Inverted Introvert

SARAI ALLEN

I learned how to turn myself inside out...

I ran my fingers through my hair and then cut it all off in an attempt to find someone new, someone who was living here all along...

I shook out every good idea I had and ran with them, clutched close to my heart like a small child because they need help to grow. I need help to grow… 

I have tripped and fallen more often than not and every time I have lain there, sometimes crying, sometimes smiling up at the ceiling, caught in this daze of purple smoke and Percocet pills.

I learned how to turn myself inside out and now every passing year is wrought with consequence, cause and effect. My decisions bite back all over my body and I am scarred underneath these clothes, it gets up under my skin. But beneath this layer of brown stretched over bones, I am hiding waves upon waves of emotion peeking out from under my sleeves. I will roll them up and expose myself to anyone willing to see, anyone willing to listen, anyone quiet enough to hear what I’m trying to say…

I’m trying to say that I went inside myself and this is what I found: a little girl masquerading in big girl shoes, a mother afraid of her own creations, a desperate friend in need of a prayer and a woman, who looks just like me. She is made of fire and elegance, like the kind I’ve been searching for. She is Bright eyes and elephant skin and I scarce believe she is real. I turn inside out and there she stands, radiant, ready to show me how to live. Ready to help that child stop growing up so fast, ready to tell that mother to love what she has made, for her creations will be her memories. Ready to hold a candle up to the dark heart of that fiend and pray she finds something that keeps her warmer than whiskey. She is so becoming, and I'm becoming her. I'm getting hotter and hotter and more elegant each day. My eyes are lighting up and my skin's getting tough and I am becoming her. I am no longer that little girl looking for her lost childhood. I've learned to love and be loved. Whiskey still warms me and it takes time for dark hearts to heal, but the point is I am healing. Sometimes it takes the help of the person living inside of you, waiting to be turned inside out.