You have dreams of big cities and fancy cars and you are surrounded by beautiful people
But your ship is drowning
You've been on this voyage for 18 years now and you've come farther than you ever thought you would have but you will come up alittle short
Just as always
You have such big dreams but larger deadly habits
The razors won't help you and you know that but
Somewhere in your head you have convinced yourself that if you drain out all your blood you will also drain out all the hate and be lighter than ever and then you can finally make it to shore
But, my dear, the hate is not in your blood it is in your head
You are the captain of this sinking ship but your depression is your first mate
Your depression has been the evil stowaway that has been sleeping in your brain for years now
The hate in your head can be traced back to it
You've spent the last eighteen years trying to track its every move
You've performed countless operation on yourself trying to make yourself better trying to remove your depression
You would have thought you were van gogh trying to paint the perfect smile on your face because you know people say smiles can cure depression but i guess you just didn't try hard enough or maybe you should have ate yellow paint instead
But no matter how you decorate the ship it is still sinking

Sixth grade was the first time I remember feeling out of place in my own body. I tried on a shirt from the year before and realized I wasn't the same size anymore. I felt strange for a moment, then brushed it off. I threw away the shirt the next day. By the end of middle school I knew I was bigger than my friends, but I tried to avoid thinking about it. I just wanted to fit in like the rest of them.

Freshman year I got called fat and decided to make myself invisible. Treated every food as if it an allergy. Lost 30 pounds in 60 days. Told my parents I already ate. Told my friends I was eliminating junk food. Told no one my secret for years.

Gained my weight back then lost it just as quickly. The never ending cycle of starving, binging, purging.
Starving, binging, purging.
Starving, binging, purging.
Nobody notices when I fall off track because disordered eating is only cared about when the victim is skinny enough that you can see the evidence. I have been terrified for four years to speak out for fear nobody would believe me when I told them.
No one expects a bigger girl to not know how to feed herself.
There is something to say about a culture so warped that I get upset by the fact I don't have a stereotypical eating disorder body.

Sometimes I wish it was more obvious, so at least that way they could see how hard I'm trying to be perfect... To fit in.
America, am I not sick enough for you already?

"The problem with suicide is that when it becomes an option in your mind, it's always an option."

My dad has always wanted me to write more happy poems, but joy has never rolled off my tongue as eloquently as sorrow.
I tried to sit down the other day and write a poem about the before. But after hours of searching my brain, I realized that I don't remember my body as anything other than the desolate, war-torn site it currently is.
I wish I could pinpoint the exact moment the switch was flipped. Go back to the day I woke up unhappy and force myself to go back to bed. I wish I could rewrite history and completely erase the first time I skipped a meal. I'd throw all the laxatives in the garbage. I never would have bought my first razor blade. Or my second. Or my third. I wouldn't have gotten sent to the hospital.

I guess it's true what they say about hindsight being 20/20. It's so much easier for me to look back on it, knowing what I know now.
I know that people didn't suddenly love me more just because I was less to take in. And scars are permanent; they don't fade just because the feelings attached to them do. I also realize that the only thing the hospital stay did was make me more of a burden to my family.

I'd love to tell 10 year old Briauna all this before she has to face it on her own, but why would she believe me? I wouldn't want to believe me either. Who would want to go watch a movie, when all the reviews rated it a waste of time?

So if I were to go back into the past, I'd focus on telling my younger self about the rebirth rather than the wreckage. I would tell her that tattoos will someday take the place of self-inflicted scars. That this time around there was a beauty behind the pain. That one day she will relearn what it means to eat whenever she's hungry and not stop until she's full. I'd tell her that nothing good ever came from being empty. I'd talk about how she adores others blindly and never lets her passion be dimmed. I'd tell her not to stress when the urge to claw her skin off remains well into recovered territory because she gets better at remembering to trim her nails.

I'd say baby girl I know you can get through this because I'm standing right here.

We'll get through this.
We're getting through this.
We got through this.

why wasn't I
enough?

When I can't feel anything, I watch a sad movie or read the ending of sad books and sometimes I wonder why I do things to make me cry instead of laugh until I waste an hour and a half watching a comedy that isn't even funny to remember  that the easiest feeling to achieve is heartache. And maybe that's twisted but I don't even remember what twisted is because twisted is my normal.

Sometimes happiness takes place of the emptiness but once it's gone it's like stepping on something sharp on carpet and trying to find it. And that may sound odd because stepping on something sharp is painful but so is a happy person with an anxious mind knowing that in only a matter of time that sweet, warm feeling won't be there anymore.

If someone were to knock on my body, it'd be hollow and they would probably imagine it as cold and damp and decide that it's not worth their time. And maybe that's why I'm alone, because everyone is a little afraid of an abandoned house.

One morning
you'll wake up
and your skin will feel soft
your hair will fall perfectly
and you won't miss
him.

the sickest part
about realizing you are in love with someone
is figuring out that
they don't have to love you back
we believe that
the person that we hold closest to us
should hold onto us just as tightly
sometimes they can't
because they are too busy
holding onto someone else
who isn't holding them back either
and the trend goes on forever.

so after all of this, here i am
sitting on the edge of another strangers bed
coughing up all the 'i love you's that were said to me
but never meant for me
i realize now that curses don't always unbreak
the past is tied to you
like cinder blocks around your ankles
and pressing hard against your chest
like the weight of his other woman
your true loves kiss
wont fix a **** thing
if the love isnt mutual
lately ive learned that
it is sometimes better when you get stuck
kissing your own wounds
and sometimes is always
i never believed that i was somebody
that someone else could love again

thank you for proving me right