Most peoples parents taught them
How to
Get good grades
Make friends
Get a job
Love.
Raise families.

All I learned was
Repeated destructive behaviours
How to let depression take over
Ways to punish myself with
People
Food
Substances.
I learned how to hate myself with the most passion Ive ever had for anything.

Most people are born with their moms eyes, and their dads nose.

I was born with my Moms self esteem and my Dads suicidal tendencies.
I inherited my Nana's intensity, desperation and mood swings.
I have my Papa's naivety and denial.

How did you get so lucky?

It has taken me twenty years to finally understand the beginning of what I am worth.

It is not 2pm boredom that turns into pretending to be different people to strangers on the internet.
It is not bruises on the inside of my thighs.
Its not 4am lines with people I dont know, but insist are my best friends.
It is not selfies meant to entice and draw in whoever likes the shape of me
And wonders what the scent of my skin is.

It is not "If you love me, you would do this for me".
Its not drowning out the inner voice that has been taught to speak by everyone who didn't understand -
How to love.
That I was a human being.
They are weak for needing to hurt me.

My body is not a gift
Given to you because
You deserve it.
I will never say
"Good job!"
Or
"Congratulations"
By unveiling my skin and
Offering my insides as a way to say
I am here for just you.

When I touch you,
I want it to be because of an
Unstoppable current of electricity
That needs our limbs to connect.
When I kiss you,
I want it to be because I can't find
Any words
But desperately need you to know
How I feel.

When I am here for you,
Its for me
Too.

Theres a constant itch from the inside out, and it feels like I've been swallowing mouthfuls of the blackest ink
for a lifetime now.
It runs down my throat, coating the words that have been carved into me.

Sometimes I can't see myself anymore. My hands become someone elses and my skin feels like
Static.

How did I get here?
Ive spent years dusting my body for fingerprints, trying to put together the unknown.
But every night I go to sleep,
I wake up asking the same questions.
With a glass of black ink sitting next to my bed, a note stuck to it saying -
"Drink me"

I daydream of an alternate universe where I breathe steady, and all the names of my resentments dont exist. Where the voice inside my head that says Im unlovable, doesnt sit just below the surface - hitting every loving word away with a baseball bat.

Its a space where I my skin drinks in real connection like its the first sunny day after a long winter. It doesnt hide anymore, my entire body welcomes kindness in like its an old friend. My days and nights melt together like a run on sentence, about the stars and everything that makes me feel like gravity doesnt exist.

Im afraid that if I allow those feelings
To surface,
They will be as consistent as they used to be.
And Ill go back to feeling that
Fear
And deep burning in the pit of my stomach.
I have spent years medicating
Myself so that I never have to
Feel, hear, taste or smell them again.
Now that I dont have my go to solution
What do I replace it with?
I dont know who I am
When Im not numb.

My body feels bulky
And my insides feel like they are
Detached,
Floating around me
And not sure where to land.

I am not myself today.