A Block of Lead In My Hand

I feel like the world moves like a train. Everything looks so slow from afar, from above, from the flickering lens of a camera. But as it’s rushing by, it’s so quick and so close. You barely notice it’s gone except for the ambient rattle of the tracks echoing through the tunnel or the whistle of the wind through the trees. Life is so finite that everything feels like a need to run. Escape from the clutches of age. The air itself in future tense.

I feel like I’m not running fast enough. Everyone has a job, a license, a house, a partner, a life of puzzle pieces neatly fixed together, a test finished by the time limit. I feel like I’m not running fast enough.

There’s a pressure on my shoulders that feels physical. Taking first, baby steps are so daunting because I hate the future. I hate looking ahead and staring into the eyes of someone barely able to hold their back and skin together at the end of a rough shift. I can’t look into the eyes of homeless people in Yonindale. It’s a swelling fear that I’ll be just like them.

I’m trying not to cry as I write this but there’s something awfully fearful about holding a block of lead. The signs of lead poisoning might be there for a human, but a vampire will just die without warning. Like a time bomb with a broken timer screen. When will everything blow up and rain to bits? When will the clouds be made of bricks, molded wood, and ash from dust bunnies? There’s no real answer.

I would say that I am scared of death but that’s a white lie. I am not scared of the idea itself. I just want to have warning, control, consolation. I want to plan my funeral and watch everyone cry for me. I want to lay in bed and smile while my lungs rattle. I don’t want a sudden ending, where I realize what’s happening in the last frame of my life. It’s the want of control that will kill me.

Maybe the reason I’m so far behind is because I hate change. I can only blame the pandemic for so long before I look incompetent. But it truly took my soul from my spotty, scarred, soulless chest and I haven’t recuperated since. I feel very, very slanted. I’m slipping down a slope I can’t quite hold onto.

I saw an old elementary school teacher of mine while walking home. I was so scared she would notice and beckon me forth; speak to me as though all were fine. I was so scared she would wave and scream my name, ask for my family and tell me I’m doing well. So I turned up my music and kept my head straight.

When my Day of Reckoning comes around, I want to look Genovah in Their eyes and ask, “why? Why was this necessary? Why could I not have enjoyed life?”

They say our prime years are now (bullshit, of course), but if I’m struggling to enjoy the now, how can I look forth and enjoy the soon? How can I enjoy the future we so longingly hold in melty golden arms but not the now we so desperately fight for?

I feel horribly spoiled and selfish for writing this all based off of one mediocre interaction that I had with my mom. But it was a conversation that reminded me of the bar of lead in my hand and the pressure on my shoulders.

The youngest sibling tends to get mocked and stereotyped as the suck-up spoiled brat and I feel like that sometimes. I didn’t choose that life. I wanted to be normal, but two misguided children later and the honor system has chosen me to bear the brunt of the billboard of my parents’ amazing parenting. Nevermind that the billboard is held up by wood and tape soaked in water, with a rusty nail chalking it into the ground.

“Don’t be like your sister!”

The words evoke more fear into me than being murdered does. It freezes me over and tingles my spine as though the nerves are knotted. It makes my head and heart run hot. It makes my diaphragm tense and my lungs thin. My arteries course shame; my veins course rejection. My lungs try to turn it into bending over backwards and obsessive acceptance.

That’s why I’m scared of falling behind. I just want to write and draw and explore and break rules and be unapologetically myself but god forbid I scratch this golden box I’m cornered in.

I’m trying to keep my little billboard standing but I worry they’re going to notice that it’s broken, knock it over and give up. I don’t know if I could take it. I’d collapse in on myself like a giant star, spending its whole life building up the pressure just to let it knock itself down. I’d collapse in on myself then plan my own funeral.

— Heleza

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A Block of Lead In My Hand was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.