Scars: Revisited

A seven year old boy once asked me:

How did you get those scars?

I lied to him.

I spun my lies into stories

that made me a hero.

I made this kid think

I was the good guy.

At seven years old

he didn’t need to know about depression.

I told the kid I killed bad guys

because I couldn’t tell him I tried to kill

myself.

I talked myself into believing

that you can’t share these scars with a

child

I told myself that I shouldn’t

be the one to introduce him to anxiety.

I treated depression like it was

contagious,

and I thought I was protecting him.

The kid is 14 now.

And his mother

wants referrals to therapists

because her kid is cutting up his arms,

and she knows I used to do the same.

She thinks I can offer her insight

on how to fix him.

And now I’m lying to her,

because she thinks that I won.

And she wants to know how her kid can

win.

she’s calling me up asking for my secrets

on how I beat it.

She thinks it’d be good

for me to tell her son

he’ll grow out of it.

Like me. He’d be a survivor.

If only I could get him to see

that sadness doesn't last forever. 

She doesn’t know

that the best I could give him

is hope that it gets easier to live with.

She doesn’t realize that while sadness 

is temporary 

depression is an illness.

And sometimes it’s chronic.

a persistent parasite 

that needs to be managed.

It’s 3am,

and I’m thinking of all the ways

I failed this kid.

If I could go back,

I’d pull 15 year old me aside

and drill into his brain

that telling the truth

isn’t synonymous with sharing my

monsters.

I didn’t need

to tell the kid about waking up

every morning with a stitch in my gut,

or the parasite

that follows me around on the bad days

gnawing away at my happiness.

But I could have told him

the part of the story

where I thought I could handle my shit,

and couldn’t.

I could have shared with him about how

wrong

I was about not needing anyone’s help.

I could have made sure he knew that

there is no life—not even his own—that

can be bought with blood.

Then maybe,

by the time he had reached the age 

that I was when I took up lying to him

he’d have known better.

When the monsters that tormented me

decided that they wanted to put a price

on his life too

he’d have known that there was no

facing that type of demon

on his own.

Instead of lying to him,

I might have been able to save him.

But then he’d  know

that I’m not some hero.

And I would have had to admit

that I wasn’t as strong

As I wanted to be.