From the ashes,
Of my life.
I rise,
I crawl, I fight.

My fingers ****** and raw.
Here I stand,
In the glory of my flaw.

I rise.
Always I will rise!

Dear Dad.
I wish I could tell you,
That I'm doing okay.
And I'm getting along just fine.
I wish when you look down,
Upon my life that you would see,
Happy.
I wish I could say.
I'm doing okay.
But the truth is dad,
Every day is a struggle.
To get up and get dressed.
Running on auto pilot all morning.
Hoping I don't forget to pack,
Her lunch for school.
It hasn't gotten easier.
It hasn't dulled in any way.
I still hurt,
Just as much as that day.
I wish I could tell you,
I'm okay.
I wish when you looked down,
You saw how happy I am.
Im sorry I'm letting you down.
I'm sorry I'm not doing,
The best I can.
I am trying
But every single day I end up crying.
I miss you.
Every
Single
Day.
And it doesn't get any easier.

And then I inhaled,
A deep earth quaking breath.
And exhaled
With an earth shattering roar!
Fire poured from my lips,
Smoke billowed from my nose.
I was no ones little lamb anymore!

When you call a **** poem victim-y.
Victim-y is the person who makes
Excuses for why they treat people like
An *******.
"I had a hard life, so I'm an ***."
Using excuses for bad behavior.

A woman writing about
How she felt about her body
After she is ***** is not
Victim-y.
It is fact.
Not a woman alive who's been *****
Will ever say she's not affected.
That she hasn't gone home
After.
Looked in the mirror
At the body she's had her whole life.
And felt utter shame
Less than who she was before.
Like the good pieces of her
Were ripped away with his touch.
Victim-y is excuse.
Talking about your loss,
As a women.
That is utter strength,
And those who can't see that.
Maybe you're the one playing
Victim.

The demons in my head,
Come to the light in segments.
Created by a younger me.
The broken bleeding 11 year old
Who had her virtue,
Her self worth taken.

Created by the mind of a child.
To protect a future her from the same fate.

Astrid the anxious
Demon one.
Questioning ever person.
Their intent,
Their honesty.

Lilith the angry.
Demon two.
The fire that burns inside
With ever unjust,
That can't be changed.

Alloster the protector.
Demon three.
The biggest.
Holding a wall so high around me.
Not even those I  love can't get in.
To protect me,
He's isolated me.
Lonely

Grief.
Demon four.
Drowning me in waves.
To only let me breath a moment
Gasping for air.
Before plunging me back,
Deep into her grasp.

The act of grieving.
It’s unlike anything I’ve
Ever had to go through.
Survived through 17 years of
Mental torture at the hands of
A mother who should have loved me;
But alcoholism had her by the throat
          ****.
That never received any justice.
Physical abuse and mental abuse
For years by a man who should have
Cherished me but instead hated me.
12 hours of labor with no medication.
No relief of the spine crushing pain.
And yet the simple act of you dying.
             Of you leaving me behind,
                           In this world without you.
Has crushed and devastated me.
     Leaving me
                          annihilated and listless.
And without

My best friend, my cheerleader, my fan, my sounding board, my dad, my confidant, my partner in crime, my moral backbone, my courage, my strength, my forever compass, my mother figure, my only family.

I don’t know how to exist here.

The act of grieving,
Has left me tired and restless.
And I’m unsure if I’ll finish the act
Or the act will finish me.
   Exit stage…..
                                                        ­        Right.

I always thought
As a child that
Quicksand would be
A bigger problem then it seems.

But then I realize
My mind is quicksand.
That slowly drags me in
Suffocating me in depression
Memories,
Losses,
Failures.
And the more I struggle
To free myself
The more lodged inside them
I become.
Dying slowly.

So maybe
Quicksand is a pretty big issue.
You just can't
See it.

Depression
Being so tired you can't get up.
You can't drag yourself out of bed.
Anxiety
Being so wound up you can't sleep.
You can't sit still without feeling like
Your skin will crawl off.
It's a weird feeling having both at once.
Like you can't move,
But under your skin in vibrating.

I wonder if  all the things
I left unsaid,
Are the things that hurt
Me the most.

Maybe,
I'm my biggest heart break.

~TMH

And the ground beneath
My feet vanishes.
The air in my lungs
Evaporates within me.
The blood in my veins
Exsanguinates through my pores.
And my mind shrivels and expands
Like the core ready to explode.
And I’m dying.

5 things I can see:
The chair
The sky
The door
The walls
My hand

The walls are closing in.
4 things I can touch:
The floor
The chair
My hair
The walls

The walls swirl in my vision
3 things I can hear:
The birds outside
The fan
The sound of my feet bouncing off the floor.

The walls move in and out of my vision.
2 things I can smell
The cut grass.
The sweat on my skin

The walls
1 thing I can taste:
The salt on my lips.

And then the walls vanish.

Forever she'll be
The girl that just
Doesn't fit anywhere.
The broken girl.
Visible flaws
people stare.
And the girl,
She hides
Hoping to disappear.

I saved the best for last.
I saved the end til now.
To mark the sky in oil paints.

And you blink.
For a moment.
For a second
And everything can change.
In a moment
In the blink of an eye.
Every
Thing
Can
Change.
And we all must blink.

In the deepest parts of my mind.
Where the waters,
Ripple in the rip tide.

I've traveled to far in,
In the darkness
Swallowed from within.

And when my darkness
Takes over a little more
Of the space then it usually does.
And the days become hard
To even get up and out of bed.
You light the way to the exit.
So that when I am ready
And able,
I can find my way back home,
Back to you.
The light keeper,
Of my storms.

This is my goodbye to you.
I've loved you for four years.
I've missed you for one.
I've taken back roads,
And detours to avoid your road.
Slipped and broken bones,
Trying to miss your exit.
Each without success.
Ending up in your driveway,
Falling in love even more.
Knowing **** well you don't love me.
I have loved you since 2014.
Been through hell and back with you.
Only man i trusted to meet my mom,
Last man to ever meet my dad.
I loved you.
Wholeheartedly.
Without bound or limit.
And in the end im spitting out teeth.
From the smack in the face when you left.
Hitting me out of nowhere,
Just gone.
Like i didn't matter.
Over text.
Like and after thought,
Oh by the way...
No.
Ive back pedal and rewritten this dozens of times.
Trying to have the right words.
So you understand.
I'm not you.
Leaving you isn't something that's
Easy for me to do.
You mattered to me.
You were never an after thought.
But my neck still hurts from your leaving.
And 2 months later a new girlfriend
Who must have been there all along.
Like a shadow.
I have loved you for 6 birthdays,
6 christmas's, 6 thanksgivings,
and 5 new years.
But that ends here.
My heart's still pleading with me,
To wait a little longer.
To hang on,
He'll come back.
But you left so fast,
Almost like you were never here.
You watched me watch my dad die.
Told me you'd be here.
To hold me up,
You had my back.
1 month later you had her on her back.
And i became...
An after thought.
Left in the broken bleeding wreckage,
Of my life.
Alone with whiplash.
From the backlash of her,
And you together.
I have loved you for 4 years.
I'll probably love you a lifetime more.
But this is my goodbye to you.
Because after 4 years of loving you.
All i got was....
A text message like an after thought.
Oh by the way,
And whiplash from your cruelty.

My story is covered in
Tear stained ink marks.
Blood soaked covers
And ripped out pages.
It's not a pretty story
With flowers and happy endings.
There's no shining armor
And forever after kisses.
There's no magic.
The evil villain is me.
My story will most likely
End  in the words,

"She really tried."

Being sick isn't easy.
But even harder when,
From the outside looking in
Everything is perfectly fine.
But from the inside looking out,
The days are black as night.
And no one left the light on

I couldn't breathe.
Like the walls
Were closing in around me.
The air thick with panic.

Then I looked up
And you were there.
I could feel your presence
Wrap around me like a blanket.

And the walls stopped moving.
And the air wasn't so thick.
For the first time
In months
I could finally breathe.

Grey like this
Or gray like that.
At least with May
It's spelt one way.
It's one word
Two spellings is just absurd.
But how do I honor you,
What you went through.
If I can't figure out
Without a doubt,
What the hell way
To spell the word grey/gray.

I found love not when
I searched high and low for it.
I didn't find it when I begged or pleaded.
Love didn't come when I forced it,
Tried to squeeze it into a box it wasn't meant for.
Love found me when I wasn't looking.
When love was the last thing on my mind.
Amongst the rubble of my grief,
Love wrapped its arms around me.
Surrounding me in a peace,
I had been searching for,
For years.
I didn't find love behind doors,
I pried off the hinges.
I didn't aquire it from hearts,
I begged to love me.
Love didn't follow me around,
Hoping that I'd turn the right corner
And just find it.
Love found me with my head in my hands,
On my knees begging for peace.
It found me raw,
Just asking for a second to breath.
Love found me,
When I needed it,
Not when I wanted it,
Only when I was ready for it.
Unrequited love is not real.
Those times,
When you search for love in the wrong places.
From the wrong people.
Behind doors that don't want to open,
But you pry off the hinges.
The love in those places, is
That thing we call unrequited love.
When really,
That love was really never meant for you.

I get up
Every morning to fight
The same demons I fought
The day before.
Knowing it'll probably end the same
Tear stained pillows
And razor blade art.
But I get up
Hoping today is the day
The switch is flipped
And the demons aren't quite
As strong as the day before.
Until one day
The demons maybe
For the most part are gone.

I have stepped back
So many times from
Confrontation
I have ended up
In the next room.
Backed into a corner
I never meant to put myself in.
So,
I spent a few years
Learning that
I never have to silence
Myself to avoid
The doubt that others
May have in me.
I am capable
And worth
The confrontation.

Breathe deeply
Inhale
Exhale
When the world
Starts to tilt
On its axis.

Stand up.
Believe in your
Strength.

For your strength
Has gotten you through
100% of all of
Your very
Worst days.

I write about you.
I talk about you.

Forever keeping
Your memory alive.

Deep in my heart.
Where darkness swirls.
I'll keep you safe
From that part of me.

I'll never let your memory
Get swallowed in that part.
So I'll keep talking about you
Forever in my art.

My reactions are never
A disgust in you.
But rather
They are a disgust
In myself.

I dreamt of you
The other night
Of the last day
We had.
I remember feeling
Anxious all day.
Feeling as though
My skin was crawling.
My chest so tight
I could not breathe.
Hyperventalating.
Panicked with no cause.
I was utterly
Terrified.
And I chalked it up
To just being me.
But
Later that night
At 0305 they called me
"You may want to come."
I got there at 0325
"I'm so sorry."
"He's gone isn't he?"
That look of sorrow
She gave me,
I knew.
I couldn't feel you.
At 0319 may 27th 2018
You were gone.
And all of the panic
The fear
It made sense
I felt you leaving me.

My world feels like,
It's always moving at 100 MPH
And I'm always running
To catch up without
Ever reaching a Single destination.

And I jump off the deep end.
I dive head first into this..
Possibility of future.  
Where before I couldn't
See past the next few
Moments just surviving.
I've jumped.
Hoping at the possibility of
A future where the loss of my past
Can be managed,
With you.
Praying I haven't
Jumped head first into
An empty pool.

The shattering.
It's that moment
That one moment
in life where everything
Good
Bad
Devastating
Amazing
That ever happened
Shatters
And what's left behind is dust.
A land void of anything
Where you must rebuild or fade away.
The shattering
It's where you decide
You decide to keep fighting
To keep moving forward
Or to let go
To give up
To fade.
The shattering
Is where you decide.

So decide.

And it all went gray.
All the color in my life drained away.
The vibrancy in my words
Liquified and ran down the drains,
Of my life like tears.
My life became a black and white movie
With no sound.
A vestibule to my torment.
Then like a solar flare.
Blue awash my vision.
And slowly as it cleared there was you.
Blue in all your glory
In my world that had been gray for so long.
And the colors are slowly coming back.
In small solar flares at a time.
Glimpses of oranges, purples, and pinks.
But my favorite,
The vibrant life assuring ...
Green.

My insides
Vibrate as if my
Muscles have been turned into
A 5 foot 3 ***** on extreme.
And my mind is thrown
Back and forth inside my skull.
What do I do
If I failed?
What do I do
If everything I have ever wanted
Slips between my fingers like
Liquid sand.

She makes broken
Look beautiful.
    Her scars she wears
     Like grace.
And when she spoke

I swore time stood still
And honey dripped from
     Her center like satin.

                      ~CataclyticEvent

Missing you
Is like choking
On air.
It only happens
When I breathe.

My strength is
Never needing anyone.
My weakness is the same
I've spent so long,
Avoiding help
Support
Love.

I don't know
How to let anyone in now.
A steal door welded closed.
And I'm trapped on the inside.
Screaming to get out.

The more time you spend with grief.
The more at home you become
Within the folds of its
Despair.

The more comfort you take
From the sudden on slaughter
Of memories and tears.

The more you are able
To recover the facade
Of being perfectly okay
In a world that now only
Feels like it's decayed and dying.