Resilient? 
***** resilient. 
I don’t feel resilient. 
I feel alone, confused. 
I feel pain. 
I feel pain now as if I had never felt pain before. 
I feel my lungs, aching to cease movement being the first thing I notice every morning. 
I feel the way barbed wire tangles itself around my ribs and pulls in. 
I feel the tears on my face when I wake up in the middle of the night, panting, as though I’ve just been submerged in a lake of ice. 
I feel the memory of you. 
I hear the memory of you. 
You are in every call my phone receives, every text that comes in. 
You are in every place I go. 
Things you’ve said. 
The way you laugh. 
The way we were. 
I remember the first time we told each other we loved each other. 
And the hiding us from our families. 
I remember the late nights and the ungodly early mornings. 
I remember falling in love with you. 
I remember all of the arguments, the eye rolls, the times apart. 
I remember the way you made me feel like I didn’t want to want to die anymore. 
The way you could make me smile with just a sigh. 
The way you turn me into putty. 
I remember being yours. 
How territorial you get. 
How you always listen. 
I remember the plans we made. 
The life we wanted. 
I remember us. 
The couple our friends were jealous of. 
The fairy tale story we wanted to tell our grandchildren. 
I remember who I was with you. 
Who I wanted to be. 
How you made me softer but somehow stronger. 
How you taught me to love without being scared. 
How I loved you and I wasn’t scared. 
Because I had you. And it was us.
So no. I don’t feel resilient. I feel battered and broken. I feel tired.

It's a shame, I think.
You know, the man whose last name I wear,
Like and itchy sweater,
Is still here, still breathing,
Still stirring up old memories.
That man used to be my daddy.
Now he's a stranger wearing my daddy's clothes,
Wearing my daddy's face, wearing my daddy's cologne,
And driving my daddy's car.
My daddy passed away a long time ago,
Left me with an emotionless clone of him
And a pocket full of hope.
My daddy has been gone for what feels like ages.
This impostor pretends to care, pretends to be the man that raised me,
Pretends to be my favorite person, pretends to know me better than I know myself,
And what's worse, pretends **** is just something you do in your spare time
But when you lose your job, all you have is spare time.

My daddy always told me not to be sad when he died
Because he knew he'd die doing something he loves,
But what could he loved so much that is was more appealing than his only daughter.
How could he not know that by dying this way,
There'd be no spirit to stay with me,
No body for me to cremate the way he wanted.
How could he not know that I needed him to stay
So I could practice all of the things he taught me?
How could he not know that every little girl needs her daddy,
not someone wearing his skin,
not fond memories and fairy tales

My daddy died a long, long time ago.
If I had known better then, I would have payed attention
Enough to be able to to have a time of death or even a date
At the memorial service I'll never get to have.
The man who wears my daddy's meatsuit has done so much damage
That no one stops to consider this man isn't my daddy at all.

Don't they all know he's dead?

Some people are cursed with a terrible memory,
days blurring into weeks, weeks blurring into months.
Some are blessed with the ability to remember everything,
every face in a crowd, every lyric to every song.
But there are some things you never forget.
For instance you'll never forget the name of your first love,
or you'll never forget what your partner wore on your wedding day.
You'll never forget those things, those happy wonderful things.

With all of that in mind, let's take a walk.
Let's think about the not-so-minor-minority;
the one-in-three/ one-in-seven statistic.
Let's stroll over to a place where dark memories outweigh all the good.

This is a place where a raised voice
is more familiar than a burst of thunder.
Where your own name strikes fear into your heart.
Where your first memory, or any memory of intimacy
is not of a gentle lover's hands.
Where the trigger warning applies to you.
Where you don't speak because you've never been heard before:
why would it be different now?
Where you don't understand how other people can walk around
pretending that things like this don't happen.
Where you don't understand how people can think that this can't happen to them.
Where you know because it happened to you.

Do not forget about the people who say 'nothing'
when they mean 'everything'.
Do not forget about those who say they don't want to talk about it
when they really just don't know what to say:
how to convey the feelings inside their chests.
Remember the people who had their voices stolen from them.
Remember those who don't remember what it was like to be innocent.
Do not forget about the not-so-minor-minority;
the one-into-three/one-in-seven statistic
because regardless of who you are,
there are some things you never, ever forget.