Even as an adult with experience in therapy, and growing as a human, I still think back to all of the kids and teenagers you helped and feel an overwhelming urge to yell
"But what about your own children??"
And even then, I know it would do nothing.
The past never changes.
You lived an entire life through your career, saving kids from neglect.
How beautiful, for them.

There is more to me than this made up story you've written, explaining my trauma and who really was at fault.
There is more to me than this role you've created for me, as your lifelong therapist and the one who validates you and all of those feelings.
There is more to me than that little girl who spent her entire childhood taking care of your heart and making sure that rope was tied to your waist, every time you fell down that black hole you loved more than any of us.

Every 24 hours is spent cutting pieces out of myself to give to the people I care for. Creating two new humans has doubled the speed that I slice through each layer. After 6 years of pulling apart and giving away pieces of me that I can never get back, I am left with barely enough to live.
At night, I sit there and look into every crack and dark space, trying to find enough of myself to put together a collage of whatever identity I can find.

My body is not currency
That you can barter for
In return for everyday things
Like being a partner
Or friend.
My body is a gift I choose to give
When I want to feel close to you,
And words aren't explaining how
I adore you.

We can learn this together.

I am not going to disappear
Under the weight of past trauma.
I am an evergreen,
Growing her roots.

All of my feelings are rushing around inside of me and I feel like I dont have even a moment to find the pockets of silence I know exist, but that hide so deeply in the darkest corners.
My chest hurts from dry heaving all morning trying to get that black mold out of my body. Its clinging to my ribs,
Im its only chance of survival.
This is the point where I would usually slide into its arms and allow it to warm me up, and console me,
Before it destroys me completely.
Now that I know I can do better, the fight is harder than before.
I cant let myself give up now.
But I want to.

When I feel scared I wear the perfume that smells like you so I can remember a time when I had a room to escape to and skin to get lost in and a heart to use so I could forget about how absolutely invisible and small I felt.

I have worked very hard at keeping
My shame hidden, and wrapped up
With a neat little bow.
I am a professional at
Sweeping things under the rug,
With 29 years of experience.

Sometimes, when I forget to be careful,
Someone will remember it for me,
And Ill hear them say the words.
Multiple stab wounds.
If I keep that box tied as tight as possible,
If I pretend the past is not a thing,
And that I was born only 7 and a half months ago,
They can't catch me off guard.
Thats when it hurts the most,
When it comes from behind. Unexpectedly.

I want to be happy and free more than I want moments of relief.
-  I am capable of living my best life
- I can love other humans
- I can love myself
- I am ending the family tradition of neglect and unhealthy fears.
- I am worthy of a peaceful life.
- I am done suffering.
- I want to live.

That makes it look pretty simple, hey?

Its funny how those scars on my legs,
That remind me of how much pain Ive been in,
Have now been braided into the marks that write out the story of
How my body grew the two greatest
Loves of my life -
Flawlessly and without any of the brokenness I was convinced would easily be passed onto whoever came into contact with me.

For the last 3 weeks, whenever 4am comes around,
My eyes open and everything around me looks foreign.
It feels like Ive just spent 5 hours outside of my body, and whenever I dive back into it I need to double check my surroundings
To make sure Im home.
Where do I go during that time?
I can never remember.

I dont feel like a human being.
I feel like a
Mother,
Partner,
Ghost.
Everything I hear is an empty noise,
Every touch is painful.
My insides hurt.

Weeks of my childhood turned into
A waiting game over which parent would remember our existence first.
Would it be him with the tired, wet eyes. With the rough, accusing voice. Or would it be her, with the broken heart and the soft touch.
Would this be the week that I didnt see him? Just a closed bedroom door and quiet footsteps in the middle of the night.

I've spent my entire life telling myself
That tomorrow will be the day that you love me.

29 yrs in, and I think I feel ready to tell you -

Im not invisible. You lied.

Its been two days since my feet have
touched the ground.
I spend every other minute thinking about everything I want to avoid.
And for the rest of the time I try
My hardest to concentrate on how it would feel if I couldn't feel anything anymore.
I never wanted to be this person who couldn't get a handle on myself.
Spending days in a fog,
Not sure of where I am
Or where Ive been.

I dont even know what Im trying to say. I just feel like Im trying to make my way through a river of glue, and its real ******* hard to move my legs today.

The shame you so enthusiastically poured into my body,
Now and then it
Drowns me.
My head will slip below the surface -
I keep my eyes open though.
And one day I won't see you staring down at me.

The highs are high
And the lows
Are
Low.
I have synced up with the weather,
When it rains -
I do too.
When the sun says hello,
I run free.

I wonder what it would be like if I had been born with a brain that takes care of itself and grows appropriately, instead of this thing they molded for me.
That dwells in childhood and swings back and forth.

I used to think I had to experience the entire world to mean something.
To be considered a productive member of society,
Getting an education and a job
Was top priority.
That I was delaying my life by having kids, instead of making something of myself.

It turns out that I get to live an entire
Life filled with hugs, cuddles, learnings, tears, encouragement, middle of the night comforting, feeding them from my body, growing them inside of myself, creating human beings through the truest love Ive ever experienced from another adult.

I get to experience my childhood the way I had wished it would have been.

Im experiencing my education through little beings that navigate this entire world based on what I tell them.
Everytime I say "You're so smart"
They believe me.
"You make me laugh"
They believe me.
"You are allowed to cry"
They believe me.
"You are strong"
They believe me.

I get to heal by giving you the love I grew up searching for.
Its yours.

Sometimes I think about what it
Would be like if I opened the car door
While we are moving.
How badly does pavement burn?

Then I lock the doors.

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.

I am a kaleidoscope of all the broken parts of me.
Everytime I move
My pieces fall into a different place.
I wake up a new person more often
Than anyone I know.
Stability is not in me.
I am a gentle rush of color,
Rolling around in this life.
Never meant to be put back together.

No, I am not your smoke
That you can light up when
You need to calm yourself.
Or put out when you're
Done with me.

Taking one last step and realizing there are none left.
Dreaming that you're falling and waking up seconds before you collide with the ground.
The last second before you jump off a diving board.
When you climb to the top of a tree and look down.
When you gulp back that last breath before letting the ocean pull you under the surface.

Waking up.

Wholesome
Is something I feel only
When Im with you.

I didnt want to get to know anyone else,
I just wanted to un-know myself.
The only way I could see that happening is by spending as much time as possible
Diving into new hearts and between new legs, holding onto new arms.

I have spent my life surrounded by women who had eyes that betrayed their mouths. And bodies that betrayed their words.

I learned to whisper, and to adjust my posture so other people could breathe better.

Everytime my head shook back and forth
I detached it from my neck
And placed it in his hands.
I learned how to put my feelings into body bags and weigh them down with stones I had chipped out of the mountains of expectations I created.
I would throw them into an ocean and watch myself sink into the thick, infinite darkness.

I mourned every woman I drowned.

I caught a glimpse of a withering flower,
And I was embarassed by its honesty -
Its lack of hesitance to commit to something
Ive always thought to be so frightening.
I watched its petals curl into a position
That was vulnerable, and unwise.
The edges of its leaves wrinkled and lost its color,
And yet
I saw beauty.
I watched it dying,
Following the path that fate seemed to have drawn out long ago.
I blinked once, maybe twice.
And it was gone.
Life was over, all that was left
Was dirt.
What would I do now?
What is left in this world?
I felt my time had been wasted,
Searching for answers that are completely buried now.

I wept for that flower. For myself.

I then opened my eyes, and saw something bursting through the cold ground.
There was a brightness I had never felt before.
It was the same flower,
But it felt different.
Warm.

I begged for the flowers forgiveness
Confessing my weaknesses.
Spilling out my darkness into its
Soft, pure petals.

Immediately regretting my eagerness to reveal myself,
I expected to focus back onto a flower that would be destroyed again.
But she opened up,
The silk petals wiped me clean.
She sent me off to start over,
Just as she had shown me to.

My once grey sky, turned silver blue.
My hearts been floating in mid air,
Attached to my body only by the thought of you.
Rainbows and stars fill my body.
I am being taken away,
Held by your eyes and that sweet, angel face.
The bruises are disappearing,
Self doubt is leaving this tired place.
Is there hope?

A blank canvas becomes full of expression.

I woke up half dead once.
Back when time was infinite and I believed in love;
I saw you.
The unbearable lightness of seeing you in your perfect glow,
Everything had stopped.
I was wrapped up in a moment.
Paralyzed, time was rushing through me in a tidal wave of past and present.
Had we known eachother before?
Deja vu blurred the lines between fact and fiction.
My heart sang the song of the universe,
Drowning the rest out.

Yeah. I woke up half dead once.

Crystal white skin, stretched tight across those bones.
Empty and broken, all on your own.
Looking for a place,
A place.
A place.
You keep making war inside yourself.
Theres color and movement, but no emotional health.

Theres love. Then theres lust.
Then there is fear.

Rubbing my eyes, screaming my insecurities onto paper.

I think about my one destiny.
How their eyes shine so pure,
How I long to be.

Im half dead from comparing myself to everyone around me.
Been blaming everyone but me for this mess and now my shoulders are tired from carrying this bag of tears, slung around my neck by the thinnest piece of thread.

I cant let this **** me.

Itd be nice to talk about whats going on in my head to someone who doesnt talk, and listens instead.

Ive been reconstructed so many times
I dont even know who I am anymore.
My body is dead
My heart is dead
My broken insides are all thats left.
So how do I deal with that?
You ripped apart all the good parts of me,
Poked holes into what was sacred.
Changed everything I believed in.

I am only a tainted piece of glass.
I am used, and broken.
And I hate that I am like this.
There is no self cleaner I can use,
No repair shop I can go to.
I can scrub, and repaint,
But eventually it will show through.
And you will leave.
You
Will
Leave