Truth or Lie

What do people actually mean by saying "I'm burning inside"? How to cold down such deep and unarticulated speculations? Not sure if there's a better way to find it out other than tell you a short story. When she was just a kid, her mind was persuaded and attracted by fire. Everytime she've seen the warm light her thoughts were dancing a delusional tango into her head, assisted by the rushing sound of her bloodstream, and rhythmically intensified heartbeats. The flames were so sacred and bright that she always felt like someone is whispering to embrace the mesmerising heat. One day, she heard the calling. She was listening to the whispers of the flames, she burned a candle like an initiation of a devine ritual and, despite the running clock, the time stoped to a moment and resuscitate when all her little smooth palms were already covered in red bleeding spots and uniform burns. But there was no pain in this game. Wasn't a punishment of choice. It was an oblivion of joy. A pure relief from a place she got back her slight sense of control or… maybe all this dark place was entertainment for the demons whispered her release the burden. Who are the demons? Did they wanted to burn down the house or just the kid? Did the girl wondered if this moment would be her last, if yes, why she didn't said anything? After the incident, her family took hours to process the heretical behaviour, as for everyone was all of a sudden a mysterious plot. Her mom, bothered and terrified by the danger, decides to speak with the girl's teacher, which in the little girl's eyes, was cruel and misogynistic with a post soviet inclination towards bullying tactics, masked into "an educational method ". The worst part was when the teacher forced her to read "The Little Match Girl" - a literary fairy tale by Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen, in the front of all her classmates and friends, to teach her a lesson. But there was no shame in her words, she was tightly holding the book with her tiny burned hands covered by bandages and proudly voiced the tale, like that was her favourite story to tell and reflected afterwards: How come this peaceful and yet dangerous moment was silenced into ethereal guesses, and most importantly, if being alive now, would this still be her choice?

When she was small, her heart was already broken. Despicable word didn't left her a safety net. The glue she needed into fixing her soul was in the initiative of fixing others. She'd find any small creature and transform it into her little helpless patient. If a birdie broke a wing or a cat would need a cure - she's gonna fix them. Starting her day in a plain sunny spot, thinking of how the world could become better, she'd always end up into a dark place, and her lil patients would run away after they got better. And the glue was supposed to heal her small heart became poisonous. Once after a rainy night she found a dog full of scratches and bite marks that probably had a fight with the neighbour pit bulls, that weren't so called aggressive but had an extremely territorial sense of protection. The time passed, and for almost two weeks she lost her sleep over the pet, took care and cured it, hiding all the paws under her tiny, already ruined by generations bed. In one morning, someone approached her parents at the door, asking if by any chance they've seen the exact same dog she was petting. Her heart started to drop into a manifesto. And the puppy, for unexplainable reasons start to yelp, as he would cry by missing his family, or call it loyalty, and by all the rushing, the girl took the puffy heavy blanked filled with goose feathers she inherited from her gran grandmother, and hugged the dog, trying to silence it by whispering an old slavic lullaby she used to sing for her brother. And she feared. And she sang. And she understood too late that the tears rolling down her cheeks were the result of her love. Maybe was too early for developing such dark and lonely thoughts. Maybe sometime you need someone to tell you that is ok to be broken. Maybe no one deserves to be silent.