my mother says i have an addictive personality, that i become addicted to people and places and routines. i become so intrinsically intertwined with them that i can no longer differentiate between the parts of me and the pieces i've picked up along the way. i love obsessively, captivated entirely.

my grandmother gave me a diamond necklace for my 18th birthday. i haven't taken it off since. i wear it all day, at the gym, in the shower, chain strung around my neck like a noose. i will wear it until the clasp digs into the back of my neck, skin melding around it like a tree branch growing through a chain link fence. i will wear it to bits, until there is nothing left. i can't accept jewellery as a gift anymore because how could i ever take off this necklace. i don't know when to give it a rest, let it breathe.

i latch onto people, lose myself in their mediocre attention, and watch as my personality slips through their fingers until i have nothing left of myself to offer. i pick bits of people and places out from underneath my nails, storing them in my bedside drawer with 21 years of cards and broken jewellery.

i am absolutely suffocating.

it's the day before my driving exam and i still don't know how to parallel park. i'm sitting in the passenger seat as my mother drives to our old church. this space no longer holds me. i stare blankly at the bug smeared across the windshield and hope my silence will be mistaken for submission.

we sit in the right wing of the chapel, half way up the staircase. i make eye contact with the girl i made out with last summer in the youth pastor's office. she is all sour cherries, collarbone tan lines, and the taste of salt water on my tongue. she abruptly turns and whispers something to her friend. the friend gasps, clasps her hands together, and starts to stammer, "Dear Lord.."

love the sinner, hate the sin. this love is choking me.

i know they pray for me over melancholic sermons, stale pizza, and gospel songs. then they write slurs on my locker, ***** me, and try to turn me straight all for the glory of God. i wonder if anyone ever thinks to pray for them.

the pastor starts to list things he considers abominations: bruised avocados, atheists, wokeness, his ex wife. my eyes glaze over.

as a child i learned "lesbian" was a bad word before i learned it was a part of my identity. i was taught that my love is inappropriate, immoral, nothing more than a **** category most commonly searched by the same boys that tell me to rot in hell.

thats when it starts, the same speech i've heard my whole life.

i am a sinner.

my sin is love. my sin is loving so deeply that i was able to reframe my thoughts, overcome the preconceived ideas planted in my mind as a child that preached hatred and shame and passing judgement onto strangers.

for once, i do not stay. i do not endure it. i stand up, fix my skirt, and climb over my mother, her eyes fixed on the pastor, nodding along. i walk out of the chapel and 2.1 miles down the highway. my mother does not come after me.

there are parts of me that she does not know how to love and has no desire to learn how.

my family always jokes that the dog is my mother's favorite child. i watch the way she meticulously brushes her fur, holds her when she cries during storms, and loves her regardless of the mud dragged down the sterilised corridor of the house.

i take comfort in knowing she cares about something, i just wish it were me.

friendship bracelets and long sleeves,
choking down rice cakes and diet coke,

pinning Victoria's Secret models to my wall and
keeping a tape measure at my bedside,

trying tips form Tumblr,
cold showers,
apple cider vinegar,
copious amounts of coffee
(black, obviously).

wondering why i'm shivering in the southern heat and
feeling proud of it anyway.

when i was 11
i spent an entire weekend pacing
around the backyard
pretending all i had to do was survive

on as little as possible.

living off pond water,
i chopped salads of dead leaves and
whisked red clay into something sweet.

i built a home of twigs and bed of mulch.
i let my body sink into the earth,
bones melting into roots and
skin into the ridges of the forest floor.

caught at the cross road of brittle blue nails and
softened angles,
all i knew was emptiness
and it felt like i was finally beautiful.

it's difficult to reflect on how the people we once clung to
become strangers again,
how we mourn the living.
the way we block them on our phones,
out of our minds,
forcing our brain to forget what the heart still holds on to,
but you can never really mend the imprint on your soul
and forget the person who left there.
instead,
you find mediocre replacements
that don't quite match their outline.

when our lives become so intertwined with someone else's,
you don't forget them simply because
they are no longer there.
you're stuck wanting things to go back to the way they used to be
or to not have happened at all.
those anniversaries,
first times,
intimate moments,
can't go back to being just another Tuesday.
you're haunted by heartache
planted in skeletal corners,
buried in every place you have ever been.
the reminders come at the worst time,
when that song plays in the grocery store or
you're on your way to a first date and
a car passes in their particular shade of grey.
suddenly,
you're sent back into orbit,
or maybe you never left.

i like to think that if you love something
a piece of it will always linger, but
sometimes
the scars left behind are too tender
to risk falling back into the familiar.
someone you spoke to everyday become
someone you have't spoken to since-
i want to believe that we forget each other out of necessity
and not a lack of care.
reminiscing,
you wonder if it was worth it,
what did you do to deserve this?
you want to fast track the pain into healing,
worrying that you're ruined.
defective.
damaged goods.

and when you least expect it,
everything will come to a halt.
the revolving,
spiralling,
self destruction
replaced by a pale pink tinge.
daisies return to nothing more than a flower.
you find new strangers with souls fractured
in the same way as your own,
complimenting collisions,
the type of comfort that makes you wonder
how you could ever have been apart.

after years have passed,
you return to a place you once considered home
and in the distance you see them,

that beautiful stranger you know too well.

the sound of men's careless mouths
makes me want to
drag a blade around the edges and
crawl out of this body.
throaty breaths sliding down the back of my neck,
calloused fingertips rubbing my shoulder raw.

this body is fossilised in violent memories,
fragments pieced together,
held by apologies i never got and
the closure i've learned to live without.

i don't know how to talk about it
without talking about how much i hurt.
i don't know how to address my scars
without scratching open the wounds.
i don't know how to share my story
without inviting you to become a character in it.

so instead i leave room for
all the stories i will never tell,
all the memories i will never reminisce,
a space eventually filled with,
'i don't know why i'm like this,
it's no big deal,
other people have it worse.

it's not like i have any real reason to feel this way.'

i still jolt awake to the sound of your 3am suicide calls.
all that greets me is silence,
my phone isn't ringing but my ears are.

does it haunt you like it haunts me?
hyperventilating
every time i see a car in your particular shade of grey.
wondering why i can't keep liquor down anymore
or why clementines reek of deception,
or how many more night i will have to spend like this.

when i am with you,
i feel like i am dying,
but when i am not,
i fear you are.

i used to love the way you filled me with panic,
waiting for the next time your blood would be on my hands
and your hands would be creeping their way under my shirt.
not afraid of being alone, but
obsessed with the masochistic way you made me feel
needed.

someone asked me why i didn't leave sooner,
truth is,
i don't think i ever really left.

the stars dance
behind her mask
holding her together
both helpless and unremarkably dull.

she did not ask for this,
but was made that way,
with sorrow unravelling,
complimenting her
like poets do the night sky.