50. Poppy Wells

50

Poppy Wells

I am Poppy Wells, and I am a fighter.

I am Poppy Wells, and I am a fighter.

I am Poppy Wells, and I am a fighter.

I repeated the words Lia said to me a few days ago in my head over and over again as I made my way through the forest trail. The only light filtering through the trees was the iridescent glow of moonlight, bathing the forest around me in an eerie, silver glow. With each step, I felt my heart beat an inch faster than before. Every possibility, every alternative of my decision to leave that house behind raced through my mind at a million miles an hour.

I am Poppy Wells, and I am a fighter.

Each breath of fresh air I gulped down greedily set fire to my lungs, my throat burning with the sensation of dread. My entire body was wrecked with fear as I willed my fingers to stop trembling by my sides. The urge to rip away at the skin covering my palms threatened to overcome me with every step I took, bringing me deeper into the forest.

As soon as I stepped foot on that all too familiar rope bridge, a calming silence washed over me. All the pent-up tension inside of me fell apart at the seams until I finally felt free. Lowering myself onto the floor, I kicked my backpack off and let my legs dangle over the edge of the bridge. The river below churned harmoniously, mimicking the crashing of waves against the shoreline–a sound that washed over my body almost immediately.

I hoped this year would be different with my anxiety.

For once, I wanted to be the one in control of my life. I was utterly sick of being thrown around like a puppet on strings by my own mind.

Why couldn’t I just be like all the other kids?

I was stronger than most people thought. They just needed to believe in me a little. You know, like the Avengers. Natasha Romanoff didn’t need powers to save the world, and neither did I. Except, it wasn’t the world I needed saving from…

People didn’t realize how draining it was having to fight your mind every single second of the day. How exhausting it was trying to convince yourself that the simplest of tasks couldn’t harm you, even though every single nerve inside you screamed at you like it would. The pure strength alone it took to wake up every morning and mentally prepare yourself to go to school when the dread inside you was tearing you apart like a tidal wave.

Living with anxiety changed the way I walked through life whether I realized it or not. It determined everything I did. The way I breathed and how much I needed to breathe and the ache in my stomach that never seemed to go away. Not being able to leave the house without packets of paracetamol and a rescue remedy spray just in case– I lived my life in the just in case way and I couldn’t seem to stop.

I wanted to be free. I wanted to feel free.

I wanted to be normal.

I burned my skin with hot water bottles and filled my stomach with pills with the hope that, for a while, all my thoughts might just… stop . I bathed in bubble baths and walked through nature and exercised and kept a journal and tried and tried and tried everything I could to make myself feel even the least bit calmer.

I wished I could think like a normal person.

I wished I could do a presentation without breaking down into tears.

I wished I could walk down the street without having to list five things I could see until my heartbeat finally evened out.

I wished, I wished, I wished…

As the fading sunset finally disappeared beyond the horizon, I kept my fingers on my pulse and waited for it to settle with nothing but an aching heart and a head full of dreams that would never come true.

Tugging my old, wired headphones out of my bag, I placed them in my ears, pressing shuffle on another playlist Jasper made for me as Everest by Beabadoobee drained out all the thoughts racing inside my head.

Jasper.

My Spiderman.

I wanted to run to him.

I wanted him to hold me.

I wanted to be his more than anything in between.

Except, I did none of those because in my mind, letting myself seek comfort in others was just letting myself burden them, and that was a deep and hollow feeling I was forever desperate to erase.

‘Cause even if your bags are packed

you’ll never leave your home.

‘Cause you’re scared of all the monsters

that are waiting to unfold.

The lyrics spoke to me, understanding me in a way nobody else had before. But Jasper…he knew . Despite everything I’d done to keep us at a distance, he’d managed to bulldoze every wall, brick by brick. He knew me . And I used to hate that idea. But now…now I wasn’t so sure if what I felt was hate. Perhaps even all along.

My mind refused to erase the image of him I had unintentionally summoned inside my head. He knew what to say to make me feel like my scars were never the anchors weighing me down all my life. Knew how to comfort me, reassure me to make me feel free of every past mistake and memory that haunted my every breath.

Nothing between us had felt fake these past few weeks…but was that just me hoping to find something real between us that wasn’t there? The thing that scared me the most was what if it was all happening inside my head? Just another thing my brain had desperately created in a last attempt at creating a lifeline.

I wanted to fight. I wanted to stay. But I couldn’t go home.

Not after what happened tonight—after what I’d realized.

Feeling free was addicting and I wanted to ride that high a little while longer before reality came crashing back down. For once, I wanted to be able to dream without what if holding me back. I wanted to feel how it should’ve felt all those years ago–how it should’ve felt knowing I had a loving home to go back to instead of one that broke me piece by piece each passing day.

As the hours passed and the daylight surrendered, I let the music whisk my mind off to a faraway world where my magic and dreams existed–where the power of fantasy and make-believe slipped between every crack and scar and healed something it had never broken in the first place because those stories–they were never just books, just characters, just words on pages…they were everything to me.

When I lost myself inside of them, I felt free . Those characters, they survived . They fought, and even though their journey was tough, they made it out alive. It was hope. A possibility that, maybe, I too could escape the story that had been written for me. That perhaps I could find my happily ever after too.

Seeing them fight the same battles as me and win —there couldn’t be anything more inspiring. I related to them. I saw every fragment of myself in them. I wanted to fight like them. Survive like them. Heal like them.

To. Just. Hold. On.

I was more at home hidden between ink on paper than trapped inside the walls of a home that was supposed to protect me from everything evil in the world. But what I didn’t realize was that the evil I was warned about existed under that very roof, only a door handle away.

I was a kid, but I wasn’t clueless, and even though I didn’t understand it all, I knew, deep down, that it was wrong–that he was wrong .

But it was hard to fight a world that didn’t believe you.

I…I just wanted to feel loved.

Why was that such a horrible thing?