These Are the Words: Fearless verse to find your voice

by Nikita Gill

FOR WHEN YOU ARE TIRED OF BEING CALLED STRONG After it happens, your friends will call you strong. And strangers may call you strong. Everyone who hears will use words like that, ‘strong’, ‘strength’, ‘resilient’, ‘brave’, and you will tire of them. You will want to peel off your skin and discard it, ask someone to trade bodies with you so you can remember what it feels like to be normal instead of this hero everyone is determined to make of the worst thing that has ever happened to you. It’s hard to explain how your body feels like a broken bowl that everyone keeps fixing with glue and then turning away the side that shows the damage, looking at the pretty side admiringly and saying, ‘Look, it’s as good as new.’ But it doesn’t work like that. Trauma knows where you live. It knocks on your door when you least expect it, finds you at a friend’s birthday or wedding, in the bathroom when you are getting ready, in the arms of a lover in the middle of a movie. To the people who are living with the aftermath, know that it is okay not to be strong for anyone. That you are still a survivor, when your body’s wracked with sobs, Hiding under your blanket, wishing you could disappear. That doesn’t make you small.