And Death Followed After…

Behold! A Pale Horse.

In fact, I was very pale horse, but death did not follow behind me; no, the faint sound of a woman's screams beneath the surface is what followed thereafter.

There's been so much going on in my life, that it's really hard for me to believe it's real. I would be liar if I said at times, it's a bit overwhelming, but there is no rest for the wicked and things must proceed as usual. With the ten-year challenge inundating everyone's Facebook feeds, I find myself reminiscing on my Google photos. It's a bit...unnerving...seeing the emaciated corpse I had become, the very grim art pieces I was doing during my work time, and the fascination with watching myself bleed out...with the hopes that I would die.

You know it's an unfortunate circumstance when strangers online seem to think that I'm glorifying self-harm and people hurting themselves; on the contrary, my advocacy for mental health and accessibility to therapy, medication and support could not be any more apparent. You could honestly say my Google photos archive is a series of photos dedicated to the art of destroying one's self. I'm not ashamed of the person I was, but I was ashamed that I had gotten to that point, which is why a part of me feels it's necessary to spread the word when it comes to helping others.

In case you weren't sure, no, I do not do what I do to entice other's into hurting themselves. The celebration of life is such an important gift that is given to us, and to deny the power of what our bodies can do is truly a sad day. I don't like to hear about suicide, self-harm, or anyone degrading themselves for any reason at all. With this being said, celebration of our construct is something to be proud of and it should be celebrated every day. I don't particularly see the taboo swirling around using the very things that come out of our body, but then again, my goal is not to make people understand. I merely want to educate people that being weird is not a bad thing, and this place upon which I share my most intimate feelings is a place of truth.

These pictures were art pieces I had done prior to 2020. I remember vividly I sat at my desk, with my intrusive thoughts about stabbing myself in the eye, and this was what came of it. I was painfully silent to the point that I wanted to stab out the pain in my skull and let it bleed all over my desk. The photo was an actual nosebleed I had. I don't know where it came from, but I assumed it was stress. I won't lie, I was hoping that I had an aneurysm and would bleed out. Times like that I remembered how alone I had felt, and how being surrounded by nothing but my own pain was a prison enough. I was racked with the guilt of all the things I had done, the trauma of the shitty relationships I had entered into, and the job that was restricting me from achieving my full potential.

I was so underwhelmed with life and lacked the confidence to leap off the cliff.

Well, I guess you could say shit changed when I decided to say, "fuck it," and you know...fuck it. Fuck it all.

In case you weren't sure, blood is cool, piss is cool, weird, dead, gross, juicy, disgusting things are pretty fucking cool. What isn't cool is ridicule, judgment, and shame. What isn't cool is abuse, pain, and guilt.

It took a shit ton for me to let my balls drop and accept that shit needed to change. I was not going to be relegated to this suffering corpse drawing pictures of myself with my head exploding anymore...and I didn't.

Don't worry about being weird, my friends, and don't worry about what other's think about you. Chances are, they don't even like themselves, and at least you have the balls to say, "fuck you, this is who I am." One of my biggest regrets was not taking chances sooner, and maybe if I did, I would not have wound up in some of the circumstances I put myself through. Oh, what could have been, but what could have been is gone, and so is the anorexic mess that doubted herself. She is gone, and she is collecting her allies and forming an army of kind-spirited, unique, weird individuals that aren't afraid anymore.