thank you notes (moe)(7)

trigger warning: contains descriptions of self harm and suicide

i’m thankful I re-read a little life on the plane back from lagos. i’m thankful I cried so hard while reading, the man in the seat beside me asked if i was okay. i’m thankful i paused crying for some time to tell him about this book i was reading. i’m thankful he promised to read it. i’m thankful for how much i relate with jude st francis. i’m thankful it is sometimes scary and i have to take little breaks from reading the book because it feels like I’m reading my life story. i’m thankful reading the book shows me how irrational I am sometimes and how others might read me. i’m thankful this is why I read the book a lot, to remind me it doesn’t have to be this way.

i’m thankful for a time when i thought I could do it all alone or at least thought no one cared enough to help me not do it on my own. i’m thankful for a time when i thought i couldn’t do it anymore. i’m thankful i still don’t know how i made it out of that hole. i’m thankful i don’t know how i keep crawling out of the hole every month or so. i’m thankful for the times when cutting myself was the only way i could process my pain and give it some physical expression. i’m thankful cutting became a way of showing people that the pain was not all in my head even though only a few people ever saw the scars. i’m thankful it was and still is a massive cry for help. i’m thankful that i can now respond to this cry of help rationally. i’m thankful for my scars, i’m thankful i can’t really look at them. i’m thankful for how hard i cry when I look at them.

i’m thankful for the conversations i have with r my psychiatrist about addiction. i’m thankful when we first started having these conversations, i vehemently told him i wasn’t an addict. i’m thankful for how smug i was. i’m thankful that through these conversations, i have come to see that i am addict (hopefully a recovering one). i’m thankful to be addicted to the pleasure pain and food bring. i’m thankful for the annoying and very painful process of trying to identify my triggers. i’m thankful for how i say ‘my entire life is a trigger’ jokingly to my friends. i’m thankful because its not a joke. i’m thankful to feel helpless a lot of times and not know what to do. i’m thankful i at least get some exercise when i feel like this because i punch things or go on long runs.

i’m thankful to remember the two times i tried to kill myself (i’m thankful i can’t call them suicide attempts because it hurts). i’m thankful because i obviously didn’t know what i was doing because both times i woke up having slept for days. i’m thankful there are days i wake up and am grateful i didn’t do it.

i’m thankful for national suicide prevention week. i’m thankful for all the conversations we need to be having about how people like me, a fairly well educated, Black African, Christian twenty-something girl can be self-harming and contemplating suicide. i’m thankful there are people not like me whose stories need to be told too. i’m thankful for all the conversations we are already having or have had.

i’m thankful for the conversation i had with p, a pastor about sharing testimonies. i’m thankful because i was worried about sharing my testimony because there was no happy ending to it and i didn’t want to leave people sad after listening to it. i’m thankful he explained that i don’t owe anyone a happy ending and that sometimes sadness is a good medium for communicating. i’m thankful a little life proved this. i’m thankful it is unrelenting in its sadness and just when you think you’ve seen the worst of it, something worse comes up. i’m thankful to not give in to the temptation of buttering this up with something happy.

i’m thankful for the florence and the machine’s St. Jude. i’m thankful it’s become a prayer to me. i’m thankful for these lines from it.

“and i’m learning, so i’m leaving

let loss reveal it.”

 i’m thankful to hope loss reveals it. 

- moe, 10/9/2016. (shepherd's bush, london)

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