"Dear Defeatist, or a Final Letter to Myself"

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I know the pain is suffocating. Sometimes you want it all to end, like a flame doused in a heavy rain. And I know you feel useless. Maybe even a burden. You’ll get lost inside your mind and leave the people you love behind, trapped so deep that you can never be found. You often wonder why this happened to you, why you were born with such a curse. Let me tell you this, and listen well:

You harbor this condition because perhaps no one else could bear it as you do. While you suffer, another is free to live their life, and smile, and dream, and love. They can go on to do great things with nothing holding them back. Your gift to the world is that one less person has to go through what you’re going through right now. I wonder, and I hope, that this grants you some level of comfort.

Someone will love you. Your mother certainly bears her heart unconditionally, but someone will love you. And they will understand, to a point. They will know every crease and every outline of that broken body of yours, and they will cherish it for as long as possible. Hold out for them and they will carry you.

Be a writer. Be an actor. Be a radio personality or a stand-up comedian. Or be all of them. Don’t worry about the money, or whether or not you’ll be famous, or if, in time, you’ll simply fade into obscurity, and that your name will be dead on faltering lips. Do whatever you can however you can for as long as you can.

Swallow your fear and get the surgeries. I know the nightmares. I know the struggle to get back to what you once were, but reach out. You’ll be all the better for it. And you will suffer less.

Forget kids. I know one day you’ll promise her. But don’t make a promise you might not be able to keep. The sad truth is that you’re physically incapable of raising a child. You can’t throw a ball, or carry them for long distances, or teach them to drive because you still don’t know how in your condition. You can’t run, so you can’t keep pace with them. I know it’s hard to hear, and difficult to come to grips with, but facing that reality will help you in the future, I promise.

You’ll become angry. And that anger will be like a gun pointed at everyone you love. You’ll burn bridges. And you’ll try to find a way back across but it’ll be pointless. They won’t be interested. You’ve done enough to ruin their lives.

You can endure it, like a roach caught in a nuclear blast.

Read more. It’ll keep you sane on the days your muscles disobey, where your body’s in a weird state of pseudo-paralysis. Read Vonnegut and Herbert and Wells and Conan Doyle and the Satanist Bible and the Communist Manifesto.

Read everything and open your mind. That way you can’t get lost, even though you still feel like a useless burden.

Remember the moments when life is caught in a suspense. The stars will dim. And the darkness will permeate. And every breath will be like a slow draw from your lungs. You’ll ponder death and the afterward.

Wondering…

Is it all worth it? What value does living my life have against the permanence of death? A drop in the ocean.

You are grey, a notion that everything isn’t just this and that but something caught in between.

And in each line, you’ll find a nugget of truth. Gold to be savored. Riches to be had. And when your heart finally meets its last end, when the beats struggle for a proper rhythm, you’ll smile and say it wasn’t all that bad.