Sweet Tea wrote 3 months after I turned 15, 2018


Before you, I was a girl devastated by things I couldn’t change
Trapped in an endless bitter reality from which there was no escape
Sinking into a dark, spiraling well, from which I reached my hands and found a pool of light
You were my light, a haloed sunshine angel, who graced me with his presence for what seemed so long and ended so abruptly
The sound of your voice seemed to be honey, so sweet, attracting the bees, attracting me
My sunshine sweetheart, angel lover You’ve done your time so now you can leave
Why would you want to stay with me? I’m only a cement brick that will bring you down
A loose thread that will tear you down, a yammering parakeet who will wear you down
One time you told me that I thought too  highly of you
How couldn’t I? With someone who made me feel so confident with my body, somebody who praised me, someone who thought I was worth their time at least for the time being
In a way it’s better that you left, you’ll never be forced to see what I had to see looking in the mirror hating every inch of myself, hating the way I acted, and the way I interacted with everyone and hating the way no one seemed to like me
But you liked me, but it’s better this way because I’m a letdown
It’s Like when you thought you had bought sweet tea
But it’s actually unsweetened



The new version
Sweet Tea wrote 1 month before my 18 birthday, 2021

Before you, I was a girl alone
Being molested every day by the people who said they would take care of me
I was a fourteen-year-old girl who was taught at a young age to get yourself a man to save you
So I tried everything to keep you because talking to you distracted me from the fact my fourty-year-old stepdad was touching me
But what I definitely didn’t need was a twenty-year-old man messaging me
Telling me all the things he wanted to do to me
When the law would finally unclaim me and allow me to give someone a part of me he doesn’t deserve
You made me feel so much more alone
Somebody who told me he’d touch me
But instead of giving me what I’ll need he’ll leave
“Lick me up like an ice cream cone” huh Luke?
yes I thought highly of you
Because you made it seem like you’d never hurt me
You were the biggest disappointment
You always will be

He punched me last week
And told me that he was joking and that's between me and him
My friends saw and helped me break it off yesterday
Today is my eighteenth birthday
And I am nothing like my mother

It started again in July
The warm weather could never lift my spirits
As I have always been cold from the inside
Out, let me out
I’ve been trapped in a snowstorm since I was nine
Shivering in the warmth from the ice in my veins
The tsunami started in the school bathroom
After following my sister to the bathroom after dinner time
Night after night peeking through the cracks
To see her methods
The acidic volcano laid dormant inside me for a couple of years
Until I began to grow
Sprouting towards the sky like a sunflower
All I could think about was my waist
I hated it, I tried every method to destroy myself
And the monstrous overgrowth that devoured my forever changing body
Until one day I didn’t feel how hungry I was
The growling was silenced
All I could hear was her harsh voice droning me through
Take another step, don’t fall down
115 pounds of pure solid ice
The way down my throat is slippery
My fingers thin bunched together for the warmth that they could provide each other
Water is the only thing that comes out
The voice still haunts me
And somedays I wonder why my garden of a body had to be denied of sunlight
When I embraced the freeze
And hurled my body through
Body, I am so sorry

At least I didn’t write a poem about him..

When I was 130 pounds
I was always jealous of my 90-pound mother
One day I told her I wished she was fat too
Instead of telling me I wasn’t
She said “that’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said to me”

Apple cider vinegar boosts your metabolism and reduces hunger
I didn’t realize I had an appetite anymore
The feeling of food makes you sick when you can only imagine it coming back up
Spilling word ***** onto nice freshly cleaned carpets
Teeth stained, hospital gowns
I Need some mouthwash
If nobody knows about the problem that means it doesn’t exist right?
If no one can see your face, hallowed then you don’t take up space right?
Wrong, “you’re too fat, you’re too fat” You scream into the mirror
Haunching over the toilet, trying, crying to stand back up but no words come out and your legs won’t move for help
My illness is hard not to hate somedays when your throat is sore from five times of binging and purging today
Six rounds each
Maybe more if you can stomach it
Your nose will smell it and you’ll gag up more
Your mind  is the worst weapon you can use against yourself
Counting every calorie as a new way to punish yourself for existing
You’re so afraid of taking up space that you will resort to slicing your belly in half in order to achieve inner peace
Baby, it doesn’t work that way
Listen I know that somedays you look to see your pretty skinny friends
And you feel bad about your body and how one of your thighs could barely fit through the head of her skintight t-shirt
But I have been there, I have seen **** you couldn’t even imagine
Girls who want to become bulimic or anorexic, get ready for your teeth to wear down and chip from the acid from below your belly
Rumbling with the force of regret, the food you just ate but didn't want the weight
Get ready for the hole in your throat right next to your tongue down your esophagus
That burned its way coming up as it did down
Get ready to see your mom or your dad walk in to see you on your knees praying to the gods above as below anything over the throne,
Get ready for the disappointment, the extra eyes, get ready for the tears the fears
Why can’t you just eat? The rehab, The relapse
Get ready for hating your body, lack of control
The spiral
Get ready because ana and mia don’t give a **** if you were happy before
Because  they just want to be skinny

Mommy, nothing about the way you raised me was normal
It hurts me to think out of everyone you may have hurt me the worst
Because you allowed me to think it was normal
You put me in ****** situations at an extremely young age
Momma, I was four
This was before Dad died
He was on top of you and I was on top of him
If it didn’t happen then why do I remember the PJs i was wearing?
Why do I remember how sweaty he was and how the tv was going?
I remember it was late and my sister was sleeping in her room
Why should I have to explain this to you?
I know you remember
I always thought it was normal how you let me look and touch your body
I was six or seven, I was curious about what I was always exposed to
It made me uncomfortable that you would always talk about how you loved my *******
I told you this
I will most likely never tell
Because I am scared of the men you exposed me to
But I am more scared of you
I thought that you’d never hurt me
But nothing about the way I was raised was normal

It was a long day of hating myself for eating
It was a day filled with crying, trying to throw up
Haunched over the toilet after the smoothie
After dinner
After the countless snacks, I had
Each time retreating to the bathroom
Tired of being empty but afraid of being full
When you caught me getting into the french fries
It was going to be my last snack I swear
My stomach was grumbling and just needed something I swear
I was going to dispose of it as soon as I finished
I took as little as I could so you wouldn't notice
I was craving it and craving it
I put them on my plate so many times today just to empty them back into the bag
And sigh and cry because I gained the last pound back from the big gulps of cold water I downed
Makes me wonder if I should have thrown that up too
I didn't want you to know because I was embarrassed
I shouldn't be eating like that
So much
Wasting so much
But I can't stop being hungry
And no matter how hard I try
I can't seem to not hate myself after I do it
I'm sorry I'm trying to fix it
I just don't know how to stop
I'm trying to not eat so I don't waste anything
But it's hard when you're hungry
And you're mouth waters
You just wonder when normal will be enough
When 1,000 calories won't feel like poison coming in and going out
When you're greedy eyes won't take too much, your stomach can't hold
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry
I don't know if my trying is enough
But I just can't stop hating myself
Today is hard
I think I threw up my anti-depressant too

I used to want him to love me
So I'd pretend that he was my dad
Now I know that his kind of love was wrong
He was very evil, very bad

Black nail polish
You’re a scream away from what you started
He wanted the flower girl you used to be
Years later you’ll dress like that girl
So angry at the world
Hopeless
I’ve grown from the anger
Now I sit in a field of lilies
And I don’t dream of what my life would’ve been like if he didn’t like flower girls
I’m comfortable in the silence that is now my brain
No more screaming

When I’m sad all I think about is you
Sometimes I wish you were dead or I just wasn’t born to you
Because you told me you loved me so many times
And it wasn’t true
I trusted you to help me, I needed you to save me more than anyone in the world
But you abandoned me for him
You choose him over me
And that **** still messes with me
I can’t stop thinking about him touching me
And how even when you heard my story
You still wanted to be with him
It didn’t even phase you
When I was a cutter
And I begged you day and night to make me a doctors appointment
But you were too embarrassed to say anything
I screamed at you saying I’d end up killing myself if you didn’t do anything
Until I decided to overdose and you called your husband first to tell him I did this all because of a boy
A boy? You honestly thought I’d **** myself over a ******* boy? I tried to **** myself because your husband who knew me since I was seven, who was supposed to protect me
Was always touching my ***** and asking me to undress in front of him
And many more things you know happened but refused to admit
You knew before I told you but you didn’t care
And you stuck me in a psych ward for 9 days and didn’t even visit me once
You let your husband who molested me since I was 10 tell me that there’d be people who would try to cut me and hurt me
How it’d be the worst day of my life like I wasn’t scared enough
You didn’t let me talk to the one person who understood me because you were insecure that I loved her more than you
You were right I’ve always loved her more than you
Always
I don’t care that you don’t love me
Sure it’d be nice but I have enough
Even though that when I’m not on my meds or I’m sad I think of you
I don’t love you
I don’t want you
I shouldn’t want anything to do with you
I want a mom
I want my biological mom
But not you
The person you were supposed to be
The one who loved me
Not the one who lied to me
Not the one who didn’t believe me
The one I could laugh with
The one who said she’d do anything to protect me
But I guess those were all lies too, huh?

And again, it feels like my entire world is crashing down
But deep down, I know it will get better
Hurting myself will make it worse
I'll steadily go back up

Don't be happy just because someone is giving you compliments
You're better than that

I felt bad for my poor momma
I felt so bad
But I realized that if I only worried about her
Who would worry about me

God, I'm so gullible...

My body is decaying with the knowledge that I can’t make it in the world
I wake up after a good twelve hours, aching and weak my only thought, you
I hear your voice in my head drilling me to walk up the stairs again
You tell me every day that you complete me that without you I’d be nothing more but the girl who was miserable with her body
The fat sausage finger girl who couldn’t fit in size twelve jeans
But with you, my dear Ana you’ve helped me drop 30 pounds in four months
I’m in love with you ana, you and your best friend Mia
I am a gray sky, and you are my storm
Lighting and thunder, my stomach roars but I can only hear your voice urging me forward
I eat at home, I take long walks alone
I have a notebook full of excuses that sleep under my bed
My room is a disaster, plates, and cups galore
I am disgusting, I’m hoping that when I reach my goal all of my flaws will fall away
I will be exactly like the pretty, skinny girls I see all around me
I’m cold all the time, it reminds me of when I got locked out in the middle of winter
I walked miles going forward seemingly nowhere
My coat taut fastened across my thin chest
But I was shivering, the unknown frightened me
But now I know where I’m going
You lead me with your deathly bone-thin hand
Outstretched arms you pull me in
My monstrous overgrowth devouring you
You squeeze me until all of the fat melts away
Until I am skinny
Until I am bone
Until I am nothing

Just because you're lonely
Don't let people use you

Dry heaving your sorrows
Past flooded gates of stress
Teary eyes and your runny nose
Won’t make those problems go away
Receive the truth
Speak only lies
Hush your own ****** fluid
Until it can be mistaken for silence
Relapse
A quiet lullaby
Of hungered dreams
That only makes me seem smaller
Problems, so many problems
You have one more to overcome

To be women is to be delicate
Swooning over silence
Quiet, lips zipped
Soft, demure
To be women is to ask no questions
To know every answer
To be obedient
Not to be scolded to know our place
To be women is to be delicate
To be male is to be strong
Never cracking under pressure
Brave, outspoken
Loud, tough
To be male is to be her hero
Even when you don’t deserve to be
To know every question before it is asked
To be male is to be strong

Stop trying to help people so much
It only gets you in trouble
I guess

One
They don’t know that 19-year-old doesn’t want them
The way they want to be wanted
To be needed
Like a housewife
To a loving caring husband
In their 30’s with four children and a great big house
He doesn’t share those dreams
Two
They like the attention they’re getting what they’ve never gotten before
When you used to be the ugly, weird girl
No one really paid attention to you
Until him
Even though you liked him first
Made sure he knew it
Had your friends help you message him
He was surprised
Three
He made you feel special
He told you that you were the only girl he was talking to
He told you that he seriously adored you
Four
We talked about everything
Almost
We talked about the good things in our day
We talked about movies
We talked about everything instead of what really was going on
I didn’t tell you I had an eating disorder
I didn’t tell you I was being abused
I didn’t tell you that every day I felt like ending it
That you and my friends were the only things keeping me tethered to the world
I didn’t tell you how much I loved you
How much I was falling
Five
You said how much you wanted to kiss me
Hold me, make sure that everything was okay
How you couldn’t wait for me to turn sixteen
11 months
Until...
Six
You couldn’t understand why I liked you so much
You said “I’m a letdown, It’s like when you thought you bought sweet tea but it’s actually unsweetened”
Verbatim
I thought that was so
Poetical
So deep
I realize now how wrong I was
Seven
You wanted to teach me how to kiss
Because I didn’t know how
I was unexperienced
Eight
We were so cringy
Looking back at it
I thought this supposed to be it
Calling you sweetheart and baby
When you barely knew the real me
You knew me but didn’t know
My trauma
What woke me up in the middle of the night
What I dreamed of
I longed for
My passion that I woke up every day to do
You didn’t know because I didn’t tell you
Because you never asked
Nine
You met my mom
Over video chat
I ensured her that she would love you
Just like I did
I told her all the good parts of you
And finally how happy I was with you
You said you were so nervous
But she didn’t think you were that bad
Ten
We wanted to meet up
We were going to meet at Hyvee
We planned it one day
When my mom had to pick up her medication
You were going to walk from your apartment while my mom went to the pharmacy
While I waited by the bathroom
Our plan was to have our first kiss
Maybe introduce you to my mom
Like we had both bumped into each other
Eleven
You were so much more attentive than Gabe
I told you about him
How he was my first real boyfriend
How he didn’t care
Or want to talk to me
But you did
And I thought
That was fantastic
Twelve
I thought I was the apple of your eye
But clearly I wasn’t
Thirteen
I got so many good poems out of you, it was crazy
Fourteen
Despite all the red flags I loved you
Fifteen
I was only fifteen

Summer is blue skies
Summer is pink lemonade daydreams
Summer is me and you
Winter is cold
Winter is leaving behind the old
Winter is me without you
Summer is warm, bright
Summer is happy days
Summer is when you held me tight
Winter is snowy, white
Winter is missing the flowers you used to bring me
Winter is saying goodbye

Every year I forget how much I hate fireworks
The pop and bang, blinking as fast as I can
Like closing my eyes will make the sound go away
It won’t you know that fact too well
No one has ever been able to figure out why you hate loud noises so much
You were never in the military
You’ve never been around bombs
Just the explosion that was your childhood
Every word, every screamed silence you made into your pillow when no sound came out
Every slap of ice stained teeth gritting against the broken promises spewn
Pounding marble countertops so hard you thought you would fall down
Every “I Hate you”
“Don't leave me”
When you just wanted them to breakup
Even though you should have never been involved
Because you were a child and children should never play with the deadly match of a distinguished marriage
No child should ever have to worry about that because it’s out of their mind capacity
They don’t know when too much is time to stop
When the fuse might burn their hands
If they’re not careful
No-one stopped to take care of the bleeding wound that resulted
Your pain wasn't as relative as theirs
An ongoing struggle in the battle of “I'm right, you're wrong”
Let’s work this out
Go away
That fire can burn a hole through your heart if you let it
Good thing mine is completely cold

I did nothing but protect you; When you were younger but much more dumb
If that’s possible to be more guliable and easily pesauded, did you forget about the men I protected you from?
But you couldn’t do the same for me, you ate up every word they spoke; ignored my cries about the monster you had become
It is a terrifying thing when you can toss your motherly instincts away, forget your children and be numb

The lone mockingbird traveled the earth in one night
Crisp, cold winter air rippled through her grey feathers
She wondered how anyone could look so lifeless and feel so cold
She flew past the pig farm, past the morgue
Past the stench, the open-concept
She dreamt of a world unkept
Peace, where wilderness grew
No money spent
The greed of people intercept
When sweet mockingbird flew across the ocean
She peered into the water to see her own reflection
But could only see garbage and one man's treasures strewn across the murky, once blue waters
She wonders if she could cry enough, maybe she could refill them
Clean the seas, the deep rich earth
The wind and breeze
This is what the mocking bird sees
Please, keep her safe

She bleeds honey
Glitter runs from her eyes
Sugar lips
Scream
I run my hands down her
Cotton candy body
My greedy eyes burn into hers
Hungry

“Starve” Ana said, and so she did
Her body screamed “no” but she keep going
Because she wanted to love her reflection in the mirror not hate it
She trained her brain to hate the sight of food
Chocolate cake looks like diarrhea, lasagne looks like brains
“I’m strong” Ana said “starvation will never break me”
I’ll stop when I’m thin she told her parents
hungry to bed hungry to rise makes a girl a smaller size
Once on your lips is forever on your hips
“Resist or regret” Ana said
“You don’t have to count calories if you don’t eat”
All your allowed to drink is water and black coffee
Ana is making me sick

Gunshot
Raining knives
All the ways to hurt yourself with one letter
You’re not even real
I mean
How can the person staring back at you with the dead eyes possibly have any soul left to save?
Dangerous, honey you’ve reached your peak
High as a **** kite
Ready to take flight into the nightosphere
You’re poison like ketamine
Flame burning like gasoline
Baby stop, before you hurt yourself
You know everyone is waiting to see that

Certainty  fuels the masses, the hordes of love-sick girls trapped in the misery of longing
I’m not certain of anything in this life, what of myself with my long dreadfully tangled hair and dull sinking eyes
The only clarity I have at this moment is the certainty that I feel for you
Happy is nothing more than accelerated heartbeats, strained under the weight of your own decaying body
Breathing heavily, in hushed whispers. Sweet nothings, then silence
What will happen when I finally break? will the feeling still be there?
The intensity of two humans at the brink of unconsciousness, only a zombie-like state can be of explanation
Maybe I am just a romantic of foolish proportion
Say stop and I’ll catch myself slipping into a cocoon of my own blanketed warmth, undercover, under investigation
There is nowhere to hide when you are stripped bare
When I am ready to plummet, I  will
I won’t say anything, because at that moment nothing will be needed
Right now, I’m not sure if I’ll wake

Feeling safe in someone's arms
So comfortable
And free from the worlds prying eyes and pressures
I’ve never felt like that before
You make me feel like that
And I can’t get enough
I can’t get enough of you
I’ll wear your sweatshirt forever
Because it’s yours and smells like you
I’ll miss you every second
I love everything about you
I love you

Momma
This ones for you
I remember you when you were young, late twenties
Blonde hair
Reckless but loving
I thought of you
At least
I’ve written about you so much
But mostly the bad
I hope you don’t mind
But this is about how wonderful my life could've been when you were in my world
You can tell everybody
So maybe they’ll stop talking so badly
Some of it you deserve
But I’ll always love you
And I’ll always remember the good momma
You could’ve been

Chest pain is an agony that only ice-cold water can soothe
A chicken scratch throat, sore from the coughing only misery brings
My heart tells me to leave without you, to never ride along with you
When I feel like the person I once was is a ghost, a person long forgotten by this shell of an empty shallow being
Who looks in the mirror to see her own ghastly reflection each morning and thinks to herself if only this were the last time
The last time, she’d have to see this face, this body
Hear the broken vocals this shell can utter
It gets unbelievably easy to isolate yourself from the people you once thought held the world for you
Now you wouldn’t mind decaying before the ones you love as long as it meant that the spiral would end
Bottling fireflies in your belly, locking the key, burying it deep
It’s easy to be alone, it’s easy to shut everything out
But so incredibly difficult to say so

I have spent  my entire life at war with my body
Raised in a home, where pretty is small
And if you weren't you weren’t much at all
Two years ago, I found my sister’s diet journal
Her bulimic blog, her anorexic aesthetic
For some reason skinny is important
Society has trained little girls with big dreams and big thighs
To cut themselves in half, then fold themselves 26 times
To achieve model perfection, size zero you are my hero
Little girls,I will tell you this, something you will hear a thousand times but never enough
It does not matter what size you are, how thick your thighs, how tight your mother’s dress is around your waist
You are not your body
You are much more than your body
That is just a mere covering to hold your greatness
Your body will rebel when you mistreat it
Like when your cat ran away when you forgot to feed it
Your stomach will cave in, your bright eyes will sink , your hair will fade and dry, your muscles will wither
I know that it’s hard, it’s hard to stop thinking when you can only think in the form of crunching numbers
When you couldn’t stop counting calories to save your life
When all you wanted to do is be skinny or die
And even when you achieve that goal, you look in the mirror and you still look the same, you still look like that fat girl who ruined your life, you’re still are the girl that nobody likes
Habits are hard to get rid of
Like how you bite your nails and tap your toes
I know how hard it is to stop but you must stop, you are killing yourself you are stunting the growth of your greatness
Little girls with big dreams, no matter what your size, YOU matter not your body

Locked into each other's arms
Passion burning in the pit of my stomach
We slow danced to Conway Twitty
As we stared into each other's eyes
I’ve never felt so secure
As our hearts wandered past the sea
Now all I know all need is to be with you
To touch you, talk to you
Stare into those deep meaningful brown eyes
And know that so much happier times are coming

I don’t hate gym
it’s not my best class but it also not the worst
I will do push ups
I will run, do sit-ups, crunches and burpees
I will do everything you ask of me
Except play the games
Volleyball, Kickball, baseball
I just can’t
My body tenses, my lips quiver, my head freezes
Everyone’s just so much better than me
Runs faster than me, plays better than me
They look like their having fun
Like everything worth being alive
They look better than me
Dress better than me
This is what I think about during gym
Besides that, girls
Thin girls, thick girls, pretty girls, ugly girls
Who am I? And where do I fit in
Where do I belong?
Not here
In this gym, sweat pouring down my chin
legs wobbly, body tense with anticipation
Muscles weak, brain tired
From shouting
Over and over again
In my head, how useless I am
This is why I don’t participate in gym

Sometimes I hate myself
I don’t know why
Because I don’t say the right thing
And I shouldn’t
Because I’m so nervous
I wish there was something I could be
Something
Poison
Climbing down the stars
Something feral confident
Acid dripping from her tongue
Exhausted from the chase
She’s trying to hard
Dying
Her tears put out the flames
She doesn’t know why
Why she doesn’t recognize herself

How do I explain?
When I don’t know exactly what is going on
Why I’ve been so devastated
Without using my mother's betrayal as my excuse
How do I explain that I can’t smile anymore
How do I explain that I haven’t felt joy in such a long time
That every sign I try to send is denied
The world seems pinned against me every single day
Like it wants me to fail
How can I stop thinking about her?
How I want to change the past
That I want to be able to control what she did
And make her a better mother
How can I explain that just because I miss her does not mean that what I have is not enough
It’s more than enough
But for some reason I need closure
I just want to scream at her
And ask her again and again
Why she couldn’t love me
I want to break something
I want the hole in my chest to fill back up
I want to feel something besides this immense pain inside myself
That no matter what I do I can seem to feel any better
I’m struggling
No hug from anyone can make me feel better
No kind words
Nothing except closure
I want her to pay for the things she did
For making me hurt so bad
I want her to know how badly she’s hurt people
That she’s the villain
I want people to stop telling me
She only did it because she was scared
I was scared too!

Dressed like a daydream
Prepared for heaven
Fast beauty
Forgotten lover
Scorned
Swimming in circles
Until someone held her under
Shallow grave
Cover her so no one will find out
No one will know what happened
Unless her corpse lips speak
Scream
No one heard her
No one saw her
It’s like she was never there

She doesn’t recognize herself
She stares into the mirror
But the face staring back
Isn’t her
This girl is feral
Dangerous
Liquid poison dripping from her tongue
This girl could snap at any point
Collapse at the drop of a hat
Freak out
Then there's no going back
You’re gone
There’s no saving you
You’re all alone
Like you always were
But you’re not anymore
Dark arms pull you in closer
You feel the cold glass hitting your skin
Your eyes closed briefly now you open
She switched spots with you
You bang on the mirror to get out
But now you’re trapped with everyone else
Who’s ever trusted their reflection
Shadows in dusk
Rain in the summertime
This was not supposed to happen

When has life ever been fair?
Sandstorm, stomp the ground
Scream! Get it all out
Anger and devastation has to come out
And you’ll be okay
I promise
Keep trying <3 ‘

Missing you has taught me
That you can both love and hate someone
So much at the same time
Even though it sometimes feels like every part of me is filled with hatred for you
That I can’t close my eyes without seeing what you’ve let happen to me
But I still cry out for you
My dreams are filled with memories of you
Daydreams consists of you coming back for me
Loving me again
Choosing me
Believing me
You’re not someone I should dream of
You’re someone I should hate completely without emotion
But I still have so many feelings
That I can’t explain
Loving you is hurting me
But hating you is killing me

Hold me like a prayer
Broken wings spread
Ready for flight
Caress me like a rose petal
Delicate, fragile, wilting
Fix me like the cars you’re always working on
I’m slowing down
Can’t finish this race
I can’t fly
I’m weighing you down

My fingertips are gold
my heart, navy blue
But only when I
Am thinking of you
No one understands
That I am slowly sinking
Fading away forever
Can’t you see
That i’m trying
But nobody knows
I’m slowly dying

Stop telling me she only did this because she was scared
I was scared too
I was a little girl
She was an adult
She brought him into my life
She watched him hurt me
Kept him around because he made her happy
Because she didn’t get the same kind of treatment her kids got
She got something out of the relationship
All we got was terrorized
For no reason
Because we existed
Because we were there and wanted to stand up for ourselves and our mother
We were hated because we had voices
That kept speaking out whenever he was loud
She is not a battered women
She was not so abused that she couldn’t stand up for herself
There were many times she stood up for herself and said she would leave him
But she would never leave him because of something he had done to us
Only her
She wanted him
Because she needed someone to hold her up
Because she couldn’t take care of herself
Even though she had two children doing their best to hold her
She put all of her weight on us
And all we expected her to do in return
Is be a mother
She wasn’t a mother
She watched us be whipped with belts
We stared up at her waiting for her to tell him to stop
To push him away to do anything
But she wouldn’t she stared at the ground
We told her many times about each man she had brought into our lives
The ones that sexually abused us
Three children came to her for help
One pregnant
She denied each the help they needed
Didn’t believe them, instead asked the abusers for their side of the story
Then the man got arrested
She lied to the police and told them she had no idea
About the beatings about the abuse
Like she hadn’t watched or seen our red, bleeding welts
She still visited him before his trial
Until the very end
Until his “accident” that she claims he caused
After she was so destroyed
She didn’t cry though
Not during the funeral
Not when she found out
She was dry-eyed and angry
She spun out of control for years
We didn’t talk about my father
We didn’t talk about anything
She was never home
Always working
Mainly partying
Coming home skinnier and hyper
Coming home happy until her next fix
All the while my twelve-year-old sister took care of me
Day and night
From the time I was four until I was seven
My mother was a **** head
She got angry quickly
But was so hyper
Leaving all the responsibility to my young sister
To parent both me and her
My sister had always taken the majority of the care for me
But these years it only got worse
At this time, we all slept in the same bed
A five-year-old, and thirteen year old and a thirty-four-year-old
I had put all of my stuffed animals into the bed to sleep with us
It was my mother's idea that she and my sister slept on top of them
And so my sister listened
And they moved their bodies atop my toys
I pulled at my favorite
Because I slept with it every night
My mom got angry and slammed my head into her metal bed frame
Hard
I cried and she apologized but the damage was still done
She met another man
Who cleared her of her sorrows
And made her from a ****** to a trophy wife
She was so happy
So it seemed at first
So was I
At first
He charmed us with restaurants
And fun activities
Structure and attention
That lasted about two weeks
He charmed my mom into marrying him
At this point, we were scared of him
He would yell at us for the smallest mundane things
And punish us without reason
He would hide in our closets
Then pop out when we started talking about him
He would scream at us
I don’t know how to explain how bad this was
You don’t understand unless you were there
You can’t imagine unless you’ve lived through it again and again
His face would get red
His eyes looked like ice
Normally you thought they were blue but when he was angry they looked icy
Like all the fire from his soul was burning him alive and his eyes were trying frantically to put them out
He used a threatening demeanor
He got close to you
Like he was going to hit you
He balled his fist
And told you how pathetic you were
How stupid
How fat
And worthless
First, he’d say it in a cold voice
Then get scream at you
Then he would kick things around
And break them
Like the time he broke my mom's doorway
Kicked it in so much that she couldn’t shut it
He hit me only once
He pushed me into the rocks and struck me hard three times on my bottom
He also threw my makeup bag at me while I was in the shower It hit my head then fell to the ground
My makeup spilled out and my nail polish broke
It spilled all over the bag and all over the shower
He hit my mom a least once I can remember
I told my mom about him sexually abusing me
I told her about him adjusting my bras and touching my *****
Which should have been enough to send a mother haywire
But it wasn’t
I was so ashamed and embarrassed about all of the other things
The things that were so so much worse because I was so scared he’d yell at me
That I just let him touch me, I just let him do the things he wanted to
I’ll forever be mad at myself for that and feel guilty
My mom told me from the start she didn’t believe me
But I didn’t truly believe her until she lied on the stand testifying for her beloved husband
Testifying against the daughter who had tried to protect her so many times
She broke my heart
I haven’t been the same since and that was almost three months ago
No, I don’t forgive my mother
She is not a mother
She was an accomplice to my abuser
She neglected me
She didn’t care and only loved herself
She was scared
But I was too

I daydream about death
Sometimes I wonder how it feels to be 6 feet under
I dream about the release of quiet
Of nothing
No stress
Daydreaming about my mother again
Hoping she’ll show up out of the blue
Come back for me
She won’t
This I know
I don’t want to die
I just think of it often
And I don’t know how to stop thinking
To stop feeling so much
Sometimes you wonder if you’re just as bad as him
Because you saw the mugshot of him
And how much he aged in the past months
So skinny, so stressed
You wonder if you’re just as bad
If you’re causing someone to stress so much
Am I causing him pain?
I don’t care
But I don’t want to turn out like him
I remember when he used to be so intimidating
When you thought no one would believe you
Because he was so convincing
I hope I never cause anyone pain
But I guess sometimes you have to
Because you need to protect others around you

I can feel him over my shoulder
His body, His breath in my ear
I’ve never been holy
I cannot be saved
But I can hear him
Above me
I can feel his song
Swirling around me
I am enough
I am worthy
I have been through a lot
But sometimes it’s worth the price it pays
I’m safe
I have someone to protect me
Someone who cares about me
Who shed their love so I could find the light

All I want to do is help people
No matter their age
If they're going through something I’ve been through
And they let me know they need help
I don’t want to be the person who didn’t help
When someone was hurting
And I did nothing
That’s why I try so hard
Because it hurts me to think someone is in pain
And they think no one cares
Because I thought that too
I wanted to **** myself too
And I was going to do it
Medication didn’t fix that
I wouldn’t have done that
If only I had reached out and gotten help
Talked about it with anyone
I need to help people
It’s in my nature
It tears me up inside to not

Don’t look
I wouldn’t want you to see me like this
It’s best that you look away
I want you to remember me
Exactly the way I was
Don’t look now
My face is greying
My hair is fraying
I know I keep on saying
But don’t, don’t look
My eyes are unblinking
My heart is sinking
Please don’t look
You wouldn’t like what you see

Little girls grow up with Disney
And all your life Disney girls have been found by their princes
All your life you have waited for your prince but time and again he has not shown up
Then suddenly, here he is, and he is nothing like you expected
All he wants to do is play video games, ignore you and he never ever shaves
You try to do what Disney princesses do but now it just doesn’t feel like it should but you go through the motions because he is the only one who showed up
Then you meet another Disney girl, except she is nothing like you expected she never waits for what she wants, and she makes you feel like yourself again
You realize that you don’t need to wait for your prince any longer for your princess has been here all along

Linoleum, single white floor tile
Stare at the ceiling for three hours
Follow me round the bend
To make sure I’m taking care of myself
When things got hard, free-flying into hard mattresses slamming cold, white catch yourself doors
Looking out the big barred window to see the humans below you who haven’t been caught not coping with their feelings yet
When the scratching started and didn’t stop until the clock struck six
Maybe it was the med cart that saved you that day
Shadows flicker in the dim light that glows to remind you that you are cared for, but only if you ask
You’re thought of only if reminded
You’re a priority but remember there is always someone else openly slamming that door while you lie and say you’re fine
You must believe I will get better to be with me
You must believe in me to be around me
Don’t spread your doubt about what you don’t know
To poison my tired mind
Because I am trying
And that’s all I can promise you