I Most Certainly Am on Fire

“You haven’t realized everything you’ve done so far has sparked a flame that is now burning you up.”

“But I am not on fire.”

“You most definitely are. One day you’ll understand what I’m saying and for the first time you will notice all your burn marks.”

2020 will mark my twenty-eighth year on this Earth. For twenty-eight full rotations around the sun I have been alive to witness so much, much more than any one person should ever have to. Often I wonder, when did I manage to reach this point? It feels as if just yesterday I was teetering through the days with childlike innocence. My view has since been painted with such hideous colors that at times, it skews reality. It leaves me with nothing but questions. The curiosity is still there, though a bit morbid. At the age on ten I made a decision that would never come to fruition. I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t my time to be on Earth. It felt as if my spirit was sent here on accident during the wrong time period. In this thought I knew what I had to do. I needed to die and hope there was some sort of a second chance to try again. This line of thinking wasn’t rational and while I understand that as an adult, you couldn’t have told that child a thing. She was determined to quash that flame for good. She was working very hard to ensure it didn’t leave a single mark. I made no plans for the future, I stopped dreaming of my potential career choices. It all came to a screeching halt at my feet. With my own hands I knelt down and drew a line in the sand, one I was determined not to cross. That line was my future. There was sense of power that came with the control my own mortality, I loved it. I thrived on it. If you were to look teenage me in the eyes and ask about where she’d be at almost twenty-eight years old she would have sharply informed you… she’d never make it that far. Oh, how wrong she was. Trauma is what lead that little girl to her solution. People tend to not understand the depth of damage a traumatic childhood can have emotionally and even physically. It reshapes a developing brain and wires in so many horrible, unnatural responses to even the most basic of things. Often times, these adults are ignored because the research available isn’t widely known. Humanity, to a point, stops caring once the child is replaced by the adult. I was just another face with a laundry list of disorders and a handful of meds. In many ways I was fortunate, I had at my fingertips a group of friends and family that stepped up to catch me when I fell. And I fell a lot. As I staggered through my teens and in to my twenties I was a seesaw of emotions and just one dip away from taking my own life. Each time I tried though, there was always some hesitation involved. I would pause long enough to think of the faces of those I love twisted in pain when they discovered my surrender to the trauma. It was a fraction of reality that kept me wandering aimlessly forward. I always thought the phrase, “it gets better,” was full of such shit. There was a collection of phrases tossed my way over the years and I loathed each and every one of them. But today as I type this I am living, breathing proof that it does get better. It takes time and you’ll be hurt like hell along the way but you’ll get there. It’s been so long now that I can look down at my steps over that line I drew so many years ago. That line is so far back that I can barely see it now. All I see are the burn marks I’ve left along the way to my future. For each threshold I hopped over or struggle I fought and won, there was a smoldering fire still there. In my adolescence I was often told I deserved no life or that I’d become nothing. They were wrong. I became someone and that someone, while a bit broken, I am proud of. That little girl took her heavy bag of traumas and kicked every single obstacle out of her path with such ferocious tenacity. She dropped out and resigned herself to become no one. I never became a lawyer like I dreamed of but with just a GED I became a successful class action litigation paralegal. I took that little girl’s smashed passion for reptiles and soak up everything available online. I came from below the poverty line and have my own car and home. Growing up food was scarce but now a full dinner is cooked for my little family almost every night. I run a jewelry shop, blog, and weekly podcast with no issues. I put down the rope each time I picked it up. I became someone from nothing. That little girl burned the world the adults built for her and started from scratch. She was a Phoenix that burned to ash in the pan of life and was born new. My wings are ablaze and I will use them to light my future. There is no longer a line. There’s a wedding. There’s children. There’s knowledge to be had. I have far too much to do in my time left to allow what those people did to me continue to drown out my spark. I may have scars but this is my chance to enjoy this world to the fullest. My heart is a flame and I am on fire.