Like a Power Play

by Elle Sprinkle

For those whose bodies forced them to let go of what they loved. It's still yours. You just might have to learn how to hold it in a different way.

I fucking hate that word. I hate that people think a diagnosis comes with armor. That strength is some automatic response to pain. I’m not strong. I’m just tired.

The worst part of losing the thing that made you is that the only thing you can do is marinate in its absence.

She studies me like she always does. The thing about my mom is, she gets me.

It’s easier to suffer alone than it is to know that the misery is shared by someone you care about. You don’t want to be understood. You just want to survive it.

I don’t do friends anymore.

I don’t have it in me to explain that energy drinks trigger my flare-ups, so I just stay quiet.

Class is coming up, but right now, my body feels like it’s been run over by a Zamboni.

“Oh, I’m good today,” I say, as if I am ever “good”.

But once you’re comfortable in your own silence, the noise of other people can feel deafening. Threatening, even.

It’s the simplest statement. And it’s the truth. Sometimes, all you can do is try. I don’t know why I feel like I’m exempt from it.

I never knew fire to be green until I look into her eyes and see the flame.

They don’t know about the pill divider crammed into my bag, full of the little things that are supposed to make this all bearable. They don’t know about my fingers, bent and discolored, hidden beneath my gloves. They don’t know about the days when getting out of bed feels like being hit with a bat. Over and over. When it feels like fire’s been set to every inch of my body, and all I want is for it to burn me all the way down to the bone so I don’t have to feel it anymore.

But that doesn’t mean they get the truth. I refuse to be looked at like I’m broken.

“Peyton Clarke, I can’t fucking stand you!” I grin. “Darcy Cole,” I quip. “I think I can live with that.”

"Must’ve been the wind."

“And I hate that in the cabin, when you made me dance with you—” My gaze locks with hers, and suddenly I’m in the center of the rink, the ice gleaming beneath me like a vast, white sea. “I hate that you didn’t kiss me.”

Maybe she was right. Maybe I am Icarus. And she’s the sun. And oh, fuck—I’m going to burn to death.

But if this is natural selection,

Mother Nature, do your worst.

“I’m not well educated on what Rhinoceros Articulitis looks like—”

“What’s your head size? Wrecking ball?” The moment it leaves my mouth, I regret it. What if big heads are a symptom of RA?

“Seriously, Darcy. What are you doing coaching a hockey team when you’ve got buildings t—”

Dignity's dead. All I want is her. “You can do whatever you want.”

“I can’t wait to shut you up, Peyton,”

“Listening, for once, like a good fucking girl.”

Cleo’s a pogo stick, bouncing in every direction, hoping she lands somewhere she likes.

“You can’t walk around with lips like that and expect me to not want to kiss them.”

Darcy makes me that way. Kissing her is like a power play.

It makes my stomach sink and twist. Makes me want to trade places with her, so that she doesn’t have to hurt anymore. I would live every day of my life in pain if it meant Darcy didn’t have to.

I thought falling for someone was supposed to be subliminal, something you didn’t even realize was happening. I thought you weren’t supposed to understand why that ache in your chest existed, why someone you hardly knew could take up so much of your attention. But it’s not like that. In fact, it’s painfully, glaringly obvious. There is no confusion. There is no mistaking it. I am falling in love with Darcy Cole.

Darcy spends most days trying to blend into the background, hiding what she's really going through. But right now, she’s taking up space, and I can’t get enough of it.

Something most people don’t realize about living with a chronic illness is how much of it feels like failure.

A constant presence you learn to ignore best you can.

Failure for needing to cancel plans. For taking breaks. For saying no. For needing help.

some part of me always believes I’m letting everyone down. That part i...