To have craved, so deeply, the soft pulses of my heart to be laid down ; buried in the tresses of wild grass and the ancient breath of soil. This Earth, this sacred land, the belly of Mother Earth herself - how many times I’ve longed to return to it not in despair, but in devotion. To have been so close to death in twilight hours, and yet to rise again at dawn… there is something in the ecosystem of all things that breeds both decay and rebirth. The way flowers grow from rot. The way silence begets music. The way death and life aren’t enemies ~ they’re lovers in a perpetual dance.
I have, in equal measure, craved death like a second nature and resisted it like the first line of defense. That duality of wanting to vanish, but begging to stay- is the holy paradox of being human. The animal in me recognizes the animal in you. Still, if I am to leave this earth, I ask to be laid to rest gently ; with eyes wide open, full of love. Bury me deep in the ground, not shot down with hatred. Let the soil hold my memory like a prayer. When I die, I haven’t disappeared. I have simply slipped into the next room. Whatever we were to each other, we still are.
All the people I’ve loved most - those whose presence carries unbearable warmth, sharp intelligence, and the ache of deep awareness - are people I’ve mourned long before they left. Some drifted through abandonment. Some through betrayal. Some through death. But I always knew , they cared. And in this world, that’s what makes someone holy: not perfection, but care. A burdensome understanding. A quiet heartbreak that never lets them go numb. I have written pages upon pages in my journals; broken records replaying a single fear dressed in different words: “When I die, I’m afraid there will be a sigh of relief instead of mournful sorrow.”
But this is not the kind of grief that asks to be saved. This isn’t a dramatization of suffering. I’ve been close to death in ways that left no room for performance only primal, pulsing reality. And what I found in that edge-space, in that feral closeness to death, was not horror. It was gratitude. A strange, fragile lightness of being. The kind that can only be born when you’ve faced the void and decided—I want to live. I am not gone. Not even if I am. I will live on in the edges of memory ; in the pink-washed haze of people reminiscing. They will recall what I adored. The objects, the places, the art, the people I cherished with a full and unruly heart. Through devotion, I will be remembered. They will memorize the moles on my shoulders. They will beg to hear my voice scolding them one last time.
They will not let me fade, not truly. Because I have simply slipped into the next room. It took war. It took political unrest. It took senseless loss and unbearable headlines. It took realizing how fragile life is
not just mine, but everyone’s / for me to understand that: I’ve loved myself all along. Even in my darkness. Even in my fear. Even when I thought I was the villain. Living in fear taught me one truth: It is completely fucking futile. It postpones nothing. It solves nothing. It only robs the present of its pulse. I have lived. I have burned. I have ached and forgiven and begged and laughed. I love this life. And I love this self, no longer in theory, but in practice.
And when I go, I will simply slip into the next room.
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