Alien blood

This is a blog post about a comic posted by an artist I really like.

The post by flyingfrappe

My thoughts

When I first read this comic a few years ago, I cried and cried and cried.

I felt seen in a way that I never felt before.

Seen by a fellow sufferer.

Someone else who's masked and hid themselves away to hide from the pain for so long that they lost sight of who they were.

Pain connects us, our suffering is our shared strength.

Bleeding a substance that isn't quite human

I bleed. Constantly.

From my ears, when the sounds of the world become too much.

From my nose, when someone eats a food I can't handle, when the smells become too much to process.

From my heart, when someone makes a rude remark about my behavior.

From my brain, when it starts to spiral down, down, down.

I bleed, I bleed, I bleed.

I masked so well for so long, but I would break every year.

Fall apart completely.

Autistic burnout.

Bipolar depression.

The medical terms don't quite capture it, but the image of bleeding alien blood does.

Bleeding something that no one else suffers from.

Bleeding something unfamiliar, unknown, unknowable.

Bleeding a substance that isn't quite human.

Changing, bleeding anyway

I changed too.

I did all the right things.

I graduated, got a job, moved out.

Success on all metrics, amazing grades, an amazing job, excelling in all aspects.

Everything except feeling human. Failing at just being a person. Unable to be more than an empty shell.

Unable to just be a person, to stop bleeding alien blood

Living asleep, parts of a person, broken

I split into pieces.

Fragments of a past selves that puppet around the being that's known as Lily.

For a long time

I thought

that

I just wasn't meant to exist in this world.

That I just wasn't meant to live.

That I was just meant to live a broken life until I took it with my own hands.

To break and destroy the torturous life that I had to live.

I was... so tired.

But I choose to grow

My garden is barren
Stripped bare by the storms of life
A desolate wasteland 
One of my own creation

But today I choose to plant
To plant the seeds that I've denied myself
To plant the parts of me that I've never wanted

I hold them
Their rough exterior
Their hurt
Their pain
I hold them and gently place them into the soil

For them to grow into a garden of thorns
Of roses and beauty, of thorns and pain
My strength and my beauty, my suffering and my pain

Growing my garden of thorns - Lily

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