The world’s only living girl

I’m a list-maker. I need to write things down — thoughts, ideas, sentiments, strung together like broken pearls I keep finding scattered on my bedroom floor. Otherwise I forget these things, lost in the gray light coming through shop windows and the slow crawl of rush hour traffic. I need to write these things down, about myself mostly, sometimes other people, because I can’t always remember them on my own. Plans, triumphs, failures, lists, budgets, scheming little plots for world domination or maybe just notes to remind myself to pick up cat-food.

I’ve started keeping a notebook for this reason. A Survival Notebook, as I’ve come to call it. It’s full of everything I need to remember, so I won’t let myself forget. My weekly budget, notes on self-improvment, a step-by-step guide to self-preservation, survival checklists, how-to’s and how-not’s on daily life. Things about me — about what I’ve done, where I come from, what I’m worth and where I’m going — that sometimes get lost in the shuffle and fray.

Maybe these things come easily to other people, but they don’t come easily to me. When you fight anxiety and depression, and it is a fight because I have the armor to prove it, the details of your life become muddled. Lost and faded, no matter how many times people tell you you’re worth it. It’s easy to forget that you’re smart, talented, pretty, funny, a little charming, or even just a worthwhile human being. And I’m so quick to put on my armor and jump out of buildings  that I forget what I’m fighting for at all.

And now I keep this notebook to remind me that I am enough to fight for.