A Thousand Suns

I realized that I was an adult the day I looked back at the fall of the Twin Towers and realized I had been a child. Nothing but a child. 

Graduation was long past, and I stared at the world around me both aghast and at the same time recognition. I had dreamed and nightmared about adulthood for so long. I had battled demons too big for my young body and mind to be truly shocked by what I saw, and yet now there was nothing in my mind to sigh deeply that this was not my place. 

Adult, grown… I could no longer sit with my frightened angry emotions pulsing through me, burying myself deeper into those feelings. 

I had to look around, I had to take it in the face, eyes open, teeth clenched. 

The day I decided to move out of my family’s home I was still a child, untested and unsure, but the moment I finished unpacking the last small box, staring at a space that was truly my own I couldn’t help but smile. 

The third floor apartment was small, the kitchen and livingroom and dining room were all meshed together, the living room separated by a wall that sliced at an angle across what was a generally rectangular shape. 

There were windows straight across the left wall and the light flooded it at dawn and dusk equally, making most of my time in the apartment bathed in the gold of the sun or the twinkling navy of night time. 

I tried to sleep in the bed I had asked my parents to let me move with me, the same bed I had had since I could remember, which they grudgingly gave. Even still, laying on my mattress in the new space made me nervous. I listened to the sound of the wind through the branches of the birch tree outside my bedroom window, and the cars on the street beyond it and felt the sneaking fear of orphan-hood.

My parents were alive, but had cared for me so little in moments of stress and fear, had in fact relied upon me so much that now in a roof without them I should have felt free, relieved, calm.

Instead, I realized their presence had been a security blanket, a last resort in case I should be faced with something I failed at. I knew now out in the big bad world I was alone. There would be no calling them now. 

You say, you’re not gonna fight cuz no one will fight for you
And you think, there’s not enough love and no one to give it to
And You’re sure you’ve hurt for so long, you’ve got nothing left to lose
So, You say, you’re not gonna fight cuz no one will fight for you

I lay on my bed that night and fished out my headphones, I tried to block out my rising panic with the pulse of a Thousand Suns, almost moving to another album for something more grating, more desperate, more anxious like I felt. 

But then I listened, and felt myself relaxing, eyes half closed, watching the unfamiliar lights of the cars that passed by my window so late at night. 

I had fought so hard to be where I was, had stumbled and sacrificed a lot. Had thought I would never be….well… free. And there I was, with only myself to take care of, terrified by my loneliness. 

You say, the weight of the world has kept you from letting go.

I still had ties to my roots, the pressure to be the trunk supporting the vine that was my decrepit family would not lessen for many years. 

But someday, the weight of the world will give you the strength to go. 

When the pressure came, it was in the shape of two tiny babies, needing me more than that dying vine. They are worth more to me than the world. 

I suddenly had the strength to let go.