and here you are living despite it all...

life is a lot, but here you are anyway.

I got my first tattoo the day I turned 18. It’s a single-line poem by Rupi Kaur, “and here you are living despite it all…”

If you, too, are somewhere between a millennial and a Gen Z (s/o ‘97 babies) and spent any amount of your childhood addicted to curating the perfect Tumblr aesthetic, maybe you’ll recognize the line.

It’s one that caught my attention at the height of my eating disorder, when angst and anger were my constant companions. When my Tumblr feed consisted mainly of sad quotes and black and white images of broken hearts - yes, I was that girl.

I saved the post to my camera roll and promised myself it would be my first tattoo the day I turned 18 — an age that felt elusive when tomorrow felt like a lot to ask of myself.

The thing about being a teenager is that you really have no perspective.

Your life is dictated by a handful of adults you’re trusting on faith to get you through. But when those adults have consistently let you down? I found it hard to find other reasons to believe my future would really be all that bright.

I was free-falling into an abyss, and I could either embrace the fear of what awaited below or deny that my feet would ever stand on solid earth again.

I chose denial and built a home there. I even came to like being broken.

And slowly, not all at once, my trauma became the cornerstone of my identity.

I was cool for my purple hair and chronic resting bitch face.

I was intriguing to boys whose egos yearned to tame me.

I was a nuisance to my family. But hey, at least I had their attention.

Other people will use your damage however suits them best. And I let them.

I bent, shrunk, and broke to fit the narrow cavities they allotted to me.

And the more I did, the more valuable I felt. I was irreplaceable because who else could, who else would, do what I had done to fit into these inhabitable spaces.

But the thing about being a contortionist is that there is no room to carry extra weight. No nooks to squish big feelings, no crawl spaces to shove in a little personality, and certainly no room for error.

Strict & stuck was all I could be, and I got really good at it.

So what if people thought I was cool? Isn’t that what every high schooler secretly pines for?

So what if boys wanted to flirt with the dark side? All of my friends were in relationships anyway.

The more I gave away of myself, the smaller I became.

My fragmented home fortified itself with every person who let me down and every experience that didn’t go my way. It’s sheltered me from anger, rage, loss, and hurt. It’s numbed me to the changing seasons of my life.

This is not to say I have not known happiness, joy, or love. It’s more to acknowledge that the walls I built around my heart have muffled their impact.

The home you create for yourself at your worst is vital. But eventually, you must let yourself outgrow it.

Grieve it if you must. Run your hands along the walls in gratitude and thank it for keeping you safe when no one else could. Take one last look, then step forward boldly into the unknown.

Today I went on a walk with the girl who was with me when I finally got that first tattoo. I met her in treatment for my eating disorder, and I hadn’t seen her in 10 years.

All the while, the sun shone down on us as if to say, “and here you are living despite it all…”

- June

I invite you to stay and be seen here.

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for words with nowhere else to go

unspoken thoughts, unfinished feelings, & everything in between

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