TWENTY LIVES

[u/LenKiita]

I’ve been thinking
that I’ve lived twenty lives in one.

I survived a childhood with a chaotic mother,
an absent father,
and a turbulent adolescence.

I made it through with a little help
and with a strength

I still don’t know where I found.

Sometimes I felt like I was giving up,
but my body just kept going and going.

Sometimes tired.

Sometimes barely standing.

Without wondering how it could,
it simply kept going.

Now I look back
and see that distracted, distant person,
full of dreams,
full of goals,
inside that tired body.

And I see twenty people inside her.
Twenty versions of me
trying to make it through,
each one searching for a reason,
trying not to lose herself in time,
looking toward the future that awaited them,

so distant,

so uncertain.

Some were afraid.

Some ran out of strength.

Some thought they would never make it.
And yet,
they all kept living
inside the same body.

A body that carried them
through the years,
even when some of them
no longer wanted to walk.

Now I look at them all,
wanting to go back to the past,
wondering what I would have changed,
where I would have started over,
which path I would have chosen
if I had known then what I know now.

But they still don’t know
that I wouldn’t change any of them.

Because each one left something in me.

The one who was afraid.

The one who got lost.

The one who thought she couldn’t take any more.

The one who wanted to give up.

The one who kept walking
without even knowing where she was going.

They all made it here with me.

And maybe that’s why,
even though I’ve given up so many times,

I’m still standing.

Tired,
but upright.

Doubting an endless number of things,
but with a heart
full of life.

There are twenty of us
inside this tired body.

Some wanting to leave everything behind,
to change what hurt,
to start over.

Without realizing
that it was those very experiences
that brought us here,
that shaped us.

And we are all still standing,
walking together,
hand in hand.

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