I ****** up.
I mean like I really ****** it up this time.
I don’t know what I said wrong
But
I’m sorry.
I’d pray you aren’t mad at me
If I believed in a god.
But I don’t
So I just look for people to blame and
Oh look!
I choose myself.
God.
This is the worst.
I’m going to be alone forever.

Oh.
Never mind.
He texted back

So I have this reoccurring dream where
I rush to my childhood home and
Open my bedroom door, immediately hit with the familiarity of the smell of day old crackers masked by Febreze.
My eyes search to find a cage full of rats.
I have never owned a rat.
Yet, there are about 20 of the fuzzy little guys
Gnawing at the bars of the cage, pink paws grabbing and clutching, exasperated squeaks escaping their mouths as if to say “Help me!” or “Welcome home!”, my subconscious isn’t smart enough to clarify which.
I open the cage,
A few of them are dead.
Stiff. Small. Dead.
Instead of waiting to mourn
I quickly scoop up the others in my arms
Cuddling them close.
The scenery changes to a pirate ship in the way that dreams do.
Slowly and in a way that sort of makes you dizzy but your dream self doesn’t even notice and it only starts to mess you up when you’re thinking about it while eating Froot Loops two days later.
The rats are afraid and hurry out of my arms
I desperately try to scramble them up
But one by one they all fall overboard.

Now, I aced AP Psychology, so I know how to interpret this
There are 3 theories on dreams.
Information processing theory says dreams sort, sift, and fix a day's experience into memories.
I don’t remember losing my precious rats on a pirate ship.
So that isn’t it.

Problem solving theory says dreams are the continuity of waking thought but without the constraints of logic or realism. That dreams are meant for solving your problems. It suggests my rats are metaphors. I love rats, and if rats are problems, what does that say about me? That I keep trying to hold my issues and insecurities close to me but can’t juggle them all? That all my chances keep falling and dying and I’m losing my sense of self. That I need a reason to be the victim in every situation so I will never have to take responsibility for my actions and I can pretend like my faults never happened. And what about the pirate ship? Like, I don’t even like pirates so why would I put myself in a place I hate and then cling to disgusting faults like they’re precious. None of this makes sense, except maybe it does and I refuse to admit it, I’m in denial, I don’t want to get better I want to stay in this awful cycle forever.

But activation synthesis theory says dreams are a product of activity in the brain. The cerebral cortex attempts to make sense of neural firings by creating a story. In other words, dreams have no meaning. So this whole poem.
Is worthless.

As worthless as a rat.
A small. Fuzzy. Loving.
Yet short-lived rat.

Mother warned me not to be too absorbed
In the mirror. I need to instead pay attention
To the world around me. “To form an identity,
One needs not to worry about perfection.”
She said. But, mother, you are apathetic
If I am anything but. I calm my impulses.

I buy and obsess over material possessions by impulse.
Catch me with a teen magazine, completely absorbed
As I block out the real world with an apathetic
Attitude. As I sit and read, I pay attention
To the celebrities who demonstrate perfection.
I will copy their traits to form my identity.

Lost in this dreary world, searching for identity,
I collect people’s personalities, stealing them on impulse.
Searching for happiness coincides with the pursuit of perfection.
I laugh at those who say I am self absorbed,
That say I am only looking for attention,
When it comes to criticism, I am apathetic.

I don’t care that I come off as apathetic.
It just happens to be part of my identity.
I don’t do it for attention.
Or maybe I do? I’m too impulsive.
I’m only this way because I’m self absorbed.
Obsessed with the idea of perfection.

I look at myself and all I see is perfection.
Others may see me with nothing but apathetic
Stares, but they are simply too absorbed
With their own problems of their identities.
Not my fault that they don’t feel the impulse
To love me. I don’t need their petty attention.

That was a lie, I live for attention.
Can’t everyone see I am the human embodiment of perfection?
Without their validation, I may act on my impulses.
And then when they ask why I did it, I will be too apathetic
To care. Dangerous and beautiful is my identity.
It isn’t so bad to be self absorbed.

I am absorbed in myself, desperate for attention
My identity relies solely on the thought of perfection
I am only apathetic because I care too much about myself. Here they come again, the impulses

What do you want from me?
Borderline personality disorder, why have you chosen me?
Have I not suffered enough in this pitiful life?
All I ask is to have a stable identity and sense of self
But you come creeping into my development and overtake
Labels are nothing
Labels are everything
No in between with anything,
Black and white thinking
Love or hate
Mania or depression
In the span of 5 minutes.
The only constant you allow me to feel is my hatred for you.
Every moment is a swirling vortex of losing hope and
Clinging to anyone who so much as smiles in my direction
But I suppose
When everything is switching
Faster than a traffic light
Because of you.
The thing to be most thankful for
Is to be able to hold onto you.
Borderline personality disorder, why have you chosen me?
My only sense of self, since you change everything else

A wind chime old and rusting on your grandmother’s porch
The song not as clear as it once was
The new tune so softly eerie that to a passerby it seems just fine

Waking up five minutes before your alarm
Sitting on your bed, wide awake
Just watching the time tick pass, minutes of your life
Until you’re past the time to go

In the idle of traffic, you become aware
Of all the movement around you
Babies whine, horns honk, people sing
Yet here you are
What are you doing?
Are you doing anything at all?

Your bed is a coffin, dusty from the days you don’t open it at all
The sunlight is foreign to your eyes
People prance around you, basking in its glory
They don’t even blink at your inability to see the light.

In the cemetery,
Gravestones surround you,
Bodies of the lost and souls of the ******
You can’t help but resonate somewhere deep inside your soul.
Not that you wish to be dead, no.
Just that it seems you already are.

Rushing through never seemed so lovely
Do I have to do this again?
How much time until it ends?
Phase through the routine and
Put up with the words spat in your face like venom
Who can blame you for being lazy?
It isn’t laziness making you this way
This is a universal feeling that no one knows how to explain
A lot of people don’t even know it’s there
Like
A poison slowly seeping into the gases we breathe
So subtle we barely even notice as it overtakes us
Controls us
But we are all under the veil of a lie that this is just how we are
Maybe it isn’t this day making us all mindless robots
Maybe it isn’t just enhancing our already full glass of depression
Maybe it’s ******* away at the energy of before
And maybe it’s doing nothing at all.
Since time is a concept, we just all search for things to blame for our own faults
Are we doing the same with this?
We have so much to look forward to.
That’s all we truly care about.

A self centered shallow cry for excitement that we buzz through what we could also be making exciting
We treat this day like a ghost fogging up our glasses when it is truly an opportunity smacked down into the middle of it all.
We all need a break, yes.
But what are we really taking a break from?

Three in the afternoon and everything is fuzzy
You feel the familiar prickling under your skin and welcome it with open arms
But you can’t feel your arms
This vessel isn’t your body
But at the same time it is
You’re watching yourself lay there hopelessly while you pray and scream And cry
Oh, God, please don’t let me die.

But you aren’t dead
But are you even alive?
A bittersweet medium where nothing is real and your chest is on fire
You live in the flames, you feel yourself escape the trap of gravity
And you are floating
The bed you lay on is no longer touching you
You are in the air, weightless, but only for a few moments before
You crash down to earth and farther
And farther down more
Falling into endless
Painless
Void.

Am I alone?
Am I real?
Words ramble off the tongues of a homely face
But the words got mixed up in Google translate
Foreign words ringing in your ears and you can’t tell if
If you are really experiencing everything you are
Or if you’re just playing make believe with yourself.

Back to nothing.
Always everything but.

Fingers type aggressively into the night as I stare at the screen of my phone.
A group debate about whether or not applying deodorant to your ****** will stop the chronic itching is being played out
We all smile and laugh.
For the record, it totally will.
The discussion of memes enthrals my mind as I relax into the cotton comforter.
The feeling of satisfaction travels through my veins as I embrace the friendship I have and the light, playful conversation taking place.

Anxiety and paranoia settle in and take their well worn places in my mind.
Like icy blue dragons, they curl around my thoughts, just waiting for these people who will soon be irrelevant to leave me.
The words they type about Harambe have no meaning
But the words they think about what I say in return imprison me.


Fear of abandonment creeps in as I swirl the aspects of my personality into a hue that will convince them not to drop me in a ditch.
I know, not because I’m afraid, but because I’ve seen it happen, that my trust in them will be burned to ashes eventually and I’ll be yet
Another traitor to the fragile glass of friendships that we all hold together.
Just waiting for them to use my insecurities against me like a time bomb ticking

Ticking

Ticking in my ear.

And I can’t see the timer.

But I laugh along.
And send a relevant emoji.
They laugh at my jokes and I can’t stop thinking about how soon enough they’ll be laughing at
Me.

If I were a planet, I would be as debated as Pluto.
Scientists eons away that have no business with me and probably never will discussing all of my qualities to pinpoint me into a label they've created to push me like a pinball machine into different slots of make believe self esteem.

If I were a planet, I would be the one whose moon is speculated to be made of cheese.
No one quite aware of what really lies out there but it's fun to dream up stories and ideas that we know will never be true.
No matter how damaging to this solemn planet's reputation in its universe these folk tales may be.

If I were a planet, my sun would have an oval shaped revolution, sometimes close and sometimes far, moving its inspiration along on its route and leaving just when my people need it the most.

If I were a planet, my living organisms would speak in tongues unknowing to even me.
Desperately searching every tick in them to see how they view their home, but always confusing me as I spin on my axis round and round.

Feet don’t fail me now.
I can’t look back, no way to go but forward
I need to stand tall so no one can push me down
I have to march on and pull away from the sticky bubblegum of my mistakes to rise up and grow higher than anyone ever could
This world needs a hero, and I sure ain’t that, but I sure am going to try
People push you down, but you have to pour in courage like the yeast in the recipe of your ideal self so you can rise to defeat all that will challenge you
Break free of the chains made of liquorice and spit on the crushed toys of the past to become someone no one expected you to be
Laugh at the quests others have said were undefeatable as you stomp them into the ground
Snicker when they say you can’t
With the flame burning in your chest, write in big firey letters the names of those who have crossed you and take the ocean of tears they’ve forced you to produce to wash them all out
They are nothing
You can do anything as long as you
Keep
Standing
Tall.

Dear Harry,

I see you're doing well these days.
One year later and I still watch as you grin and laugh with your friends.
Sometimes I just grin as well knowing the truth behind the plastic you call a smile.

You once told me that you feel like you don’t belong.
You get a burning in your chest thinking of how awful humanity is and how you wish you were a robot so your brain would match your body.
But when I told you from the anxious walls of my heart that I sort of feel the same but I'm not making a metaphor, I'm transgender
You said that I didn't feel it as intensely as you did so my identity wasn't that important.
I suppose I can tell you now that you became the reason why I agree with you about humanity.

Your face sickens me.
Sort of funny how everyone calls you Harry Potter because of a scar shaped like a lightning bolt on your cheek and it was a big joke and I always laughed because what a coincidence even though I never read the books or watched the movies and now because of you:
I never will want to.

I don’t know if you realise that you’ve shattered me.
Shattered me like the board you can cut in half thanks to years of karate and your hand crafted swords are part of the reason I never crossed you because if I just change myself hard enough maybe you would stop saying you could use them on me if I kept talking about how much I love everything if everything isn’t you.

Sometimes I would wonder if you could hear my knees fighting not to snap in half.
I would wonder if you knew that you are like a hurricane; strong and unpredictable.
And like a hurricane, you came storming and when your thunder rumbled and rain paraded all over me it left nothing untouched.
I could say you're a forest fire but that would make it hot and quick and emotionless.
No, you are a hurricane because hurricanes are wet and windy and raw and wild and it left me drowning.
Unlike a hurricane, your damage can not be fixed with teamwork and donations from those that feel sympathy.
The damage you’ve done is permanent and even with all the repairs I’ve made in the form of therapy sessions and promises that I shall overcome,
I.
I am still in ruins.

You are bitter but not sweet.
But for 17 torturous months I only saw it the other way around.  
Reaching out to try to catch onto something worth fighting for
But this isn’t worth fighting for

Because my hands hurt from writing I’m sorrys.
Because my brain hurts from pushing out reasons you’re not worth it.
Because my soul hurts from fighting the back of my mind that still loves you.
You have rendered me obsolete.

(November 2016)


It’s okay to cry
Don’t let your mother's poisonous words sting like bug bites
She’s only upset with herself.

It’s okay to scream
Don’t let anyone tell you your excitement annoying
They’re only jealous they don’t have the freedom to express themselves like you.

It’s okay to dream
Don’t let your teacher’s laughter bruise your heart
She only wishes she had your imagination.

It’s okay to be the odd one out
Don’t let the exclusion isolate your soul
It isn’t your fault that you aren’t like them

It’s okay to ask why
Don’t let the exasperated sighs stop you from seeking answers
You can’t be Sherlock until you get to the bottom, after all

It’s okay to forget
Don’t let his vile voice find its way into your rib cage
He was the one who chose to leave

It’s okay to live
Don’t let your learned helplessness persist
You are so young and you have so much to strive for.

So go after it.