here i am sifting through images in my head again,
and i’m still not really sure which ones are from now
and which ones are from then.

all i know is that time has lost meaning,
and i don’t have the energy to fight.
i still feel you on top of me most nights.
i’m sorry.

i’m so sorry,
and i don’t really know for what,
i guess i was praying those words
would make you stop?

but those prayers went unanswered
i wasn’t strong enough to push you off.
and that was the night that i lost god.

as a kid i used to pray before going to bed,
but ever since god left me, i’ve been writing
and rewriting suicide notes in my head.

its ironic because they sound much like a prayer
god, please take me home i don’t want to be here.

and however you arrived here today,
whether it was your soul raging just as much
as the storm around you and finding yourself
pounding on the door between then and now
with bloodied and bruised fists,
or whether it was feeling your heart shatter
into a million pieces and so bravely picking
each one up and trying to complete the puzzle
of your heart with no guide, once again.
you are here now
and here is becoming home
and you are piecing yourself whole again
and you are learning that no guide is ok
because now you get to decide what whole is
and how whole feels
and then one day you'll learn that the storm
wasn’t the only force raging inside of your soul,
courage was there all along raging just as strong.
courage was the pounding on the door of now, bruised fists and all.
courage was the piecing together of your heart again
and soon you’ll learn that underneath all of the rubble and pain,
you were always whole.
pieces of your heart together or not,
you are and have always been undeniably whole.

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.

dear moon, i am hurting.
but hear my words,
i will fight.

as i stand beneath you,
studying your beauty, your power, your certainty,
i can feel the courage returning to my bones.
and as my stance strengthens,
i say to you, and I mean it,
i will fight.

you stand so unforgivingly in your brilliance
and i promise to stand up, and stand alone,
when no one will stand with me.
i will make you proud.

i will look to you for guidance,
and i will raise my voice for all of my hurting friends,
who in this dark time, have become my family.

as i continue to admire your greatness dear moon,
my gaze softens, my heart sinks a little deeper,
i see myself in you.
your dark craters remind me
of the bruises on my heart.

maybe one day my bruised heart
can be surrounded by a light as bright as yours, too?

you are such a lone light standing in the
midst of such darkness.
and i say to you
i cannot and i will not stay silent.

when i find a light of my own,
i will guide others who are
surrounded by such darkness.
because those of us who believe in
freedom cannot rest.
i will follow you dear moon.

i promise to be the light that guides our hurting
family to a safer and brighter future.

moon,
you are hope in a time of darkness.
you are strength in a time of pain

and moon,
for every soul that has felt a pain as great as i,
i promise you,
i will fight.

survivor?
my dear you are gravely mistaken.
i think the word you are looking for is failure.

every breath, every heartbeat,
every touch that brings me back to that cold winter night,
feeling helpless in a body that is not my own
is a sick reminder of how i am still alive.

while most people my age were exploring their
favorite coffee shops i was exploring all the ways
i could possibly end my life just so i could forget the pain.

i still think about being 16 and sitting in physics class
furiously calculating the height i would have to jump from
in order to reach terminal velocity before hitting the ground
and then going home and looking over the balcony
of my 13th floor apartment and praying i would find
just one second of courage and jump.

all of this despair happened over the course of that one cold winter night.
it was the night i was taught i had no voice or choice.
and when i woke up the next morning nothing made sense anymore
because i could see the sun rise out of my window
but my heart and mind were still stuck in the dark
and i have never seen the light since.

i have spent years perfecting the art of denial.
i was a master for so long, i wouldn’t let a fraction
of truth leave my soul.


i would go through hell just to find every way
possible to pin the problem on someone, or
something else besides you.
and so often that someone was me.


through my pain, i found the strength to protect you
before i could ever find the courage to protect myself
perhaps that’s because you have taught my heart
to fear so greatly and i have just now begun
to learn that fear is the instigator of my denial.


i fear hurting you for fear that you’ll retaliate and
hurt me more than you already have and my mind
can’t fathom anything that could bring more pain
than what you have already done.


for a while now I have felt the truth building up and
pushing against the walls that i have so carefully built
around my fragile heart and i have been trying
to use the little strength i do have left to fight my way
back to denial once again.


i am learning that the walls i have built are
not strong enough to hold all of this pain that denial
has brought along with it.


you taught me that fear was the most powerful
force of them all and i believed you for so long.
yet i am learning much too quickly that the
truth will eventually overpower fear and find it’s way
to the light no matter how hard i try to keep it buried
within me.


the walls i have built are collapsing so fast and i am
just trying to find a way to not collapse with them.

my thoughts are spinning so fast in my head
that i think i might fall off the side of the earth.
i imagine that i would land somewhere in between
the moon and the stars and i think that is when
i would finally feel free from the storm within me.


i look at the trees and how they seem to
dance through the raging winds that pass through
with such resilience and grace and i find myself
wondering why i can’t do the same.


then i remember how time has so often taught me
that i am no dancer and the storm will find me
wherever i hide and i am tired of being found.


these winds are so unforgiving that i end up in the
middle of a desolate road sometime past midnight
looking up at the moon and the stars and the place
in between where i am meant to be and my
only hope is that when the next car comes
that i will no longer feel the turbulent storm within me
but instead feel the years of pain and fear leaving
my body as i dissolve into the night sky
and find a new home among the stars.


i pray that car comes soon.

overcome by darkness
i look out into the distance
and try to see something more
than the fog and confusion taking over
my head and the self hatred that burns
in my chest.
there is nothing but empty space
that i am so afraid will soon be filled with
the same confusion and self hatred that
already grows within me.
and i cannot take anymore.
what i have is already far too much for me
to hold.


time after time i reach up towards the dark sky
in hopes that some devine being will reach back
and pull me out of this nothingness.
i cannot do it on my own.
i am not strong enough
i have learned this over and over again
and i am tired of falling back into the darkness.
most days i’d rather let it consume me.
it would be much easier than continuing
this sick game of crawling out of the darkness
just enough to get a glimpse of the light
only to fall back again.


i must not have been made to live in the light.

i keep asking myself how i can love storms with such passion,
yet always feel so overcome with sadness every time the rain falls.


how can this beautiful process which brings life
be the same that causes me such loneliness?


am i not too, a part of this earth?


my feet stand on the same ground where rivers flow,
flowers bloom and where the strong mountains meet clouds.


how can i be so close to something this beautiful
yet feel so distant from the concept of beauty itself.


i am not beautiful.


i have been overwhelmed with a pain too
great for my fragile heart to hold and i have
forgotten how it feels to live in the light.


i was not made to fight.

my heart is a raft lost in an ocean of sadness.
my anger is the storm closing in and
my thoughts are too heavy for this little raft to carry
for much longer.
i’ve spent years trying to pull myself to shore
only to be overcome by violent waves that push
me back out into the vast sea yet again.
soon this ocean of sadness will consume me
and i won’t fight it anymore.
i have been fighting for too long and i am tired.
i want to go home.
there’s got to be a home waiting for me on the other side.

i was not created to be broken and
you were not created to destroy.
yet somewhere along the way
you were taught that it was okay to
take a heart and overwhelm it.

your words were carefully calculated
to make me question the reason
my heart kept crumbling despite each
exhausting attempt to piece it back
together again.

am i stitching the pieces back together
wrong?

i was slowly dying at your hands
while you thrived on watching me unravel.

but it was never your fault because
you were never the one pressing the cold
blade against my skin, right?

five years later, though i am no longer dying,
my chest caving in on itself might as well be
called just that.

and you’d think i would have forgotten
the sound of your voice by now
but it echoes in my mind
just the same as before.
just as painful as before.

i am swimming in an ocean of
sadness but it feel more like
drowning these days.

so now I’m here forming lines on
paper with a pen instead of with a
cold blade on my skin.
and even though i know neither can
erase the pain that has found a home
within my heart, i will keep searching
for some sort of peace.
and i promise i will take it in whatever
form it decides to visit me in.

and no, i was not created to be broken.
so i look up towards the never ending night sky
and curse the stars i cannot see for letting
our paths cross, because i am still collapsing.

i see no end.

whoever created me cannot be the same
being who let you break me.