It's My Birthday And I Want To Throw Up - Tumblr Posts

memento mori (remember you must die)  {december 4, 2022}

I’m thirteen now, in 12 minutes, and I can taste the blood in my mouth. I need to leave this bedroom and run to a place where no one knows my name, but I can’t seem to catch my breath. There is no escaping time.

For the first time in my life the day that I was born has not been spent alone. I have a family now and we shout and laugh and beat our chests like boys do, breathing in the cold air and spitting at the earth for suggesting that we sleep. And yet my bloody nose has licked my lips and the iron reminds me that there is no running from the world.

I hold my future in papercut hands, every passing moment a reminder that I can never be the way I once was. Now I am woman, now I am adult. I make decisions and I have money and I hold cards in the dynasty of girlhood. I am not the first and I am not the last. This is a very old, very well-told story. But what’s the difference between a day and the next when all my family sees is a high-cheekboned child, scraped knees and crooked teeth?

And so I lean over my sink, morning skinny and lightheaded. Shaky hands bring water to a matured creature. The cycle is midnight and then up again at dawn and then repeat. Stretched thin with bony elbows over paper and numbers and notes and sore muscles. I am seeing this new family more than a barely-thirteen-year-old would, especially one who never stops running, one who never sits down and no longer breathes warm air. Unhealthy as it is, I crave it; the last thing I need is time to think and time to realize I haven’t been home in years. Morning skinny and lightheaded, I take a cold shower and remember that I promised myself to stay disciplined.

Ever since my tenth, time is moving faster. As precise as I am, I can never seem to catch up or prepare myself. The revelation has only just hit and broke my jaw, bleeding my nose, forcing me to relive my seventh where I still had training wheels and saw daylight a different way. But I am thirteen now and there is no time to waste. I must work harder and be faster and be better. I must stay disciplined as I promised so long ago (time flies; I will reach through the air and grab its wings) and never grow weary, never lose motivation. Thirteen is at stake; eventually I will catch up and hold it in my bloodied fist. After all, I have been running my whole life, and time has only just begun to.