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(Tw: s/h) 21 years ago, on a gloomy spring day just like this one, I stopped going to school. I stayed home alone during the day, curling into myself like a burning piece of paper. I watched Treasure Planet and Lost Boys on repeat and read Anne Rice and clung to any depiction of bravery I could find. I was seeing a counselor and a psychiatrist once a week and trying (and failing) to find different ways to hide the deep, infected wounds I dug into my wrists with the end of a twisted bobby pin. My mom worked down the street and would come home on her lunch break and we’d go to the McDonald’s drive-thru and I’d get a Salad Shaker and a chicken sandwich… an attempt at normalcy that always felt like a gift. At night, I’d wake up with panic attacks so violent that I’d almost black out. I’d run to my parents room and wake my dad just in time, and he would hold me and pray with me until I could see, again. Life seemed really long at 14, and mine looked like it was going to be a tough one to sit through and a tough one to watch. But I knew that if Jim could face Flint and Michael could fight David and Louis could try and be good even though he was broken… I should give fighting a try. And now I’m 35, on a gloomy day just like those, listening to the Treasure Planet soundtrack at my desk, where I’m writing a story for that same scabbed-over little freak who thought iceberg lettuce and ranch was a salad. I am planning tattoos around the scars that never faded and approving the cover design for my debut adult fantasy while sipping a perfect cold brew. Tonight, I’ll celebrate my nephew’s fifth birthday with my whole family. Thank God for bloody, messy stories and the parents who didn’t scoff or judge my life raft. Thank God they let me find God in a language I would hear. Thank God for hope, for plot twists, for art on old wounds. Thank God.