I am a mother. Biologically and physically. Mentally and in practice. I cradle the deflated and distended flesh were my babes once grew. I bear the perpetual markings of crusted handprints on my pant legs and snot dried on my shoulder. I sacrifice for my children: sleep, time, my body, my space as my bank accounts bleed dry. I smile bigger than I knew I could. I weep out of joy and astonishment. I feel the love for them in my bone marrow.
I am a lover, a life partner. I am the teenager he met at a keg party and the woman who birthed his children. I am beneath him saying “I love you” and beside him holding his hand at her funeral. I am rolling my eyes in rage as I throw out one more bicker; I am laughing uncontrollably as he pinches my hip bone. I am awash with gratitude as I watch him play with our children. I am lost without him and stronger because of him.
I am a tormented writer, slave to the page, victim of the word. I have a million characters living and breathing inside of me, crowding my consciousness, fogging up my brain with their writhing heat. I dissolve and disappear into other worlds, vanish into stories untold and lives unlived. I belong to my twisted imagination, both persecuted and enlightened by its sharp edge. I carve out chunks of my soul and bind them in a file, tossing them out and asking strangers to buy and love them as I did.
I am bipolar. I am the depression that makes me want to open a vein; I am the mania that makes me feel like an unchained heart. I am bliss and agony. I am the swirling dance between two minds, a refugee left traveling between two fleeting worlds. I am emotions amplified, perceptions distorted, self turned enemy. I am beautiful suffering and painful happiness. I am artfully crazy.
I am a runner. I am the pavement beneath shoes. I am the panting breath and relentless sweat. I am the exertion of the body against the protest of the mind. I am the stubbornness to keep going, one more mile, one more stride. I am the float disconnecting brain from body. I am the endorphins to breed sanity. I am the trial, the accomplishment, the addiction.
I am a dancer. I am the music in my hips, the melody manifest in my bones. I am sealed lips and active flesh. I am expression and freedom. I am confidence in a scandalous costume above of an audience. I am the ferocity to mangle choreography before a crowd, with a smile. I am lost in the beat. I am transient of the sound. I am reduced and concentrated down into movement.
I am savage. I am the base and ugly core. I am the reality and the desperation. I am the decision between you and me, the line between us and them. I am fight and flight. I am selfish and self-serving. I am ultimate priority. I am survival at all costs.
I am the tattooed and pierced freak. I am the orange hair and the black clothes. I am a high school goth floundering through professional adulthood. I am my inner darkness on the outside. I am questing to show myself as different. I am the art on my body, the pieces of my mind drilled into the flesh. I am the socially condoned pain and body modification. I am the struggle to find the outside expression of the inside brain.
I am an eating disorder. I am an obsession with food, a fixation on numbers. I am the weight on the scale, the inches on the tape measure, the calories in my last meal. I am the compulsive tracking of every workout. I am hours spent in the mirror poking at unsatisfactory skin. I am the demon in the back of my brain, never satisfied. I am the perception distortion in my eyes. I am the insecurity.
I am a dreamer. I am belief and possibility. I am ideal and ambition. I am the forecast of the mind, the silver lining in the pain. I am lost in the world at night, a prisoner of the subconscious musings of my sleep. I am reaching out past reality, stretching into the alternative. I am seeing something else.
I am a child. I am still that child and that teenager from decades ago. I am still small, overwhelmed and confused by the world. I still call out for my mother when I am sick, my father when something is broken. I long to find shelter under that wing of unconditional love. I finally see that I never knew anything all along as I shunned the older and wiser voices pleading advice to my closed ears. I now see that my parents knew everything and that I remain their ignorant child.
I am horror. I am the darkness in us all, the hidden crimes, the primal undertones. I am the hairs rising on the back of your neck, the quickened pulse, the shallow breathing, the thin, cold layer of sweat, the blank mind. I am the fear rising up from behind your thoughts, whispering to you in a deeper, more persuasive tongue. I am the exquisite mingling of thrill and panic, the delicate line between entertainment and terror. I am the edge.
I am everything.
I am nothing.
Christina Bergling
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Savages
Two survivors search the ruins of America for the last strain of humanity. Marcus believes they are still human; Parker knows her own darkness. Until one discovery changes everything.
Available now on Amazon!
savagesnovella.com
The Waning
Beatrix woke up in a cage. Can she survive long enough to escape, or will he succeed at breaking her down into a possession?
Fiery Pen 