that are in my mind, weep until I have no water left in my body, or scream at the moon, begging Her to listen. I have to cast a spell, do an egg cleanse, sprinkle the doorways with my special “bitch be gone” powder. I have to put on my faerie wings, pretend to be Aphrodite’s pupil, or one of the Good Folk who lives beneath the hill. I have to do, and be, things that make me want to stand still and smile. I have to do and be the things I like about myself.

My shadow is hissing at me now, but the light is on my face and the words are hitting the paper as we speak, and I am calm.

My shadow wants me to turn all my writing to ash, and then pour that ash into the wind and the sea, never to be seen again. But I like seeing how I’ve grown, and changed – or even how I haven’t. 

My shadow wants to remain hidden so, I’m going to let her out, for the world to see. For all of you. All of my issues, addictions, ups and downs. Because I feel so much less alone when I do. And hopefully, so do you.