I know some days it feels like the moon lives inside your skin, buried beneath all those layers of muscle and bone and tissue, but no matter how hard you try, you can never reach it. I know you want so badly to plunge your hands in, grab that moon, and lift it up and out and free of your skin, free to shed its light over everything you love and make you feel whole again. But the best way to do that is not to cut into your own flesh so deeply in an attempt to slice far enough to reach that slice of moon.
You may be able to tunnel a little bit down, a little closer to the moon, but that passageway eventually closes up. There is no way to reach that moon with a razor or a pair of scissors.
I once read that fireflies are so loved because they only come around a few times to light our way in the dark. Every flash of their body is like a tiny lightning bolt striking ground. Just as fireflies carry a miniature candle inside their shells, so too do you. The best way to keep that candle burning, and to supply it with fuel in order to ensure that it always keeps burning, is to reach out and ask for help. Doing so is terrifying and almost unthinkable; maybe you’d rather place your hand over a lit stove than tell someone about your struggles.
But the thing is, maybe you’ve been down so long that you don’t even know what up feels like. Up is here. Up is the string at the end of a balloon that you just have to grab onto-just reach-just a few inches, and it will be there. Find a loved one and reach out for them. All it takes is a few words, a few seconds, and the secret is out.
The hardest part is the telling. Now close your eyes and imagine this with me: you’ve walked into your sister’s room, or your mom’s or dad’s or brother’s or aunt’s or counselor’s or teacher’s, and you’ve told them. In a single rush of breath you exhaled your problem and your fear and this dark thing that’s been living inside you like a black moth, and now that moth has floated from the cavern of your stomach to this person’s hands, and they are holding it in their palms.
They are holding every miserable, disgusting, sad, wretched, awful, terrifying, gut-wrenching, nerve-racking, self-loathing feeling in their hands and it is trying to flap its wings and escape, but they won’t let it. Imagine that. They won’t let it escape. They are going to tie this moth down with you, and they are going to make it watch its own shadow, and you know what? Maybe they’ll even let that moth just a little too close to the lamp, and it’ll burn itself out.
Now imagine that this person crushes that black moth in their hands, and they replace it with your face. They are holding your face in their hands and they are tracing its every curve and plane and they are holding you, just holding you, and rubbing your back. It feels like a vine is crawling its way out of your mouth and they are tugging on that vine and pulling it out, and now that vine is something to hold onto. This is a lifeline.
The hardest part is over now. You’ve told. They’ve listened to your problems. They realize that there’s something so dark and awful sleeping inside you. Now you have to tell them that you hurt yourself.
You don’t have to show them your scars, not yet, not if you don’t want to. Just say “I hurt myself as a method of release,” and they will take it over from there. They will ask you the questions and now you can answer those questions and you don’t have to come up with any yourself. They’re guiding you along now and now, close your eyes again-they’re leading you by the hand over to the bathroom and they’re taking out the razor.
They place the razor in your palm.
Then they place their hand in your other palm.
They ask which one you will choose.
You look at their face.
You see the pain and fear but also the hope, that incredible, shining planet of hope, rotating slowly in their eyes. It’s not Mars or Saturn or Venus; it’s something far, far more beautiful. It’s the shining beacon in a lighthouse that guides the sailors home, it’s the fact that the ocean caresses the shoreline so gently that even tsunamis can’t ruin their relationship.
It’s hope and it’s there and it’s real. It’s the relief that comes with telling your story and letting it out and being heard. It’s so real; it’s finally real.
You look once at the razor, then twice at their hand.
You keep looking at their hand.
You take their hand, slowly, maybe a little bit hesitantly.
They fold their palm over yours so tightly you can’t reach for the razor anymore, and it’s settled.
You stay that way for a good ten minutes, fingers entwined, as all that hope splits itself in two and makes its way over from their eyes to your heart, and fills it up, lights it like a lantern.
And now you have the fuel for the candle, and you keep it burning,
so it never goes out.