Perfectly Broken (Under Editing)

Four Years, three Epiphanies, two Apologies, and a promise

I have a favour to ask. If you're here, at the end of this Fic, maybe after a binge read, maybe randomly returning when a notification pops up that I've updated this relic. No matter how long this post ends up being, Im begging you to read it to the end. Please, do that for me, I need to say something important.

So, I was scrolling through my laptop, procrastinating A-level coursework as I always do, when I receive an email; its the Wattpad team. Saying something like this

'Hello @espressopatronums! since you've been gone, you have received 798 notifications'

I read it as

'Whats up, you suck, people are trying to interact with you, idiot'.

(Im aware this is a dramatisation but it gets me online so what can you do?)

So, for old times sake, I open the app, with its dumb new logo and its gratingly clashing colours.

What I'm greeted with, is an overwhelming wave of what can only be described as crushing guilt. This Fic - this anger fuelled coping mechanism of 2015/16 - sits with a smug ranking

#2 in trigger warnings

This isn't something to be proud of, not something to celebrate, not worth a tacky rosette encouraging others to read it. If anything, its a badge of how truly down I was, how endlessly black my future seemed.

Over the past four years I have had three epiphanies. They are things that I used to view with disdain, things that felt empty and meaningless, but they are so real. So Real.

This book was started in 2015, I was 12 years old and struggling. There was a girl, multiple girls really, who decided that, for whatever reason (my personality/my face/my likes and dislikes/my voice/my weight), I wasn't worth their spit. They trampled me and then left me on the ground to sink into the darkness that embedded itself into the lines of my palms and bled into my heart. And there were other girls to, ones who's smiles made me blush and who's faces shone too bright to just be an admiration. These girls were a different kind of catalyst for destruction. Rather than crushing me further into the floor, they led me to shuffle so far into a closet that I stopped being able to see the way out. So much went wrong, I was presented with a hundred different crossroads and seemed to always turn the wrong way, away. Everything I did, everything I felt, every shitty decision I ever made, was transferred over to my fictional victim, Draco Malfoy.

This Fic was a cry for help from a twelve year old, a yell to just be noticed by a thirteen year old, and a suicide note from a fourteen year old. Everything Draco did in this book, bar the magic sadly, was done by me, to me, and ultimately because of me. When Draco first placed a blade to his wrists, I sat there with him, staring at matching marks. When he hunched retching over a toilet, I felt how his throat was rubbed raw, his nose leaking with every ugly thought. When he perched himself at the ledge of an open window, my stomach swooped with the same forbidden exhilarated nausea ...When he was touched by a man who had no right to his body, I wrote every helpless cry and every bruising hand like a victims report. The twelve year old of my past hid in their bedroom and desperately grappled with fear and darkness and ugly; trying to pull out some semblance of beauty.

This takes me to my first epiphany. No matter how perfidious the maze of your mind becomes, you aren't as alone as you think you are.

This thought didn't hit me like a bombshell, not in the way movies lead you to believe. It was a quiet truth, a gentle thaw beginning with a message sent to a group of anonymous strangers in late 2016, strangers who became acquaintances, then familiar, friends, family....split pieces of one soul. The first epiphany was a gentle glow blossoming in the ruined heart of someone who wasn't ready to understand they were allowed not to hurt.

The second epiphany came far later... in late Autumn of 2018. Allow yourself to feel happy, and when the shadows fall across your mind once more, allow yourself to hurt. You're human, and it stands to reason that the sun will one day pierce back through the smoke

This one hit faster, like a tidle-wave to shore... or perhaps a piano to the head like in those slap-stick cartoons. It was in the release of control that came with finally letting myself love. Love a girl who is good, and kind, and honest. I was so afraid for so long. So sure that if I could be happy, then I must be faking all the sad.

This is so far from the truth. You aren't a bad person, you aren't deceiving yourself or others, a moment of joy doesn't mean you're lying about the pain.

Im Not Afraid To Feel Anymore

The Third epiphany came today, upon opening this app. Progress is a slow thing, and sometimes you're just too close to notice the change. one imperfect brush stroke doesn't tarnish the whole painting.

I look back at the thousands of words I wrote, and I can hardly recognise them as my own. That twelve year old ,who looked to their future only to realise they couldn't see one, is now me. The thirteen year old, who shied away from happiness in fear of twisting it into something evil, is me. The fourteen year old, who started a tentative friendship but refused to believe they deserved it, is me. And despite it all, I'm here aren't I? I still fall apart, I still walk down the wrong road sometimes, and I still forget to allow the promise of happiness. But Im Alive, I am breathing. And thats something I never thought I would be here to say in 2019.

If you have read this Fic, the chances are that you have felt, or maybe are feeling, how Draco has. How I have. Thats Okay.

My apologies are these;

To the twelve year old child who listened to the voices of others before their own voice and didnt think they deserved a future, Im sorry you forgot to treat yourself with kindness, and I'm sorry you couldn't find a home within your own arms.

And Im sorry to you, dear reader, I'm sorry for posting a story with no filter; one without hope or happy endings. Im sorry for ending the story before I realised there was more to tell.

And Finally, I have a promise.

Sometimes the world can feel so big, so overwhelming, that you wonder how you can have an effect. How you could possibly matter. But every one of my three epiphanies stemmed from the casual action of single people. Even if your world is grey, even if you feel so completely alone that a cry into the void yields nothing but your own echoing voice. Know that I am rooting for you, and I am here. But on top of that, know that your future self is rooting for you... they are waiting eagerly at the next crossroads, ready to support you in whatever path you take.

If you're looking for a reason to stay alive one more day, this is it. You owe it to the person you will be tomorrow, to stay alive tonight.

Give yourself permission to Love, give yourself permission to Live

it won't be easy, it won't be fast

But You Could Be Someone Else's Epiphany.

12 year olds or anyone else reading this; if anyone tries to give you any shit for who you are, tell them that your over-protective internet mum has been to hell and walked back out, but they're perfectly willing to drag your dumbasses there