notes from a person passing through

Written while holding my grown self like a shield against an old, angry girl.

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒 

Yesterday, I felt endless sadness. It was heavy, yet familiar. I know what to do with sadness. I stay quiet, avoid people, listen to music that reflects it. I know how to hold it without dropping everything around me. I feel 13 again today.

I’m angry. And anger is worse. Because when I’m angry, I say and do things I regret. I react before I even process what’s happening. I curse when the phone rings, roll my eyes at every message, feel like throwing my phone across the room. Even small things make my skin crawl.

This kind of anger always takes me back to when I was 13. That year, I hated everything and everyone. I thought I hated the world, but really, I hated being alive in it. I was full of rage, but also empty in ways I couldn’t explain. That’s when I started hurting myself.

I remember how it bloomed under my skin, how it made me do things to myself I couldn’t take back. Hatred made me feel powerful, until it didn’t. Until it left me hiding from everyone, hiding sleeves, watching blood like it owed me something.

The memories come back when I get like this. That self-hatred, the constant tension, the feeling of being unlovable and unfixable. And the only way I knew how to cope was to direct all of it at myself. On days like this, I feel the old version of myself breathing down my neck. Like she’s waiting for me to lose control again.

I try to remind myself that I’m not her anymore. That I’ve grown into a woman now, that I can’t pretend to deal with my feelings by hurting myself. But when the anger comes this strong, it’s hard to feel grown. I feel stuck in the same cycle, just older.

“Ten years old without a voice… I feel like nothing’s really changed, now I’m just a little older.”

I don’t want to be 13 again. I don’t want to be angry just to survive. But today, it feels like I’ve gone back in time, and all I can do is ride it out.

𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀𓇬⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒