Its odd to think that this skin that covers my bones is the same skin that witnessed all of my love and hurt, stretching and shrinking, bleeding and healing, emptiness and growth.
The map that shows you where every hand has been, and all the corners Ill never allow to be touched again.

Being a mother to you
Is being a mother to me.
And that little girl is
so thankful for you.

When I kiss your cheeks,
When I hold you in the middle of the night.
When I dry your tears,
When I make you laugh,
When I watch you at the playground,
When I hold your hand,
That little girl heals more than anything else that's tried to heal her.

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

Being a child was burned to the ground the moment he sat me on his lap.
Being a teenager was searching for the next person to make me feel like he did.
Being a young adult was acting out the past in a new relationship with someone who had no idea what was coming.
Being a mother has been reliving trauma and healing.
Being a partner has been learning to let someone love me.
Being a human means I am still all of these people.

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.

I am so hungry every single day
Every word I say takes a bit out of me and by the end of it all I'm left with an aching gut and a brain that can't think straight.
I can't eat because I'm sick
I'm sick because I can't eat enough
And the cycle repeats itself every 24 hours sometimes
I'm going insane.

My bed is where I let myself drown a bit
It's where I let myself be soft
Folding my legs in like the corner of the sheets
And letting you get close
But never to my face.
You can get in even closer if you touch my skin the way I tell you to
And let me perform the way I've been taught to
So that after every show you can clap for me
Tuck my hair behind my ears
Kiss my eyelashes
And tell me you've never felt the inside of someone the way you feel mine.
It's existing and it could almost be called life.
The trail of colors and feelings you trace along my spine and my hips so that I can always look in the mirror and remember every single thing that ever created this body.

You love this body.
You love it so well that you think it loves you too.

Its taken me 13 months to shed this skin that has kept me prisoner for
29 years.
She died last night and
Im dedicating this entire day to planning her funeral.
I love you, little girl.
But it's time for me to be free.

I often take the time to write out something that feels like the old me
Who is sad and kind of cracked.
The one who made the wrong decisions because that's what she knew to do.
Because feeling sad is what I grew with most of my life.
Feeling a little hollow was supposed to be permanent and sometimes
When I look at how my life is so warm now, and every part of me that used to be empty is now filled with flowers and roots and so much green.
It's nice to breathe in a little of the cold I used to feel day after day.
Maybe I still do it to know that if
All of this falls apart like I often expect it to,
I could go back there and it would be as if nothing happened.

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.

If I eat the edges of the toast first and then the middle then there's no way I will feel sick after.
If I wake up and wash my hands and then eat a muffin that I've carefully separated the top from, and start with the bottom first then my day will be successful and I will have to make good choices.
And if I make the kids lunches the night before, then make sure I put them in their bags by 8:15 their days will be uncomplicated and safe.

Aren't these rules that everyone knows?

My bones are melting into my skin and disappearing as every inside thought exists less and less. Every hope and effort I put into becoming more for you is leaving me and I don't understand how this is something I'm expected to cope with. I can feel my joints start to tingle and they turn into sinewy strands barely keeping what's left of me together. I want to feel again.

She sets sail in her sailboat hoping that these winds will take her to a new ocean where someone will look at her and say "oh. We are the same"

Sometimes I spend too much time
Writing lists
Hoping it will help my brain
Organize all of these thoughts
That never seem to stay in one place
For very long.
Sometimes I don't eat, so I can feel
That familiar empty
Hollow
Space
Inside of me
That reminds me of when I had
So much focus and only one thought.
"Stay in control".
Sometimes I eat everything
That makes me feel sick.
So I can remember that I am
A waste
Out of control
Disgusting.
Every word I write screams
"LOOK AT ME"
And its just
Too loud.
So if I direct the letters into words that dont resemble the hurt then maybe it will quiet down and I can get back to the routine I have so lovingly crafted
From day one.

Ive been learning to love myself for a year, so why is she deciding to fight back now? We had relief, some calm.
Now the bones are rattling and the screams are crawling up my veins.

She keeps telling me that Im alone
And that its over.

Summer rain and the first few drops that hit the hot pavement, thats been begging for a drink all day.
The sun and the way it hits my veins as we are driving through the city, windows down and trees above us.
Afternoon naps with just a sheet and skin.
Coming inside after a day out in the pool, smelling like chlorine and sunscreen. Rolling down that bathing suit, and climbing into bed wrapped up in a towel.


These things make me whole.

My therapist told me multiple times that our unhealed trauma wounds create a cycle where we obsessively recreate the damage we endured as children.
What a strange thought, that the worst pain I've ever felt is something my body forever remembers and wants to repeat it over and over.

I'm tired of her.

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?

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.

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?

I am light and love
I am sickness and health
I am scars and scabs and holes
I am hollow and as soft as a feather
I am sweet and I am distant
I am ups and I am downs
I am moonlight and intense heat
I am the biggest, burning star
On this stretched out skin
With these fingertips full of life
And this voice dripping with
Insecurity
Curiosity
And the power to heal
Herself.

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.

Ive complained about the material this blanket, that I stitched together, is made out of - without realizing it was my choice all along.

Purification has always been an act of violence.
And I crave it.
From the very beginning
when I was told about the
corruption between my thighs
and the way it seduces others
who are broken like I am.
I daydream about starting from the bottom with the rough hands and mouths,
The words that cut the deepest.
The bruises you can't hide.

That is how I start over.

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.

All of my words are foggy and I can't seem to find the right combination, to build the truth I keep digging for. Only broken bridges come out of this mouth. They lead you over waterfalls and into dense forests, filled with trees my past has grown for me. Trees that have rooted themselves deep inside of me. Ive become so enmeshed, I cant tell where the roots end and my limbs begin.

Sometimes I feel like my bones are made up of inflated balloons.
Filled with flat air that never floats me in the right direction.
I have skin and clothes covering them but with every step I still hear them move.

And everyone sees 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.

Everywhere they touched me and branded me with their hurt,
You take your hands and pour them onto every inch of me
Saying the "Im sorry" they will
Never give me.
The "I love you" with meaning
And the warmth without the burn.

Somehow you have managed to grow into this body that is made up of all of these small things that fit together in the most distracting way. When you sit close to me I can feel the static from your skin and I always brace myself for the shock, but for some reason you just absorb it or something and I'm left with my shoulders tense and this weird, phantom pain in whatever spot you were closest to. Sometimes when I think about you I get this random heartbeat that comes from a spot inside me that really shouldn't have a heartbeat. It's like you scrambled me inside and out and head to toe, but it still totally works and somehow my organs keep me alive like they haven't moved from their original spot. Sometimes I just can't wrap my head around how you feel so light and it's so constant that my brain just goes into this overmedicated kind of fog and I have to blame it on some conspiracy theory like, this is the Truman Show and I've just been conditioned since birth to end up here, that it's just a script. Love can be so easily created and that means I never have to lose this.

I wonder if you ever feel this about me.

I think I could be this for you too, you know. I am really likeable I think and I'm not scared to jump off the cliff if that's what comes next.

I'll meet you at the bottom.

My body is made up of the dark things but underneath my skin are the light things, and sometimes when everyone is quiet and distracted with themselves
I peek under there at the pastel colors and the softness of winged things flying around aimlessly.
It's a beautiful little secret that I keep buried in my dreams where I get to feel like a kid again but with all the knowledge I need to keep me safe.
There are fields and sun, and the perfect amount of a breeze.
I get to run, roll down hills, get my knees ***** and wash them off in a river.
I nap in the tall grass.
I can smell when the rain is coming
And I never run from it.

It's my favorite place.

If I don't use destructive coping mechanisms simply out of fear of rejection, abandonment or judgment..
Am I still succeeding?

I am angry at him.
I am angry at her.
I am angry at them

I am angry at myself.

The girl in the mirror looks like someone I met in another lifetime,
I forget almost everything about her.

We were loud, flourescent and my heart never wants to let go of the good memories. Even when the bad ones sneak up and remind me that nostalgia is heartbreak all over again.

I feel like I'm falling from the sky and no one sees it hurts to burn this bright. "Oh look, it's a meteor!" No it's just me again, can you wave back this time?
You're always so quiet.

I like when it gets dark and it's quieter in the hallways, you can hear your neighbors TV softly drowning out the creaks and the groans and the whispers of your body as you slowly relax.
I'm not sure if my mind moves faster or if I can just hear it better because everything around me is moving slower as the minutes go by.
Either way the speed of the thoughts isn't what makes me feel unsteady,
It's the fact that they start in one spot and up back at you.
I don't even fight it anymore.
They move across my brain like it's routine now.
It makes me forget how to breathe in a  normal pattern
And makes my stomach feel like it's filling up with cotton.
Somehow I always end up back at the beginning and I say good night.
Goodnight heart.
Goodnight memories.
Then I turn off the light and close my eyes to get enough rest so that I can do the routine again tomorrow.

My batteries have run dry and every store I go into tells me they're sold out.
I dont know what else makes this brain and body continue on living.

We have spent 12 years dissolving the shells we grew as we got older,
Everytime we would get close
Another layer seemed to
Disappear.
Our flesh and loving words
Became shelter over our
Open wounds.
I dont know where I end
Where you begin
Or how we do this thing called
Independance
Partnership
Detach with love.

I want to know you on the outside
And not only as this blur of comfort.

Limb by limb, she swallows me whole.
Its quick, and I feel nothing.
The only peace I find is when Im being devoured.

I thought it would be cold and dark in here, but its the only place I manage to feel some warmth.

Which really, doesnt make sense. All she ever says to me is
"Better off dead"

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 feel the feelings.
I ignore the feelings.
I set the feelings on fire.
Mourn the feelings,
Share the feelings,
Bury and forget the feelings.

There's something inside of you that screams my name so constantly it's all that's in my head lately.
A Call for connection, maybe.
A connection that sits in the front of our brains begging to be focused on 24 hours of the day, greedy attention seeking touch starved intensity that you feel so deeply inside of you it's as if your body turns into a soft current of electricity that brings our bones to life. The bones we never knew wanted to move that much. The bones that we thought were forever still and told us settling was comfort.
Comfort is the speed of which my heart leaps into your mouth saying devour me.
Comfort is your skin becoming my skin.
Comfort is nothing else but what we can never tell others, because explaining it would be so lacking in the actual feelings that it would be like the faintest breeze of wind. They would never see it. And it would change nothing for them.

I'll always be the nurterer and the comforter, the seat at the table that little humans call mom and the others lean on.

I'll never trade those words for anything different.

But I know I'll always have a secret pocket of things I feel inside, that don't fit out here in life.

I'll always be a dreamer of colorful and impossible things.
I'll be a lover of many people, spreading myself so thin that I come close to the edge of that cliff over and over in this lifetime.

I want to have that vague taste of desperation under my tongue, forever.
I want to write about my heart feeling broken, about how a strangers kiss changed my entire life, about grief and all those little things that give joy.

I want to feel summer rain on my skin and not be able to think about anything but that sensation for moment upon moment.

I want to get goosebumps when he leans in too close and have all the scenarios of how he will kiss me to go through my head.

I want to cry when I see a mother lose their child. I want to feel my insides being torn out and then having to live without it.

I want to taste something sour and then go back for more, because the feeling inside my mouth and against my cheeks feels a little bit like being alive.

I'll never let these things go.
I keep them organized and quiet in the back of my head and the middle of my body so that everyday I'm reminded that the human I am is so much bigger inside.

Inside this body is an incredible amount of the biggest things you could ever think of, and I carry it well.

You're it.

And I dont know if thats just my inner child talking or if its my real heart. Thats where it gets so confused. All of the time. So confused.
Am I just living out this deja vu script my family wrote out for me even before I was born.

Or is it love.

I always said love was freedom but that was the first thing I gave you and now Im left with nothing.

Love plus love doesnt seem to equal love, somehow.

I was never good at math.

With every word that comes out of that sweet pink mouth I feel my body shrink, and shrink. Before I know it my vision is blurred, and my chest is just an open, bottomless pit.

And I want more. Do it more.
Let's move backwards in time
Until I don't exist.

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.

Im not sure how else to explain to you that I fully understand when you say things like "God is love, people are bad" and "God loves you still even when you're angry", it's pouring gasoline on an already large fire.

I already spent 16 yrs asking for him to give any amount of affirmation so I could calm the mental suffering and constant questions,
And feeling in my gut telling me this didn't fit.

I already spent 16 yrs with my ears open trying my hardest while listening to the absolute deafening silence I got in return.

Is that not enough for you?

Can I have my body and mind back now.
Can I use my voice for other things that bring my joy instead of
Defending and reasoning with you on why I'm allowed to make my own choices now.

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.

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.

I wrote my own vows to myself today and it's full of memories - of picking ripe strawberries and eating the first one out of pure impatience for the juicy taste of summer to hit my tongue. Grass stains on my knees and elbows from rolling down dandelion littered hills. Sweat rolling down my back from running down the side walk after the ice cream truck. Hair wild and half falling out of my braids because my best friend and I spent the afternoon swinging on the swings, seeing who could fly higher and communicate with the birds. Climbing trees, up so high I can only hear my heartbeating in my ears.

The vows are a promise to keep these close to my heart and to never be anyone but that little girl who was always her wild self, could never keep her skirt down or her legs crossed at the ankles. Her socks always ***** and her shirt untucked.

That's when she's at her best. Her most beautiful and pure.

She's mine forever.