Blue Flame

She said I was bright blue when I was born, that they had to rush to put me under heat lamps. I wonder about that, an allergic reaction to exiting the womb. But it was only the fuse.

Turning sixteen felt like crushing up my birthday cake and sticking it behind a napkin on my plate. It tasted like apples, only 45 calories if you get a small one. I ate two apples a day for an entire summer as my only sustenance; the summer I turned sixteen was a test - could I continue to survive life, living in a "blues" state of mind?

Someone once said you go broke slowly, then all at once. Depression is like that. One day you're a happy little girl, brought back to life by heat, and then the next day the heat consumes you - a flame that festers, and then catches hold of every single neuron you had hoped could connect to serotonin.

I still can't really believe I survived being sixteen; perhaps I am a phoenix, rising from the ashes, but I'm probably just average.

Flames can be blue at the base. Perhaps I have merely risen from my natural state - hot, cold, a contradiction and an omen of what is to come.