I am sick.

I have to keep telling myself that.

It's just a sickness that eats away at your heart,
Making you feel unworthy,
Useless,
Pointless.

And with proper treatment,
It can be lessened,
Though it will never go away.

It's just a sickness that deteriorates
Your self esteem,
Your confidence (if you had any to begin with),
And your relationships with others,
Because you sabotage all of them.

It's a sickness, right?
Because you get so tired of fighting it,
Tired of pretending to be okay,
Tired of being tired.
And dear God, you're so very tired.

And everything hurts,
And your patience is thinning,
Because you feel hopeless,
And the meds aren't working as quickly as you would have liked,
And you're still going through a harsh withdrawl from medications
The doctor told you to stop.

But there's just enough fight left in you,
Where all you want is to feel better
So you can laugh again.
So you don't make him so sad and worried.

It's a sickness, I am sure.
Because I feel so sick of it.

I love in vast amounts.

With all of me.

With my whole being.

How do you "low key" love someone?

How do you not give your all?

How do you not wear yourself thin?

I'm destroying myself
Because I love so much.
Because with the amount of love I give,
I know I'll never be worth half of it.

And maybe it's some kind of cosmic punishment.
For whatever sins against whatever god I may have committed.

Too much of anything is too much.
Even something like love.

My skin is starving for your touch,
And my heart aches for your voice.

I don't think I'll ever get better
And maybe that's why you're so far away
Even when you're right here.

It's the biggest lie I've ever heard.
People only tell it when they become old, and bitter, and jaded.

You must be able to rely on yourself.
You have to be able to pick yourself up
Off the bathroom floor,
When you collapse in a mess of blood and tears,
At three in the morning.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't rely on others.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't have faith,
Or hope,
And it doesn't mean you should never love.

I was told the opposite by a Catholic deacon.
He said
That when you feel down and out and full of self hatred
That it's okay to lean on those around you.
It's okay to ask them for help and guidance.

I struggled to hide tears, and I told him
"What if you have no one?"
Because at one point, that's exactly what I had.
No one.

He sat with me, and didn't bother hiding his tears.
I still wonder what made him cry, when he spoke to me.
Was it the fact that I was so small and young and yet so broken?
Or the fact that I reminded him of his daughter, and that I had, unlike her, faced much more of the worlds cruelty?

I tried not to let it get to me.

He told me
That if I feel I have no one,
Know that I at least have him in my corner,
And whether or not I still believe (and he understood if I didn't) that he would be praying for me
And a strong, and hopefully swift, recovery.

I like relying on others.
I like when they rely on me.
Humans are pack animals.
We must rely on each other,
It's what we're supposed to do.

And now that I have someone
Who I know I can always rely on,
I realize how bitter and cold and hopeless
A person must feel
To truly believe
You can only ever rely on yourself.

You haunt my dreams,
Egging on the sentiment that my subconscious favors,
The little mantra of
"You're not good enough."
Or
"You're worthless."

And while I should be fired up
Into a frenzied rage
That you would dare treat anyone
As poorly as you treated me,
I am much too tired.

I am much too done.

I am in a lull
Where there is no sound
And no hate-fueled anxiety
Rampaging through my heart.

For my mind is getting the best of me,
It whispers "Are you sure he loves you?"
And before I can respond with logic,
It shuts me up while hissing "Are you sure you're capable of being loved?"

And I try to keep it together,
But I crumble when I'm near him,
When I hear his voice,
Because it's so hard to be strong
In front of someone I only want to be honest with.

Maybe I'm supposed to feel bad
For the way we left things.
Maybe I'm supposed to feel guilt
Inspired by your gaslighting and lies.

But I feel no guilt towards you,
I am punished enough by the dreams where you hurt me,
Again and again and again.

The only guilt I feel
Is that I cannot be better
For him.
At least not yet.
At least not quickly enough.

I have sunset eyes
That see through facades
And every disguise
You could front.

I have midnight eyes,
That create oceans of tears,
Produced from lies,
Yours, theirs, and mine.

I have sunset eyes,
That bring forth life
And revitalize
Those without purpose.

I have midnight eyes,
That pierce through your soul,
And no one really can realize
Until it's too late.

But you have sky blue eyes,
That hold the sun just around your pupils.
And your eyes remind me
That I too can fly.

Your eyes are sky blue,
With a sunny forecast ahead.

I always thought blue eyes were pretentious,
And that brown eyes were boring.

But when I first fell in love with you,
I could feel the honesty flowing off you,
And when I touched you that fateful Saturday,
In a friendly hug,
Gentle kindness rolled off of your colors,
And I was finally home.

And now when I look in your eyes,
I am reminded that blue is now my second favorite color,
And when you look at me,
I realize brown isn't so bad
Either.

It feels like my skin is crawling,
Though I know that's just the old medication
Seeping out of my pores.

It feels like the room is spinning,
But that's just me getting used to
It not being in my system,
Because the new medication hasn't kicked in yet.

I'm a mess,
I'm a wreck.

My emotions are splattered on the wall
Like red paint or rust colored blood stains.

I feel myself slipping
But it is a slow decline
From sanity.

I fall into the void,
But the void spits me back up.

And why shouldn't it?
I'm not done here,
No, not yet.

Breathing isn't something that comes to me
With ease.

Breathing is difficult,
And I forget to do it often.

I'm so wrapped up
In awe,
In anxiety,
In wonder,
In despair,
That I forget that breathing
Keeps me here.

I have to force myself to breathe sometimes.

Because other times the air is too thin,
Or too thick,
And it chokes me.

I have a phobia of asphyxiation,
Which is pretty ironic
Seeing as something always
Takes my breath away.