Shame--Janelle

Ah, March... where this month at this time of year represents the month of luck. St.

Patrick’s day is just around the corner and almost everyone wants to celebrate with a boatload of money from their paychecks, have a glass of rum or beer to celebrate the luck of the Irish, and or maybe find their stack of ‘gold’ at the end of the rainbow. Not for me, though. Instead, I find a pot of coal sitting at the edge of the cliff of the colorless rainbow whose colors tend to fade out a bit, like the soul crushing, countless, and hell provoking days a human being or maybe even a leprechaun can’t seem to dwindle upon. Everything came crashing down with my heart striving for a sense of... love? The drumbeat of my heart aching for a relationship. Clich é at most, but ‘love’ has been the peak of my downfall. Balancing out where I fit on the spectrum of my sexuality almost felt like I was on pins and needles. The memories crashing down of my mother constantly screaming in my ear, as if balancing out getting good grades in school wasn’t already enough. Finding out, the perfect little filipino girl that she had hopes and dreams for were shattered into a painful distraught of uncertainty and misconception. The furious, sorrowful tears streaming down her rosy cheeks had taken a toll on her behalf. Doors slamming and names yelled out to one another almost felt like the pile of bricks between my barrier of safeness has been dismayed and the weight slowly crushing me. I knew I have made the worst decision of my

life, just telling her... I was, in fact, dating a girl. A gender that was the exact opposite of what she expected it should’ve, in her eyes, wanted that ‘person’ to turn out to be a boy. The amount of disconnecting all from social media and one click of a ‘block’ to this girl, put me through heartbreak. It felt like I was running a marathon with loopholes and misconduct, jumping hurdle after hurdle...finding out later in the end there is no hope for crossing that finish line. The audience in the bleachers screaming for you to surpass that person in first place managed to end up booing you for being distracted by the numbing, distracting, eerie thoughts rushing through your brain. Every hurdle that I jumped seemed to let me trip and fall struggling to make my way through the runner ups who was my inner battles of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. Like, every accomplishment and courage built up inside this introverted sixteen year old teenager, at the time, felt meaningless. Hair follicles being ripped off by my claws of my wretched nails in irritability and stress have become an utter nuisance to me and my mental health. Every waking moment, felt like a ticking time bomb was strapped to my back and I wouldn’t have cared if it managed to blow up and just let all my burning flesh and organs rot into a decaying gush of...nothing. Unbearable, and reluctant pain rushing through my blood vessels as if the disconnection from my family, who was always there to support me has become an enemy I had to overcome, as if I was in some sort of video game with no particular way of beating it or even speed running through it. On top of all the icing on the cake, being pushed away by your spirit lifting best friend really sliced a cut even deeper in the wound that I was almost close to bleeding out... It felt like all hell broke loose and it made me physically and emotionally with one snap of a finger just wanting to end it all, or maybe even consuming a poison apple could’ve let all my numbness and my slowly decayed rotting soul just disintegrate into thin air. Although,

something kept me to keep going. My therapist. Therapy session after therapy session has kept me going those last couple weeks when March was slowly coming to a close. Maybe, there was gonna be light or that pot of ‘gold’ at the end of my rainbow. Whether you believe in Allah or Jesus or evolution or parallel universes there is only one thing we know for sure. That life is now.