panicked apologies spilled from my mouth that night.
and now they echo like a chorus in my mind
as if i never left that night behind.

“please, no”
“you don’t have to do this”
“i didn’t mean to make you angry”
“i’m so sorry”

i’m
s o r r y.

my words weren’t enough that night.

i felt the life draining from within me right before my eyes,
desperately trying to save whatever light there was left in me,
but i died.

i
d i e d.

the world around me turned dark
and soon blood started spilling from my veins
instead of flowing through my heart.

if i wasn’t enough to save myself that night,
will i ever be enough to pull myself back up towards the light?

i want to scream ******* god !!

******* for letting people hurt so badly that
they feel the only way for their pain to end
is to take their lives.  

******* for not letting me die when
i tried so hard to leave this world.

i am still hurting god
i am hurting so much.

i am angry at you god but
i need you right now.
i need you more than ever.

i feel so alone, god.

please help me
please guide me
please hold me
please comfort me

please let me know why you are giving
me so much pain all at once because
it feels like you are trying to **** me.

no human is meant to withstand
such heavy things all at once.

is this you trying to let me know
that i can’t do this on my own?

is this you telling me to reach for you?
because if it is god, then i will reach.
i promise i will reach.

i will do anything to find peace and strength
in this life because i am feeling so tired and weak.

i know i want to kick and scream and punch you, god
but i also want to believe in you, know you and trust you.

i have an overwhelming urge to love everyone,
to walk up and hug random people on the street.
anything to keep them from the pain i have felt.

god,
please love everyone a little louder tonight.
please hold the hurting extra tight.

i don’t usually ask for much, god
but if you have some love left over,
please send it my way.

i can’t do this on my own anymore.

to the flames of this fire,

i am giving you my pain,
may you soften it.

i am giving you my fear,
may you dissolve it.

i am giving you my rage,
may you resolve it.


dear self,

may you allow yourself time to grieve.
grieve that innocence that was lost far too soon.

grieve those years that were lost to a pain
far too overwhelming for most to understand.

you need to grieve.
and it is ok to take time and do just that.

as the pain begins to soften,
room for more beautiful things will begin to form.

may you let this be a new beginning,
one where you allow yourself to grow
and learn and share and heal.


and dear universe,

when i forget,
may you remind me that i did not live through
a sadness so heavy only to let my struggle be forgotten.

may you remind me that there is a
purpose for this pain of mine.

because there is a way to the light,
and i am finding myself closer and closer to it
with every breath.

may you remind me to
let my journey guide others.
let my fight inspire others.
let my story be told
and let my heart stay whole.

“be careful” - everyone always told me while i was growing up.
“don’t walk alone at night”
“always keep pepper spray on you”
“when you’re walking alone,
pretend to listen to your music but don’t actually
listen to your music - you need to be aware of
your surroundings at all times”
“use your keys as a weapon if you need to”
“we don’t want any suspicious man to hurt you” -
they said.

you see, growing up i always thought there was something wrong with me.
all my friends would be talking about their latest guy crush and i just
really didn’t get it.

so at fifteen years old i was really excited to finally realize that i was gay
and that i was, in fact, not going to die alone like i had previously thought.

feeling comfortable enough to come out and explore my sexuality
in an environment that felt safe was such a big relief.

the thing is - no one really tells you to be careful around friends,
or around the people you’ve grown to trust the most.

no one tells you to be cautious when you’re laying on
your high school crushes bed making out instead of
watching the movie tarzan that’s playing in the background.

sure i was aware she had a quick temper and occasionally
threw the furniture around at school in fits of anger.
- but when she wasn’t angry she was always the first
to crack a joke and make me laugh, so everything’s ok, right?

no one told me that girls can **** too.

so when it happened later that night after tarzan was over,
in addition to the crippling disgust and paralyzing fear i felt,
i was really lost and confused.

because it happened,

but it didn’t happen in a dark alleyway like they had told me -
i was in her bed.

we weren’t drunk - like the men they had told me to be wary of,
we had just been watching tarzan earlier that night.

it wasn’t a man that did this - like they had warned me.

it was a girl.
a sixteen year old girl.
it was someone who i had grown to trust.

after, i spent the majority of my time dissociating.
i dissociated to the point where that night was completely
erased from my memory and replaced with a black hole in my mind.

it’s almost exactly like when you’re watching a movie and the
dvd is scratched up so it skips a couple of scenes forward and
you know something had to have happened because now the
main character of the movie is uncontrollably crying when just
two seconds ago she was smiling,
and now the story doesn’t make sense anymore.

you can’t go back and rewind it because
its a permanent scratch on the dvd.
a permanently damaged movie.

so yes, i always knew something happened that night.
because even though there was only blank space in my mind,
the self hatred, deeply rooted anger and questions about what happened
still remained and i couldn’t figure out why my heart
was hurting so badly all of a sudden.

i’ve been told by doctors that this is all a normal reaction to trauma.

so why do i still try to convince myself that it never
happened, when i know **** well it did?

and why did i keep quiet and carry something so heavy
for years after the memories started resurfacing, alone?

maybe it was fear.
i mean how could i expect others to believe me when
the majority of the time i didn’t believe it myself.

maybe it’s because it’s unbearably painful
when i do acknowledge it.
and it’s unbearably painful when i don’t.

i don’t really know.
i never wanted this to happen and i’m still trying to
find my way out of this ******* mess.

all i know is that no one ever told me that sometimes the
ones who hurt you the most are so often the ones you trust.

and i am so scared to trust again because man,
i was only a kid but i was forced to grow up overnight.

this year i found myself broken
before i even knew i was breaking.

sitting on the edge of my bed
staring at the floor of my bedroom,
with a pain in my heart and a sickness in my head
that no living being should experience,
i tried so hard to leave this world
and i came so close to being gone.

i woke up to the sound of the hospital machines
that were keeping me alive and spent the following days
lying in an unfamiliar bed in a cold hospital room,
staring at the ceiling in disbelief.

i never imagined myself alive at age twenty,
but there i was, lying in a hospital bed,
alive, hopeless, but alive.

through this brokenness i was brought to people
who believed i had the strength to piece myself whole again.
and i spent so much of the time pushing them away
because i was afraid to fail at living,
the same way i had failed at dying.

but these people never gave up on me
even when i had long given up on myself,
and soon i started to accept the help i
had convinced my self i was unworthy of.

this year was brutal.

even now there are times that feel impossible
but in those moments, i remind myself that
even breathing is an act of courage.

there are still days where i curse my sorrow
but i am learning that this pain is what has
taught me compassion in the truest form.

i have spent months unlearning the lies
that years of abuse left me believing true
and planting a garden of self love instead.

i had spent so long living in darkness
that i believed i was beyond repair,
but i am learning that there is no such thing.

i have a place in this world and
i am piecing myself whole again.

i am growing,
i am learning,
i am rebuilding.
i am alive.

and this is only the beginning.

to my family that doesn’t believe mental illness is real:

i sincerely hope you never get woken up in the dead of night
by a phone call from one of your precious girls, hundreds of
miles away from home, calling to tell you with a heart full
of pain yet a voice void of emotion, that she is so sorry
but she has to take all of her pills.

i hope you never find her so dissociated and confused,
walking in dangerous parts of town without a coat on,
in the snow, hoping someone would **** her or at the
very least she would freeze to death.

i hope you never have to plead with one of your girls
to not press the cold blade against her skin, or not
to put her neck through that noose she spent so much
time researching how to tie all while you’re desperately
trying to call an ambulance to her house, praying it will
get there in time.

i hope you never have to watch your child be escorted by
two cops from her room at the general hospital that she
was stuck in for nearly a week because her blood was so
poisoned from the lithium and her risk of seizure and
blood clots were so high, to be safely taken to a psych unit.

i hope you never have to watch your child be taken back
to a psych assessment room while you have to sit there
in the waiting room, pretending everything is okay all while
your heart is silently breaking into a million pieces because
your girl has been broken by abuse at another persons hand
and you couldn’t have stopped it from happening.

i hope you never have to see one of your girls get admitted
to a psych unit. one minute you walk in with your suicidal
child and 2 two hours later you walk out, but this time alone,
knowing that there is nothing you can do to ‘fix’ your hurting baby.

no mother or father wants this for their child.
and no person chooses to have mental illness.

do you really think i wanted to spend my high school years
in and out of the hospital?

i don’t think you understand the loneliness that comes
from being stuck there while your ‘friends’ are only
worrying about the next big test that was coming up.

i would have loved to only be worrying about that next test
but instead i was preoccupied with death, wanting nothing
more than to finally feel the pain draining from my body.

do you really think i enjoyed having to strip down naked,
no underwear or no bra, every day so the hospital staff
could make sure i wasn’t still hurting myself?
i felt like i was being violated all over again.

do you really think i enjoyed having to sleep on a mattress
on the floor with the lights on so hospital staff could watch
me to make sure i didn’t **** myself?

i hated being in the hospital.
and i was terrified knowing that when i got out i had to
find the strength to walk back into school with a smile
on my face despite knowing that i would have to see
my abuser walking the same hallways everyday.

you don’t know my story. it’s none of your business.
but since you have felt the need to pass judgment
on my family and i, i thought i would let you know
that your ignorance is a death sentence to some,
not me, i’m learning to deal with my dark thoughts,
but to others who aren’t fortunate enough to have the
support and resources that i do,
it sends them straight to their graves.

mental illness is real,
and the stigma that ignorance creates, kills.

and i hope that if one of your children is
ever plagued by an illness similar to mine,
that they feel comfortable enough coming to you.
and if not, i hope they feel comfortable coming to
me. i will lend a non judgmental, compassionate ear.
because the only thing that ever talked me off the edge
all of those dark, cold and lonely nights was just that:
compassion.

i was only 15 when i met you but
i was armed with a heart full of optimism,
and a mind craving a future of adventure.  
i saw the good in everyone i met,
including you.

i still remember spending lunch break in the
music room playing piano as you sat on the
bench next to me and watched my
fingers glide over the keys.

or how we sat next to each other in history
class and our teacher had to separate us  
because we couldn’t stop giggling over the
stupidest ****, day after day.

or how late one night we snuck into the garage
where all the golf carts were stored at this really
fancy country club and we just sat in one and talked.
one minute i was laughing and the next you were
kissing me and i remember thinking how right
everything felt in that moment.

i still don’t understand how the same person i
shared so many laughs with could be the same
person that grew so angry after i pushed her off of me.

who disregarded my pleas for her to stop.

“you don’t have to do this.”
“i am so sorry, i didn’t mean to make you angry”.

i am sorry,
i am sorry,
i am so so

s o r r y.

you didn’t stop
and i was forever changed.

after that night, i kept finding myself spending lunch
break hiding behind the couch in my empty math
classroom so i didn’t have to muster up the energy to
fake a smile and make small talk with anyone anymore.

i kept catching my heart sink in the middle
of laughing with my friends, none of it felt
real anymore and i felt so alone no matter
how many people i was surrounded with.

everyone was starting to notice and i
found myself answering the same
dreadful question day after day.

“are you okay?” they would ask.
“i’m just tired” was the standard reply.

i was growing increasingly angry as the
question kept coming and my answers
were becoming more sarcastic by the day.

every time i heard those words “are you okay”
i felt like i was being punched right in the gut,
of course i wasn’t okay, but i didn’t know why.
so one day i just stopped answering.
everyone that asked was met with silence.

i didn’t understand why i had grown so cold and tired
because you conditioned me into thinking that what
you did wasn’t bad and that i was over reacting.
soon i started questioning if i even remembered
that night right.

i didn’t understand why i was missing class after
class because i was too busy having panic attacks.

or why i couldn’t make eye contact
with you in the hallways anymore.

or why i prayed night after night to a higher power that
i doubted even existed because every morning i still
woke up when i prayed so hard that i would not.

i didn’t know why my heart was hurting but it was,
and there were no words, no matter how i phrased them,
that were able to convey the pain that i felt in my chest.

i eventually stopped trying to piece the right words together
because no matter how they came out, i couldn’t
quite capture the hopelessness or the emptiness,
or the desperation of needing someone to hug
me and tell me over and over how
this was not my fault no matter
how much i believed it was.

i thought maybe if i took the blade to my skin then
someone would recognize how bad i had been hurt.
but no one really seemed to think there was a problem.

but i was still sad,
so i figured that maybe the problem was me.

i became addicted to punishing myself for what you did.
blaming myself for not having seen this coming and  
for not having fought against you little harder that night
despite the paralyzing fear i felt.

the whole time i thought that
maybe if i understood why my heart was
hurting so much that i could find a way to fix it
and things would be a little easier.

flash forward to now,
i understand the reason behind the pain and
though i am no longer hurting myself to express it,
it’s hard to see my scars fading when the pain is not.

the paralyzing fear from that night
has followed me everywhere since
and it will follow me everywhere i go.