...your struggles have made you wise

when the counsellor tells you your struggles have made you wise...


ask her how useful the knowledge of how many punches it takes to lay you cold on the floor will be in future. ask her if the endless frost that shivers under your fragile skin is going to turn out handy, a free cooling agent in the heated heights of summer. ask her where she was every morning when you took the pills and crumpled the plastic cup pathetic in your fist. ask her about the taste of toothpaste and bile, how she felt when the dentist marked the progression of decay and solemnly warned you to cut down on sweets. ask her how it feels to keep all those suicides filed away in her desk drawer knowing that they were never ‘wise’ enough to see another way out and through. ask her about the first time she drank until she threw up for hours after she’d become sober again because a boy wouldn’t touch her, or a girl wouldn’t give her a second glance. question everything because there’s nothing like being given the honorary badge of ‘wisdom’ to make your thoughts stagnant, your will complacent. your whole life is now going to be measured on each side of a line between ‘here’ and ‘recovery’. understand that to therapists, you are at A and ‘recovery’ is at B. it is not  a B, though, not a single point on a map; ‘recovery’ is the white light at the end of the tunnel. it can signify the end of something, but it is not the end. it is used by health professionals as a preferred ending point, though, where they can stamp your hand and sign your papers and put you back out to pasture with the healthy cows. congratulations- you are through-- you are on the road to Happy now--- good fucking luck with that. don’t accept a happy ending, a brief flash of joy at the end of a long, sad life- seek a happy middle and find what it is that doesn’t just make you happy but makes you go, drives you forward and forward and keeps your edges sharp in a good way. it is hard to stand fast and stop your edges being blunted by the world, but relaxing into softness is not the answer. despair is soft, a cushion to dull every blow. depression is so compassionate and charming, she will stroke you with her pliable undemanding hands until you wonder if she is the only one who will ever understand how to love you, and you will believe her because what else are you supposed to believe- she keeps you so comfortable, you’ve sunk down into your EZ chair and now you couldn’t get up if you tried. you can’t fail if you don’t try. you are bound to fail if you don’t try. if you don’t try, you are bound. in six years when the lover leaving your bed asks about the scars on your thigh, tell them how you cut yourself free. lead them through the gashes in the fabric of the labyrinth of yourself. don’t leave anything out. wound them with your honesty so that they know how it feels to heal. when they stroke the soft skin over your ribs and say you’re beautiful, agree. you must be beautiful, must make yourself beautiful because the world was already ugly when you were born and there is no room for more ugly in it, so it’s impossible to believe you’re not the definition of gorgeous. say i am not ugly. and maybe you think that last part was a lie but so were the last three and a half years of your life. listen to them say it ‘beautiful/beautiful/beautiful’ over again until the word loses its meaning and becomes an empty noise, the cooing croak of some strange owl, the moan of a misshapen hinge on a door. the best part about ‘recovery’ is the pieces of yourself that you recover, rediscover, like coins stuffed behind the pillows of a couch. you are a big pile of coins. no other pile of coins contains the same coins that you do. the coins that make you who you are have value; so do the coins that make up everybody else. you can see the value in others. remember that you have value, too. incalculable worth. when the counsellor tells you that you are getting better, smile and say thank you, ask if she has an honest coin in the treasure trove of her soul or if she likes to hoard shiny lies and pretty words for making the sad sick girls feel special. when the counsellor speaks to you, speak back, honestly, even if it’s mean, even if the truth is too terrible and scary for you to tell without tears. because the only way you will not be measured by her words is if you are measured by your own.