I'm starting this new life
new town
new job
better fiends
I'm building myself up and you're still demanding a roof with no foundation
you're complaining about the lack of paintings but you don't have any walls to put them on
I've given you all the materials that I can
It hurts me to know that you wont be with me the same way on this journey anymore
seventeen years of growth has changed us both
and while I'm terrified to go without you
I know you will hold be back
I am excited to see how far I can go by only taking care of myself

I will always be your best friend

--I think you stopped being mine awhile ago

I want to pack a bag, step outside, and walk
I don’t know where—I don’t have a destination,
Never have
I just want to walk and escape life for a little while
But I can’t do that
I have bills and jobs and people and animals depending on me
I was supposed to know who I was by this point
Instead my soul endlessly wanders without my body’s company
Reaching conclusions with flawed logic
And I know healing is not linear,
But all I’ve ever done is walk forward
and I’m still unsure of where I am and where to go from here

I blame it on a lot of things
The timing was wrong
We had different goals
The spark was gone
We just weren't on the same path
I blame a lot on outside forces
I should own up though
I only spoke when spoken to
Only hung out when asked
Never me being the one to iniate contact
I distanced myself
Emotionally
Physically
Mentally
I was our ruin
As with every relationship I've been in
I am my own downfall

They spoke to me today about the possibility of discharge
I don't want to leave
here I feel steady
unjudged
cared for and loved
here, I'm away from the stresses of the outside world
I don't want to go back
the biggest stresses I have here are what coloring page I'm going to do;
what number I can't figure out in my Sudoku, if there's music or animal therapy today outside---
I'm forced to be an adult  
I've been an adult my entire life
I've never gotten to be a child

I'm on my third group of patients
now the welcoming committee to a place I was once a stranger
I know the walls and schedules,
which nurses work at night,
where the Tech met her husband,
and the due dates for the pregnant staff
I'm on my third group of patients
each one leaving bittersweet
these people know me without judgment
I can talk without fear
and with each discharge--
I feel like I'm losing a piece of myself
I'm on my third group of patients
I'm having to learn to let go
this part is never easy

A suburb of hell I live in
Across the road from the picture perfect family
Small, yappy little dog who is walked every morning and night by loving husband and father of three
Next door the father who left his family to live with his gay lover downtown
Three young boys and a wife who will never understand
Behind every door is a secret
The Wilsons live a sheltered and abusive life
The man of the family is powerful
The cunninghams across from them are timid and smile to hide the bruises on their arms
Father knows best after all
My door hides the racist, the Republican, the conservative, the homophobic
My door hides the yelling of a bipolar mother off medication
The alcoholism of a child too young to drink
And the silent watch of a father trapped in a loveless marriage
Every house in this suburb of hell tells a story
None of which are happy
Yet you see my neighborhood and call me privilaged
If only you knew.

I asked and you answered
One thing on your bucket list
An act I have since put on mine
Go to a castle
And sit on the throne

I had to take a CPR class last september.
and my instructor told us we learn this
to save lives because everyone has a reason
for living
going around the table he asked us why
we were alive
family
friends
people that anchor us to the world
all the answers you would expect
for someone who was asked why they were still
alive
but when he asked me I told him I didn't have reason
how was I supposed to say that mine is spite?

I think I missed something
I think I was supposed to have a hiccup in my aging where I partied and went crazy
college right?
high school?
my 20's?
I think I missed it.
I think I went straight from being a child to
a 65 year old lady who goes to bed early
with bad eyesight and who wears cardigans in
90 degree heat beause you're always cold when you're old
I think I missed it

Small but there--
I can acknowledge it in the least;
A dim glowing of a promise
That something is yet to come
And I feel like Gatsby staring at that green light across the lake
So certain his love is there,
But I know that my light is attainable
If only I should chose to be brave

--Im holding out hope that fear will not stop me from loving again.

Everything about me dwindles down to this
broken body, mangled branches, rivers of blood
I am nothing more than true unbridled feeling
and sometimes that scares me

There are letters behind my name
not ones earned with prestige and degrees but ones that follow nonetheless
MDD, GAD, BPDII, ADHD, OCD, hEDS
defining traits of my mental
and while they label they don't add any value to my life
in fact they do the opposite
they hinder every moment
every thought
every action
every task it takes a village

---I hate asking for help

You told me once that you
were lost and just needed
to feel things out but
your hands had been broken

Today and group we talked about super powers
I've always talked about wanting to freeze time but I've never really asked myself why
I think I'm scared of the world moving on without me
that I'm running out of time to make an impact
that I'll be forgotten
I have issues with abandonment
I feel alone

If I could stop time I'd be able to travel,
see the world without the craziness or commotion of everyday life
I think I just want a break
here I was given a break,
someone else to take care of me for a while this place is like stopping time
only the world is going on without me
I don't know if I'm ready to go back

I know staying here much longer can affect my progress
but Mania feels the same as getting better and while I'm ready for better,
I'm scared of good
of the fix
that the stitches I've placed will start tearing out again

They told you
you had changed since you met me
of course I believe that to be true too
I've changed since I met you too
But of course over two years you would be different
who wouldn't be?
change of school, jobs, life plans
the only constant here was me
so fingers were pointed at the only thing that stayed the same about you
and I had no say at all

I feel heavy in my chest--
an anxious weight of the knowledge that it's about to be bad again;
I can feel it getting bad again

and the trigger might have been you or it could have been this impending sense of  doom I cannot seem to shake--
but it's going to be bad again

I can almost grab it--
fingers desperately trying to pull a dumbell off my lungs
my arms are too weak
and the bell is too slick
and I can't seem to grasp it quite yet but it's there;
sitting,
heavy,
holding me down while the sword of damocles is hanging above my throat--
I can see it's getting bad again

but I cannot move,
and the sun is setting quick--
the darkness almost comforting as a distraction from the cool steel of the blade taunting me--
I cannot seem to watch as the sword begins to drop

it's getting bad again,
I can feel it--
see it in the ways the world's colors tinge a subtle sepia,
hear it in the ways my favorite songs don't sound as they should,
taste it in how foods are turning repulsive to my mouth--nauseous and burning,
smell it in the smoke I use to drown out the constant ringing of alarm bells,

trust me when I say:
I'm not prepared for the worst--and well,
it's getting bad again

The trepidation I've felt has begun to settle somewhere other than my chest
I've been known to be reluctant with change, especially with myself
this change is good but unfamiliar
I can't decipher the medium --that steady baseline people are supposed to have with their emotions
so they are keeping me for observation
like we do with a sick fish at work
my sick is in my mind
it's harder to diagnose--
unseen and masked--
hidden and shameful;
here, I've begun to forgive myself

I hold these superstitions dear to me
knowing they're nonsense and choosing to ignore that reality
I step cautiously over the cracks in the sidewalk on good days
and on bad ones I stomp on every one hoping you feel the pain that I do
I know you don't deserve it mother, but my feet land on them still
I still throw spilled salt over my shoulder
hoping that maybe this time some luck will come of it
and I avoid walking under ladders if not for safety's reason than for those years of bad luck
Believe me when I say that I know these petty rituals won't affect an invisible force like luck
But I wear my night shirt inside out and backwards thinking that somehow it will cause snow to appear
These superstitions of mine may be childish
It may be downright insane for any sensible young woman to believe in such a thing
But I hold onto this childish hope that maybe
just maybe
If I do enough of these superstitious acts
that my life will finally turn around
and for once I will be lucky....

I don't think I've ever been satisfied with my life
I don't think I ever will be until I am nothing but dust
See I crave death in the way others dont
I don't want to go to heaven or hell or spend my life somewhere in between the two
I would be so bored
bored of "eternal piece"
bored of "eternal pain"
routine, mundane, eternal
never changing, predictable
I would loathe a forever like that
I crave reincarnation
I crave growth and new experiences and new adventures and new perspectives
I crave what I cannot get in this life
or the next life or the next life after that
I crave knowledge and empathy and ignorance and spite
I crave the ever-changing unknowable world that our bodies live in
I will never be satisfied

Sharing my poetry with the world is terrifying
It's like I'm showing a part of myself that I'm still afraid to admit exsists
I dont know what it is about having others read my writing that is both thrilling and absolutely petrifying at the same time

I can't be there for you if you push me away
too bad for you though,
I'm quite stubborn with things that I love
You're dating a force to reckon with

The groups seems to bring out emotions I'm not fond of facing alone
and these people make me feel safer than my own family
but although the depression is lessening,
its cousin anxiety has settled in somewhere deep in my gut
sending shockwaves to my fingertips
I fidget
I disassociate
I crave desertion
but I've been running
and I've been hiding from the skeletons seeping their way out my closet
bony metatarsals and phalanges fiddiling with the lock
it will rust soon enough
I don't know if I'm ready for the break

It's rejection

And loss

The slow realization that everyone who meets me expects me to change


I find myself alone

Guarded

Knowing that every time I open up to someone

They eventually leave


And in losing everyone else

I'm slowly losing myself



--and my mind

I always thought that I
was the protagonist of my story,
why then, are you trying
to make it about yourself

And I want to mark you as my territory like how girls mark theirs in Bobby pins on bathroom sinks

I dont like confrontation.
In fact I will do almost anything to avoid it if I can
Thats probably what makes me a good manager-- because I'm able to diffuse a situation before it becomes one
That's also probably why I let the trash pile up on the patio for weeks until we recieved an eviction notice
Because I'm scared of confrontation

I'm scared to tell you it hurts me that I've done the dishes the last 3 times because you wont put in a maintenance request to fix the dishwasher but I can't because you want to be here when someone comes.
I'm scared to tell you I hate that I'm the only one who takes out the trash because you ***** and gag if you touch a trash bag
Well I'm gagging too, but it has to be done because we're adults.
I'm always so happy when I come home and find the trash to be gone only to open the pantry and find the bags there. Only to open the balcony door and find the trash there.
Now that I think about it, you always complain that you'll throw up if you do it and I think that's a form of gaslighting.
I'm scared to tell you that instead of buying supplies to make cobbler when we had no food in the house, you should have bought basic materials to eat or god forbid a plunger because your toilets been clogged for 3 weeks and you have to use mine.

I'm scared to tell you I hate your rabbit and the fact that it chewed up 4 of my phone chargers, my echo plug, my laptop cord, vaccum, and is now tearing up my carpet. Oh also the fact that it's YOUR rabbit and I had to buy you hay when you were running low, but you could buy another fish tank we dont have room for.

I'm scared to tell you these habits of yours are bothering me because you're no longer lucid and I think you're slightly addicted---but everytime your boyfriend brings that up you complain.

I'm scared of confrontation. So tonight I made 4 trips to the dumpster at 2am filling my car up with garbage bag after garbage bag because I was embarrassed of how much trash we had and I didn't want the neighbors to hear or see.

I told you I was doing it at that time expecting your help, but instead you told our guest you'd waited all day for me to do it and took a trazodone and fell asleep.

Tomorrow I can already tell I'll have to wear my braces and use my cane.

Tomorrow I'll wake with baggy eyes from a sleepless night of anger of frustration of worry of tears from the fear that comes with the confrontation of the text I sent you asking you to please take out the last of the 3 trash bags by the door.

I'm waiting for the excuses.

I dont demand respect a lot
I'm not the kind to hold my position above others for control
But I do demand human decency

You know those times
at three A.M.
when you walk into the bathroom
look in the mirror
and you don't recognize the face looking back at you?

I don't think I can have children
I've always thought that I was infertile
It never really bothered me
I never wanted to go through that pain, those long nine months of probably bed-rest if my family's history of pregnancy is anything to go by--
My mother wasn't supposed to be able to have children
My sister is infertile
The girls in my family don't typically do well with pregnancy
So I was never phased by the idea that I wouldn't have my own flesh and blood running around
I'd have much rather adopted or fostered children who need homes and love
But when you
after years saying you didn't want your own kids
admit to me that you want your own flesh and blood children
It crushed me
I don't think I can have kids
Never really wanted them before
But I would do anything to give you that wish

I’m scared
And I hate to say that about myself
Because I have lived in a sense of false security for so long
Reliant on others because I can’t be reliant on myself
And I’ve developed this system of ignore, persist, and repeat
And I think its slowly draining me

There are moments when I can forget that my life is the way that it is
Self-medicating to prevent the anxiety from creeping up into my throat
Turning off the big light to blind myself from all the ugly pieces of me that I am ashamed of seeing
It is my instinct to believe that something is wrong with me

And I’ve never been good at being alone
Though I crave it all the same
When I am alone I can breathe in the darkness
Veiled by the idea that running away will one day have to stop

But I still find my legs striving towards to finish line
Try as I might take my time to get there
The idea of just completing the race urging myself forward
A success where I have never had any before

I am trying
And I am healing
And I know that it is not linear
I know I have many more obstacles ahead of me
But I think the want may finally outweigh the hatred and shame

I used to think you had to be worse to go in patient
and then my three days turned to ten
and everyone else had come and gone four times over
and nursing students were assigned to me to be thier case study
I didnt realize they weren't assigned to everyone
I'm in outpatient now
and the social worker is telling me that I was in patient for a long time
this I have had to come and accept
I was a lot worse than I thought

and people wonder how you get to that place
to neglecting yourself to the point of decaying
I can't explain it to you
I wouldn't want anyone to understand
if you do, then you should be here too.

The funny thing about most toxins
Is that you can have them in small amounts without any consequence
It's only when
You sit in it long enough,
Injest it so many times--
That you get sick

She was like smoke:
Interesting to look at.
Moving so intricately in her dance,
she entranced all those who watched.
She encapsulated the depth of a soul.
She was the personification of darkness,
and the bringer of light to destroy it.
She flowed so freely like the wind.
Nothing could hold her to this world.
Touching her was useless.
She fell right through any fingers reaching for her.
I remember finding that odd,
as she had touched every heart to
come in contact with her.
I once asked her why she had to go.
her response was a whisper in my ear
and laughter like bells.
I never got a response.
I suppose she had other places to be.
She was always transforming,
changing,
flowing,
running.
She never stayed in one place for long-
always choosing to follow the beauty
that intrigued her,
and never noticing that she, herself,
held that same beauty.
But then again,
She was like smoke.

  --My sister had a friend who died at 16

A dusty grey gritty feeling has always been in my lungs from choking back words and impulse I'd be admonished for breathing

It took years of practice to craft the smog into a milky then translucent expected response: appropriate ---Instead of one lacking tact

But with you
I falter

It stays, it stays, it stays this way--
Close in the dark; words huddling and wrapped in the eager cavity of your chest
Using ribs as lap bars hoping to keep this feeling there---
Trapped until it heals you
Too long has past since your heart felt love like this
And you fear if it leaves the ride prematurely, it will be to afraid to try again

--Your heartbeats are sounding over the roaring in your ears that this could fall apart again

I keep waiting for the other foot to drop
waiting for someone to tell me that this
dream that I'm in is too good to be true
I know I should wake up but that would
mean facing a nightmare
I keep waiting for everything going
right in my life to laugh in my face in
disbelief that I fell for the joke that my life
could be anything worth living
I'm flicking my eyes to the corners and
shadows of rooms expecting the cameras
to come out any day now
Reality is so entertaining;
my failure and strife amusement to others
I'm waiting but nothing is coming
I haven't heard any hands on doors pounding
any car engines start running
any heavy breathing approaching to boast that this if fake
For once in my life things are going right

I am happy

I am living

I am happy that I'm living

   ---5 Years ago I wouldn't have believed you

Like a child,
I play pretend
I run and hide from the monsters
unlike a child
I have no one to check under the bed
in the closet
behind the door
I live alone
and find comfort in that
but I cannot be my own caregiver
the difficulties in my wants are oxymoronic what I want and what I need are playing tennis
the ball constantly bouncing back-and-forth face and conquer
or fear and cower
the match has yet to end

-- they are undefeated in their own fields

I've been letting these feelings of complacency linger for awhile now
avoiding the process of acknowledgement like it's an overused hobby in my freetime

and it's rare for me to act--
instead I diminish and allow myself to curl in on myself
rather than facing head-on the things I fear

I am weak like that--
weathered down by time like a stone in a creekbed until my sharp edges are smooth--
only good for skidding above the water and sinking down below--
my obtrusive nature nonexistent,
only useful to those searching for me

but I've been sitting here complacent--
letting the rushing of the currents wear me down,
and I find I am tired of it's constant freezing presence
sitting beneath the crystal waters--visible to those searching for my stone,
waiting for the helpful hand of someone brave enough to seek me out
waiting to fit perfectly in the palm of their hand

and maybe I'll find that I've found purpose again.

I hope one day your lips will curl around your meager breakfast of coffee and cigarettes and acknowledge that despite what they've told you, you are not hard to love.

Its here again tonight like a cinder brick on my chest
In this grave I call a bed I'll surely die from no rest
The air is too thick milkshake through a narrow straw
And no matter how I gasp air will not provide my lungs
with what they need to survive

And I'm sweating and I'm turning
Well at least I am in my mind because I'm stuck in too warm sheets and the heat they trap inside
I can hear my heart beat like a bomb counting to my doom
And it keeps on beating faster and I dont know what to do

--Lately I can't sleep with the thought that I will die

It sent shivers through his body;
he sought warmth in the sharp tang of the whiskey
no matter how much he drank though, he was still cold--
the only burning in the back of his throat,
in his stomach,
as he tried to not *****.
strange too, was the burning of his hands, of his forehead;
ghosts of her soft touches from earlier in the day
they calmed him then
why weren’t they calming him now?

I feel stupid
humiliated
embarrassed rather than chagrined
and I want to cry like a child who has lost their favorite toy
I am a downfall unto myself

but I cannot scream
and I cannot cry
because doing so would be admitting defeat--
even if it would give me some relief

I feel like I'm in a constant fight to prove myself
where previously I would have been given grace
I find I am given none,
even with it being my name

There is a first aid kit in my bathroom
Menagerie of cotton, disinfectant, plasters
Reaching for it I click the lid open and stare
Push aside some boxes never opened never needed
Push aside wrappers long since needing a trash can
And as I rummage I become frantic
        Not here!
           Not here!
            Where is it?
         Not here!
It seems this first aid kit cannot do much for my mental
It cannot do much for broken heart
It cannot do much for a frantic night of disallusions
But it can keep my paper cut covered and protected from unexpected assaults from overuse of hand sanitizer
And that will have to do...

I fought with you the other night
the tears on my face trying desperately to wash
away the demeaning words you threw at me
an embarrassment to you
a *** who will never be anything more
I have to keep telling myself that this is gas lighting
this is abuse
this is you making yourself feel better
because I have to believe that I am so much
more than you limit me to be
after all
if I can't believe in myself
who could?

I coughed and I choked up sea water
My feelings for you bursting through my throat so quickly my nostrils and lungs were full
It burned
This love, this salt is rough and course and tears through my chest
You taught me love can be painful
I'm still learning to accept that

I cut my finger on a can opener last night and now I'm constantly reminded of how sensitive I am

I wish my heart was calloused so I wouldn't ache everytime another meaningless occurrence reminds me of you
But hearts are not hard
They cant become calloused
And even though they are surrounded by bone, ribs are meant to be flexible

This finger will heal
It will scar and callouse with repeated use
My heart instead grows only softer and weaker with time
I dont know how much abuse it can take.

For as long as I can remember
I believed that I would die young
I'm still here
Age twenty
And I still wonder
If death will show it's face soon
I've tried to meet him many times
Clearly he's avoiding me for a reason then
If I am still here
I'm still here
Death,
I'm still here