I am thirteen
    when the mean girls call
me weird—
I do not shave
I do not wear makeup.
I do wear basketball shorts
and messy ponytails.
I am pressured to be her—
Aria.
I shave relentlessly
    for the next two years.

I am fifteen
    full of discomfort
    and anger
breaking my bones like they
    are glass
reckless rage—
all reckless no brave
    depraved of a home
    inside my own skin.

I am fifteen when I
learn what gender dysphoria is.

I am fifteen when I
    realize I am a boy
that I always have and will be
    a boy.

I am fifteen—
putting holes in wall and
    overdosing on advil
like it is a sport
championing my own self demise.

I am fifteen afraid and closeted—
I write my name as
ALEX
on my school assignments
I always change it back
before I turn them in.  

I am fifteen
    convinced everyone loves the girl
I am not
    and will never love me as the boy
I actually am.

I am sixteen crying on the floor
    of a psych ward
    this is my fifth hospitalization
in fourteen months.
Pretending to be her is
killing me.
I choke back tears as I tell
my mom that I am
transgender.
She tells me she loves me,
    and she saw me writing
    ALEX on my papers.

It will take five years
for her to let her daughter go.

I am seventeen when I am shoved
    to the floor in a men's bathroom
    slammed and slurred across the tile—
It will not be until six months into
    Hormone Replacement Therapy
that I use the men's public restroom.
I am eighteen when my moms boyfriend of the
time pulls me aside
and tells me I am making a mistake.
He would wear his mothers dresses and heels,
    hiding in her closet
    all of this is to say
    this is a phase.
When people say that this is a phase—
    I am sixteen
    sobbing on linoleum floors
    covered in cuts
    wanting nothing more than death
    if I have to pretend to be her
    for more than one second longer.

I am nineteen hopeful
    and naive.
Voice cracking and hair sprouting
    I am coming into my own body.
    I have learned that there
    are things much worse than needles.

I am twenty out of the
    ashes of abuse and trauma
    I am finally becoming
    the man I have always been
    meant to be.

Grab your supplies,
two needles, six alcohol pads and
the Wonder Woman bandaids you bought
to feel brave.
Remind yourself to buy a box for mom
next time you supermarket shop.

Curse under your breath,
its left thigh week and
you know the left thigh really hates T
Message your group chat,
Ask them to pump you up
so you can ignore needle induced palpitations—
are my ribs caging my heart or protecting it?
Refocus yourself; now is not the time
for existential thoughts

Fill the syringe with the eighteen gauge,
and then drop that sucker into
the ancient bottle of vanilla coke
filled with used needles.
Change to the twenty-five gauge,
refresh your music page.
Is it a Queen or All Time Low shot day?

Wipe your leg down,
not once, not thrice,
but five times—
As you stare between the needle,
your thigh, your needle, and again
the thigh.
Count to three,
One,
Two,
Three,
and in it goes,
not so bad—it never is.

Repeat every Sunday.

I                                                        if
                               asked
you                                                              loved                                                  me
        
      razor-blade                           silence
    
  the  
                                                                  blood
                    stained
                                                                              my                                           sweatshirt

left                                    
                behind—
                                                                just
                                                                        a
                                                                              cutter.

I                                    
              never
                                     mattered
                                                                                                to                                   you
                                                            anyways.

           You
                                              left                    me                                                   alone
                         in
                                                the                                         dark                                            of

your                                                  room.

Balance


My coworker points out my perfectionism when
I’m facing the shelves.
spent the last forty-five minutes
undoing the asymmetry of everyone else's
actions.

I do not say anything.

I think about how I haven’t take my Prozac
in five days
enough time for the OCD
To reinsert itself.

I didn’t sleep for six straight days in September.
rewriting my notes compulsively because I messed up,
looks a lot like rewriting myself into perfectionism.

My serial symmetry—
controlled letters looping into the perfect picture
a picture those around me cannot get enough of.
When I don’t sleep for six days,
I see a psychiatrist.
I didn’t know anything was wrong,
with my harmonic convergence on letters
and work and neatness and writing,
was abnormal.

It's hard to know something is wrong with you when the world labels you:
“PERFECTIONIST”

I took no issue with the obsessions
Because I didn’t know there was an issue at hand.

I got the script for Prozac
and it rewrote the notes for me.
It did not fix everything,
but I could breathe for the first time.
My symmetry still slips out and I have to fix the mess—
Every mess but myself.

My life hangs in the balance:
I am terrified of not being good enough
yet I have to try.

I continue to push,
I have something to say.
My atypical thought pattern will not cease
no matter how hard the symmetry tries to knock it down—
I must write,
paint,
draw.

It is the only thing that differentiates self care
from self medication.

I will not drown my sorrows,
like those who came before me.
The cure for my woes is not at the bottom of a bottle—
but maybe it's there when the ink runs out in my pens.

Again and again
I find myself here:
on the precipice of my own creation,
on the precipice of my own destruction.
I live a black and white balance,
There is no grey when it comes to my mental health.
It is not like OCD to wait,
my proactiveness comes with creation
perfectionism waits in the shadows to **** me.

I must be better than the parts
of me
that seek,
my own
end.