If I let the pain sit inside of me it just rips away at my muscles and leaves bruises on all my bones.
Instead I resurrect it from the deepest parts of me so it can leave,
Find somewhere else to live.
I let it live in my hands and my art
And I let it release through crying in theaters, watching you enjoy me, and screaming into my pillow when I feel angry.
I let it travel through me with music that gets put on repeat until I'm sad, then I turn it off and move on into everything else.
I see it through windows looking at strangers, with their dogs and their babies. With their hand holding and their phone scrolling. Their headphones in tight and avoiding eye contact.
I wonder if other people notice it too.
Sometimes I picture all of our stuff just floating around eachother,
All of us choosing to be oblivious to something that is connected between each of us,
Like cans on a string.

Sometimes,
Someone pics up the other can.

I'm the strongest when I'm soft.
I love best when I am loved.
I am free when I'm alone.
I am most me when I am with you.

I fly highest with the kiss
And sink deepest with the rest.

I've had some hands that have touched me, break me.
And they live inside of me still.
Sometimes when I listen too closely I can hear everything they said to me and it takes everything I have to remind myself not to listen.
I want to love completely someday and without being afraid.
But every person I look up into I'm worried they have a mask on.
I've seen lovely and beautiful people but all my hands want to do is search for that corner of the mask that's lifting so I can catch it before it scares me again, deeper than before.
A habit I can't seem to break.

I cry easily because
I come from a long line of women
Who spent a lifetime swallowing their anger, their fear and their pain.
They grew old knowing the taste of their own feelings and needs they wished to have met.
They swallowed their sorrow and grief for their own inner child and bred the same habits into new baby girls, creating soft little beings and secretly wishing they'd find a way out.

I cry easily because I come from women who hid their tears and held them back, who held the hands of the men who used those hands against them.
I cry for the women who never understood the feelings they had inside of themselves, and never knew their own strength.
For the women who were diluted and pushed into a box built out of "Love thy husband" and "Obey".
The women who grew up waiting for the day they were handed off to a man who would make her life worth living, and turn her into a real woman by giving her babies to birth.

I cry for them.

He's right when he says no one will love me or be for me like he has been and I'm devastated over it because its as if he chooses everytime regardless of whats going on inside my heart and body. But what do I do. Where do I go.

There's nothing and it's nowhere. It's nowhere and it's now.

The difference between last month and right now is honestly alarming.
But I have to admit, I'm impressed with how not alarmed you seem.
I guess I'll just keep writing mine out here for strangers to see so I can be calm about it too.

You meant it when you said you weren't afraid of me, but I didn't know it also meant not afraid to forget.