Crow and Flame

did it again.

The spiral came quietly at first—
a tightening in my chest,
a whisper turning into a roar.

I got overwhelmed.
My breath turned against me,
short and sharp, like it was trying to escape my body
without me.

I hyperventilated.
I felt the walls closing in,
my thoughts stacking, crashing,
louder and louder until there was no space left inside me.

And I hurt myself—
not because I wanted pain,
but because I needed something I could hold,
something I could control
when everything else felt like it was slipping through my hands.

The urge was suffocating.
A fire in my veins,
a scream with no sound.

The desire for relief—
that single, desperate thought:
make it stop.

To just let go.
To silence the storm.
To trade the chaos inside for something quieter,
even if only for a moment.

Because sometimes
it’s not about wanting to feel something—

It’s about needing
to feel less.

This is the part people don’t always understand:
it isn’t weakness.
It isn’t attention.

It’s survival,
twisted into a language the body learned
when it didn’t have another way.

But here’s the truth I’m trying to hold onto,
even now, even here:

I’m still here.

The crow still watches—
tired, knowing,
wings heavy with everything I’ve carried.

And the flame—
though it flickers,
though it nearly goes out—

it’s still burning.

Maybe next time
I will pause a second longer.
Maybe next time
I will find a different way to breathe through it.

Maybe next time
the flame will feel just a little stronger
than the urge to disappear.

For now,
I’m here in the aftermath—
raw, honest,
not healed, but not gone.

And sometimes,
that has to be enough.

Because triggers don’t ask permission.
They hit hard and fast—
lightning through a clear sky,
sudden and disorienting.

They’re unpredictable.
A sound, a word, a memory—
and suddenly I’m not here anymore,
I’m there.

And my ability to cope wavers.
What felt manageable a moment ago
slips through my fingers.

I can go from functional—
smiling, speaking, surviving—
to not.

To unraveling.
To gasping.
To grasping for anything
that will anchor me back into my body.

It’s not a straight line.
It’s not progress you can measure cleanly.

It’s a flicker.
A fight.
A returning.

And even here—
in the breaking,
in the not—

the crow still watches,
and the flame, somehow,
still burns.