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 was born a clean slate. An empty house. I watched everyone around me decorate my walls as they wanted to see them. They filled my cupboards and organized my closet for me, filling it with words and feelings I never understood. It got to the point where I felt more confused than comfortable, and so empty - even with all of these things that life had filled me with. So I got angry. I tried over, and over again to redecorate. I put up new wallpaper everyday, I burned rooms to the ground. I locked doors, I broke windows.

And then I found my people, and they told me that I was lovable even as this filthy, dark house. With paint peeling, and cobwebs in every corner.

I started to rebuild, I put up art that made me feel things. And wrote poetry on my walls. Every moment I spent with my new people, and myself, I was sent home with a new piece of my house to put together.

And now Im here. The floors need to be redone, and it still smells of smoke, but its mine. And who I am is not a ***** word, I wear all of my labels as a full, connected human being.

I will never use
"Im so lucky"
As a reason for my success
Ever again.
My only reason now is,
Because I wanted to.

Fear spills into me, and soaks through every ***** like ink makes its way through paper. So effortless. Without hesitating.
I wonder if healing will ever feel less like dying.
Ive inhaled so much poison my lungs are nothing but corrupted flesh, Ive set fire to my stomach hoping that it will **** whatever is in there, eating me from the inside out.
None of it works.

I killed my father's daughter.
So now whos going to play opposite you?

I've already grieved her death,
It's been 7 years since I buried her.

This doesn't hurt me anymore.

But I can tell by how you hold yourself around me,
It hurts you.

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.

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.

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.

Born into a role they never would have volunteered for,
Laying their lives down for people they'll never meet -
With their cabinets full of guns
Claiming their lives
One by one.

Bow your head and pray
For another life lost,
A child you'll never save.

But hey,

Atleast you still have your guns.

Cry your empty tears
Down your hollow cheeks
Give the grieving moms a ribbon
To show your support.
Change your profile picture to an
"RIP innocent lives"
As if that says enough about the debt they've paid,
For your rights.

We bury our outrage
With their children
For another day when
The time is right
To dig up their tiny coffins
And fight.

My skin is dead weight,
Keeping the person inside of me so still.
My tongue, glued to the bottom of my mouth so all I can do is make noise and it means nothing to anyone.
I won't move a muscle
Because it told me if I ever did
It'd come back and **** my family.
And even though they'll never know,
I still pretend they say thankyou everyday.

Whoever writes my obituary is going to say such lovely things.

And no one will ever know what my trauma did to them, or to me.

There are so many times where we don't know how to decipher and seperate the obligation from choosing commitment.
Do we do this because
Soul mates?
Or do we do it because we said we were going to, and to end it now means we both lose.

If we could just be in love with eachother,
This could work.

I don't want you to "like" me
I want to invade you, so you can't think of anything else but the way my mouth looks when I speak.
I'm warm, soft and my eyes say "come closer".
Feels familiar, almost, right?

Most people when they are asked what they want to do for a living will respond with things that are painfully normal and expected.
But for some reason I always knew that I'd spend my adulthood going from body to body, from heart to heart, making sure that each one gives me a piece of them that will change how they live the rest of their life.

I'm meant to do this, you know.
I'm your dream girl
I like metal and I want a white picket fence and let's start a business together, partners right?
Yeah totally I like that podcast I listen to it all the time. ​
I know how you take your coffee,
And that you don't like it when people don't tip their servers.
I indulge every detail of your core.
I'm your girl. I am you.
We are the same.

I'm the keeper of your secrets and I speak your body's language in a way that sends you into another world.
Pleasure never existed before me.

You let go and you will never notice that sometimes when you are laughing or enjoying my body or talking about something you love,
I peek out from behind the wall and secretly wish that you'd notice.

I crave the salt of the ocean the way I crave the skin on your back,
The constant crash of the waves against the shore and your hands grabbing at the sides of me, as if you have never felt anything quite so soft.

There's always a quiet rhythm to the way you love me.

Like the feeling of when it's raining and your driving somewhere you have never been, so you take the time to listen to the steady movement of the water being wiped back and forth off the windshield.

Something to stop your mind from racing. Your eyes lose focus but your body loves the familiar feeling in your head you have from the wet air, and the heat being pointed at your feet. You can't really feel your face but the bottom half of you gets increasingly warm. And it slowly spreads. Up, and into your belly.

And then we dive in.
Past the waves,
Into isolation.
Into the middle of the blue.

I could spend days floating with you.

Let the world swim beneath us,
And the sky above us.

Dark below and light above.

Me and you.

When everyone she loves most is in bed fast asleep,
She silently opens the door and walks softly down her steps
Until she reaches the end of the concrete.
She breathes in,
And it's crisp and clean
As it fills her lungs.

She looks straight ahead,
At the home that's been built out of her bones she had to put back in place and the hair she lost when she grew those babies inside of her,
and the blood she drained out of her veins to sign the paper that suggested there was another way of life
Somewhere deep inside the center of her journey to her earth.
To the core.
When she had already signed 30 other contracts,
Swam across 30 oceans and sank every boat.
Flew over deserts, dropping petals into the sand so she could find her way back but they never seemed to stick around.
Walked across the empty highways always hoping to run into real life but instead found sticks and stones, and broken bones.

And she weeps.
Into her hands.

Because this was never supposed to be hers, but it turns out that no one ever knew what they were talking about,

And sometimes
Future is choice.

It hurts when she screams for attention
Because her reason is always
Something that I spend my time
Trying to run from.
Her sweet face.
How does she hold all that hurt behind it and not give it away.
What a smart girl.
A smart, clever
Loved
Beautiful girl.
Don't worry my baby.
You can rest with me for awhile

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.

I'm building these wings so that next time you say my name and cause that shift of the ground beneath my almost stable feet, I can hover until you're done.

Maybe sometime I can fly away
And feel free.

I want to catch my daydreams as they try and flee, and tie them around my wrists so I can carry them with me.

I will tie them with the pink thread from the dress you loved to watch me twirl in after church, in the basement.
It will be a relief to watch the wind hold those memories rather than holding them in that part of my brain we don't talk about.
It will look pretty, and light.
Maybe I will feel pretty, and light.

Either way these things I see running through my head are stuck with me as long as I keep the threat tied tight,
I will look past that pink string and into the thought of living a life where I am the bird on my arm and the child inside me.

We fly together and we are free.

I am the official family wound doctor.
Call on me when you want to
Be validated
Feel powerful
Or have someone acknowledge
Your heart with an -
"Oh you poor thing"
Or
"That is so unfair to you!".
Sometimes I'll throw in a
"You're so strong"
Just to add a little zest.
I have the fastest stitching hands,
I can hook up an IV without you even noticing the poke of the needle.
Cant vocalize your symptoms?
No problem, Im great at riddles
And deciphering cryptic messages.
You don't want to feel like you're the only one? Thats fine too.
I will remind you of all of my darkest corners and how hollow I am, so we can suffer and be poetic in our trauma together.

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.

Women walk around
Sleep deprived
And starving over the latest diet.
Holding their keys between their
Fingers as they clench their hand into a fist, because it's late and it gets dark so fast lately.
They've had hands grab their waist to move them out of the way.
Men who tuck her hair behind her ear and tell her she is "so beautiful, I don't even understand why you wear makeup."

Spending our time with
Grown men
Who use us as therapists,
And bank accounts.
Grown men
Who replace their mothers with us
And demand our time, love and energy anytime we accidentally make eye contact with them.
Holding onto the heel of our shoes as we climb, telling us to slow down.
Asking us to come back to where they stand because that's where they find we fit best.

Grown men who,
after all of that,
Ask us to smile more
And wonder why we don't want to **** them.

I am a haunted house
Buried deep, in the thickest of forests
Hoping that no one will ever discover me.

I can feel the sun here.
It warms every broken wall,
Every dusty, moss covered corner.

When I was 21 and had just given birth to my first baby,
I got a blank postcard in the mail and on the front was a picture of a woman in a dress, standing in a field of yellow.
The longer I stared at it the less it made sense,
She became less and less familiar.

4 years later I was holding my second baby,
And I got another postcard, nothing written on it this time either but on the front was the same woman.
This time she sat on a bench in the middle of a storm.
I felt a strange and intense need to tell her to get up and walk back home -
She seemed to be paralyzed by all the grey surrounding her and I thought if someone would just yell her name, she would remember who she was, how her body worked, she would wake up and realize it's time to leave.
But my throat would close up everytime I tried to say anything,
And I got too tired.
My body started to hurt,
My heart felt like it was buried too deeply inside me.
I glanced up from the card and saw some clouds in the distance,
I thought
"That's odd.."
But then looked at my sweet boy and
Told myself to forget about it,
You can concentrate on this feeling and be a real mother and those clouds will pass by,
You probably won't even notice them as they float over you.

But I forgot to finish building the house before the clouds came and before I knew it was were living, eating, sleeping right in the middle of the worst storm I had ever seen.
Nothing made sense anymore.
My family was inside the tornado,
Oblivious.
My loves were outside watching closely
And I was flying around
And around
And around
Dying for my feet to touch the ground.

I thought, maybe I can just get used to the spinning.
Do I maybe like the spinning?
I started to forget what he looked like,
And sometimes I'd pass by his hand he had reaching out for me, and not even realize it had been another year spent traveling around this world.

I loved them while I hated myself.
I loved them so much that I wanted to die for them.
I loved them so much that when he held me, or they sat in my lap, or someone said
"I love you mom"
This entire body would scream
And the pain I felt in every corner
Was enough to make me want to run away forever.

And I would leave,
And fly,
And spin around
Watching them grow
Hearing him say
"Please come back".

Now I'm here. 6 years later.
And my skin soaks up their light.
I use the word love openly and spent the time I needed to finish  building our home, so that whenever that tornado in the distance looks like it's getting closer,
I lock our doors and shut the curtains
And we lay with eachother telling stories, talking about our joy, and feeling the comfort of closeness. The freedom of vulnerability. The calmness of attachment.

I'll wear these bricks on my shoes until the day I leave,
So I'll never fly away again.

A look and I breathe heavier. A touch and I melt down into dirt. Lips meet and I lose my place in reality. Anything more is just the most complicated song ever written. And we can follow along.

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.

This skin and these insides squeeze too tight sometimes and I cant breathe anything but shallow breaths, that never seem to satisfy my lungs need for air.
These eyes and this heart seem to be sad all the time lately, and cant find a spot to sit comfortably to see out the window we used to spend hours living through.

Im tired. This body doesnt serve the purpose it used to, anymore.

You always smell like cinnamon. When you kiss me, you hold my neck like you're taking care of me. The rain and the truck and the backseat. The constant reassurance and gentle chuckle, like you just can't believe we are here. Its all the same. Pouring myself into you until I am half empty, convincing you I am that girl for you. All for you.

I want to drown in a bucket of the pretty things I tell you to convince you that you mean something.
I want you to see that I'm so committed to your ego that I'm willing to get lost in it. And when you realize I've gone quiet it'll be too late.
Then you can sit there wondering where all those open wounds came from.

And realize it meant nothing.

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.

I have a little girl inside of me named shame.
She was raised by people who didn't understand how to love.

When she gets loud - I hold her, and tell her that her bad days and hurt aren't what make her whole. It is all about us and our heart, and nurturing it while we grow.

If there was any one memory
I hope to hold onto forever,
Its how it feels to have the babies
I created with love
Grew with every nurturing,
Womanly,
Mothering,
Love filled corner
Inside of me -
How it feels to have them
Breathe
Beside me.
Its never a gentle, or subtle involvement.
They crawl into my space and
Force their way into my skin
Like they are trying to become
A part of me again.
And I live for it.

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.

I was 10.
It's not my fault that when
My doctor compliments my hair
It send a tingle down my spine
And makes me feel on edge,
Alert and wondering if all men
Smell like him.

I was 13.
It's not my fault that my gym teacher
Likes to sit in the change room
With me while I try to skip class.
And he tells me I need to eat more to
Fill out my figure.
That I'll grow into a
"Beautiful young lady"

I'm 15.
It's not my fault the 23 yr old man
Looks at me and wonders what
I taste like.

I'm 17
It's not my fault that my friends dad
Tells her to invite me on every trip
And that one time I went too far
Into the lake and he had to come save me by holding on tight and grazing parts of me that made me feel small and quiet.
And wish I had drowned instead.

I know its wrong.
But it fulfills the
Need.

I want to start caring and encouraging myself as vigorously as I try to **** what is inside, hurting me.

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 am drowning in other people and none of them will throw me a rope.

This body of mine is not
Made up of braille.
You do not need to touch me
To know me.
I have felt emptiness
Through fingertips
Enough times to last me until
I die.
Give me warmth.
Look at me.
Show me what you mean.
I want to be taught how other people
Enjoy relationships and bodies
And don't flinch at the amount of movement created by humans walking past me, noisy and unaware of how it feels in my head.

I want calm comfort now.

I often stare at whatever food I have infront of me and think to myself,
Why do people say we need to be fed when feeding myself makes me feel so weak and invisible.
When my insides feel empty is when I feel strongest.
The sounds that escape my belly are my war cry.
When she screams, she feels nothing.

I am not here to be your
Manic pixie dream girl.
Im here to live
And love you.
Im not an object for you
To pour your affection
And ego into.
Im here to learn
And thrive.
I dont know how to be
Your perfect woman.
I know how to be me.

Why do I continue to pour from my empty cup when everyone has warned me not to.
If someone asked me to jump off a bridge would I do it?
Maybe.
If someone dangles some temporary validation in front of me
I break out into an instant jog.
I am a tool used to boost egos
And heal wounds.
No one notices I'm just taking them and wearing them as my own.

And I am so tired.

The bones are breaking.

Sometimes when I'm all alone
And my heart has quieted to a whisper
You can hear them creak and groan
Like an old ship
That's carrying too much
And has crashed one too many times

My body is a padded room
And I feel like an alien inside of it
Set up with a small window,
Buttons and levers.
I don't know what any of them mean.
My skin feels like someone else's
And my limbs are too small for this oversized shell filled with human bones.
Where am I supposed to sit comfortably when I feel like every inch I exhale,
is taking up too much space.

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.

I am simply a vessel for you
To feel
Important,
Controlled.
Strong.

My saviour.

The safe little nest Ive created
And burrowed in for a week
Is getting thinner and messier
And less safe.
I can see right through the
Paper thin walls,
Outside is covered in
Neon lights that spell out
SHAME.
I dread it.
I can feel it in my chest
Like Im about to ***** all of the
Feelings and words and tears.
Will I ever stop hating myself?
When will that burning in my stomach
Stop coming up,
Reminding me why I am desperate
To run.

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.

I like to take my time studying your face whenever you forget I'm around.
The way you push your hair back sometimes out of frustration
And the way your shoulders tense up when you can tell I'm watching you again.

I think the whole point of the way I pour myself into your body until there's nothing left,
Is just to escape for a bit.
If all of me is inside of someone else,
I don't have to feel the feelings or be overwhelmed by the weight of whatever obsession has burrowed its way inside my head that day.

I like to feel nothing.
And you like to feel everything.

We are made for eachother.

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.

The dark parts of me always come out at night, they haunt my sleep and make it impossible to soak up the rest I desperately need.
I don't even believe in ghosts.
And yet whenever I start to feel safe
These things, they sense it.
And they wrap themselves around me
So tight.

Every other woman comes before his own daughter.
They have so much more to offer.
What good is a woman he can't touch?
I am always too much and never enough.

Forgiving my father without hearing him say "I'm sorry"
Is my super power.

The waves crash and the birds fly
Farther and farther away from me.
The wind softly sings;
"Follow them".