Ignite Me (Shatter Me, #3)

by Tahereh Mafi

My seventeen years have collapsed and buried me from the inside out. My legs feel full of sand and stapled together, my mind overflowing with grains of indecision, choices unmade and impatient as time runs out of my body. The small hand of a clock taps me at one and two, three and four, whispering hello, get up, stand up, it’s time to wake up

all too well

TAYLOR?

My eyes are filling fast with tears and I blink and blink but the world is a mess and I want to laugh because all I can think is how horrible and beautiful it is, that our eyes blur the truth when we can’t bear to see it.

sit up slowly, feel my brain twist somewhere in my skull. I manage to climb onto the bed and sit there, still numb but less so, and pull my knees to my chest.

I’ve been here before, I tell myself. I’ve been lonelier than this, more hopeless than this, more desperate than this. I’ve been here before and I survived. I can get through this.

WHATSHESAID

I have to start over now; face the world alone again. I have to make one final choice: give up or go on. So I get to my feet.

I hardly knew how to interact with people—could barely understand the words in my own head. It shocks me to think how much I’ve changed in these past months. I feel like a completely different person. Sharper, somehow. Hardened, absolutely.

But I’m tired of thinking. And right now, all I want to do is shower.

There’s a strange kind of freedom in the dark; a terrifying vulnerability we allow ourselves at exactly the wrong moment, tricked by the darkness into thinking it will keep our secrets. We forget that the blackness is not a blanket; we forget that the sun will soon rise. But in the moment, at least, we feel brave enough to say things we’d never say in the light.

“What difference does it make?” he says. “People can think whatever they like. I don’t desire their validation.” “So you don’t mind,” I ask him, “that people judge you so harshly?” “I have no one to impress,”

He ate w this one

“It’s not charity,” I snap. “He cares about me—and I care about him!” Warner nods, unimpressed. “You should get a dog, love. I hear they share much the same qualities.”

OH!?

“If you’re going to survive,” he says to me, “you can never be indifferent to your surroundings. You can’t depend on others to take care of you. You cannot presume that someone else will do things right.”

wonder why I’m not waking up yet, why no one has reached out to tell me it’s okay, it’s just a bad dream, that everything is going to be fine. I feel as though I’ve been scooped out from the inside, like someone has spooned out all the organs I need to function and I’m left with nothing, just emptiness, just complete and utter disbelief. Because this is impossible.

oh

I spent so many years bottling everything up and locking it away that it still takes some time to remember it’s there, waiting for me to harness it. But the moment I welcome it, I feel it rush into me. It’s a raw power so potent it makes me feel invincible.

“What happened to you, princess? You seem different.” “Bad different?” “Good different,” he says. “Like you finally put your big-girl pants on.” I laugh out loud. “I’m serious,” he says. “Well.” I pause. “Sometimes different is better, isn’t it?” “Yeah,” Kenji says. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

#real

“Damn damn damn. This shit is bananas.”

Using this now

Maybe he needs time to grieve in silence, in a place where no one expects him to be the funny one.

For so many years I lived in constant terror of myself. Doubt had married my fear and moved into my mind, where it built castles and ruled kingdoms and reigned over me, bowing my will to its whispers until I was little more than an acquiescing peon, too terrified to disobey, too terrified to disagree. I had been shackled, a prisoner in my own mind. But finally, finally, I have learned to break free.

Bar

I am no longer afraid of fear, and I will not let it rule me. Fear will learn to fear me.

Ouuuuu

Words, I think, are such unpredictable creatures. No gun, no sword, no army or king will ever be more powerful than a sentence. Swords may cut and kill, but words will stab and stay, burying themselves in our bones to become corpses we carry into the future, all the time digging and failing to rip their skeletons from our flesh.

I’d rather be shot dead screaming for justice than die alone in a prison of my own making.”

Brendan can handle electricity and Winston can stretch his limbs into just about anything. And Ian . . .” I falter. “Well, Ian is . . . good for something, I’m sure.”

Lollll

Sometimes I wonder if the planets are still up there, still aligned, still managing to get along after all this time. Maybe we could learn a thing or two from them.

“So,” he says. “When’s the big day? Have you set a date yet?” “What?” I startle. “For what?” “For the day you’re going to stop being such a dumbass,” he says, shooting me a sharp look. “Oh.” I cringe. Kick at the air. “Yeah, that’ll probably never happen.”

“I’m not,” I insist. “I’m just—I don’t know.” I sigh. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.” “They’re called hormones.”

LISTENNNN

“Good for you. I’ll buy you a balloon the minute the world stops shitting on itself.”

“This wall is off-limits to you. All of you,” he says, looking around the room. “Everything else is available for your use. Do not damage any of my equipment. Leave things the way you found them. And if you do not shower on a regular basis, do not come within ten feet of me.” Kenji snorts.

I don’t want to give a shit about anything. Some days I just want to sit on my ass and cry. All day long.” His hands stop moving against the mats. “Is that crazy?” he asks quietly, still not meeting my gaze. I blink hard against the stinging in my eyes. “No,” I tell him. “No, that’s not crazy at all.”

truth

I have seventeen years of psychological trauma to undo.

“You have to, like, literally pull it out of yourself and then push it out around you, J. It’s only difficult in the beginning,” he says, “because your body is so used to containing the energy. In your case it’s going to be even harder, because you’ve spent your whole life bottling it up. You have to give yourself permission to let it go. Let down your guard. Find it. Harness it. Release

Bar

sometimes people can weigh us down,

everything is going to get much, much worse before it gets better.”

“And I think people become who they really are when things get rough.

“I wanted to move forward. I wanted to be angry and I wanted to scream for the first time in my life and I couldn’t. I didn’t want people to be afraid of me, so I tried to shut up and disappear, hoping it would make them more comfortable. But I hate that I let myself be so passive my whole life, and I see now how differently things could’ve been if I’d had faith in myself when it mattered. I don’t want to go back to that,” I tell him. “I won’t. Not ever.”

MMMM

You don’t know what it was like in my head. I lived in a really dark place,” I say to him. “I wasn’t safe in my own mind. I woke up every morning hoping to die and then spent the rest of the day wondering if maybe I was already dead because I couldn’t even tell the difference,”

I had the power to break myself out and I didn’t, because I had no idea I could. Because I never even tried. Because I let the world teach me to hate myself. I was a coward,”

Ouuu

“who needed someone else to tell me I was worth something before I took any steps to save myself.

Ok im done

“I need waves. I need waterfalls. I want rushing currents.” “Damn,” Kenji says. He laughs nervously, scratches the back of his head.

“Try again,” he says slowly. “Stay calm. Have faith in yourself. If you don’t believe you can do it,” he says, “you won’t.”

Word

So I should be happy. I should be eager. But I feel strange. My head is in a weird place,

“I can feel your presence. Hers, most of all.” “Really?” Kenji says. “That’s some weird shit. What do I feel like? Peanut butter?” Warner is unamused.

“Commandering is not a word.” “It has letters, doesn’t it? Sounds like a word to me.” I’m too nervous to banter right now. Kenji sighs. I hear him stomp his feet against the cold. “He’ll be here.” “I don’t feel right, Kenji.” “I don’t feel right, either,” he says. “I’m hungry as hell.”

And we are quotation marks, inverted and upside down, clinging to one another at the end of this life sentence. Trapped by lives we did not choose. It’s time, I think, to break free.

Oh word

“We’re too different now. We want different things. And this?” I say, nodding at our hands. “All this managed to prove is that you are extremely good at turning me off.” Adam’s jaw clenches. “Now let go of my hand.”

CLOCKED HIM YESSS

“Is this really happening?” I hear him whisper. “What?” I blink, try to stay awake. “You feel so real,” he says. “You sound so real. I want so badly for this to be real.” “This is real,” I say. “And things are going to get better. Things are going to get so much better. I promise.” He takes a tight breath. “The scariest part,” he says, so quietly, “is that for the first time in my life, I actually believe that.”

Awww.... Wait theres more

“It’s the only way I know how to exist,” he says. “In a world where there is so much to grieve and so little good to take? I grieve nothing. I take everything.”

Words are like seeds, I think, planted into our hearts at a tender age.

But though we’ll know forward and we’ve known backward, we will never know the present. This moment and the next one and even the one that would’ve been right now are gone, already passed, and all we’re left with are these tired bodies, the only proof that we’ve lived through time and survived it. It’ll be worth it, though, in the end. Fighting for a lifetime of this.

“Are you out of your goddamn mind? You think we can take on two hundred soldiers? I know I am an extremely attractive man, J, but I am not Bruce Lee.” “Who’s Bruce Lee?” “Who’s Bruce Lee?” Kenji asks, horrified. “Oh my God. We can’t even be friends anymore.” “Why? Was he a friend of yours?” “You know what,” he says, “just stop. Just—I can’t even talk to you right now.”

LMAOOOO

“Attention, Sector 45,” I say, the words rough and loud and mottled in my ear. “The supreme commander of The Reestablishment is dead. The capital has surrendered. The war is over.” I’m shaking so hard now, my finger slipping on the button as I try to hold it down. “I repeat, the supreme commander of The Reestablishment is dead. The capital has surrendered. The war is over.”