By Eden Aros-Truhe
Dear Dead Girl,
It’s been a very long time, hasn’t it? And yet, no time has passed at all.
Dead girl, do you know that I love you? I do. I could never hate you—you’re me, after all. I know now that all the parts of you that I hated, you hated, we hated; were all symptoms of our suffering. You were scared, you were barely alive most of the time and you had no control over your body. You are absolved of your social sins, as I am of mine.
I am writing to tell you that it will be okay. We will be okay. You will be okay.
We live in a new house with our own bedroom and no spiders in the shower. We do so well in our new school, our parents love to brag (though this school is not so new anymore—we graduate next year). We have friends that love us and accept us, no one throws food at us anymore, and we haven’t had a slur yelled at us in years. We’re in therapy and on medication and we’re saving up for a car.
We dress up as formally as possible and go to chain restaurants with our friends.
We play Dungeons and Dragons and Candela Obscura and Elder Mythos and Vampire: The Masquerade.
We code a little and write a little and act a little and teach a little.
Dead girl, do you know that we are alive? Holy fuck, I love being alive.
Eden Aros-Truhe (they/them) is a high school junior from the suburbs of ever-so-slightly-south southwest Connecticut in the U.S. They love TTPRGs (Tabletop Role-Playing Games), Florence + The Machine, and their friends, and plan to pursue a career in joy and whimsy.