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Amanda Stoddard Jan 2018
here comes the crash and burn
here comes me keeping score
of every **** thing you've ever done
in comparison to me I think you've won

watch me unweave into a basket
of backseat insecurity
you're driving me mad.

I'm sorry for not being there enough
and I apologize for shutting you out
but when every word from your mouth
shouts "this is your fault"
it's hard to stay calm,
it's hard to keep going.

I took my last breath for you yesterday
and now I breathe much easier,
without the weight
of a thousand problems on my plate.

this is food for thought,
your universe is not as big as me
I'm as small as a pebble
and as frail as the dirt
but I can still become something more.

Dissemble myself from you
piece by piece.

I don't want to leave you with nothing-
but I don't want to keep on hurting

Myself.

I'm done trying for your sake
should've seen this mistake
coming around the bend again
but we're at a four way intersection
and none of us wants to go.

I'll guess I've make the first move,
to move on from being you.
to move on from letting you
love me.

it's a sad song,
on a good night
it's a long drive
with no goodnight
kiss.

I'm craving things
I don't seem to miss
and it seems I'm done
reminising
about you.

These memories
were good to me.
But the pressure was too much.

I threw myself under the bus
and I never looked both ways.
I should've looked both ways.
this is a song
Amanda Stoddard Jan 2018
these scars on my knees are a reminder
  i cannot run away from the past.

but still I am buried here
   staring at soil unsettled
   basking in the outline of my body.

I have spent my days trapped-
  holding on to this idea
  that I can dig up dead memory.

Holding on to what keeps me guessing.
  everyday I am reminded
  of this ghost that carries me
  like it is a harness that helps me sit up straight.

But it seems I am slouching again
  seems my posture cannot handle
  the fact I'm trying to stand up for myself .

Where did my backbone go?
  how do I repair this absence?

When will I know that I can trust myself
  when will the alcohol stop being a cushion
  for everything bad thing I have ever done
  and every bad thing that has ever been done to me.

I am relapsing into oblivion
all because someone else wrecked who I am.

All because of this spine that is missing
and this spirit that cannot be dug back up.

It's shame I can't tell love from deceit.
It's a shame I only sometimes recognize intimacy.

When will I uncover the parts of myself
  that make me fit for recovery.

Why is survival the only thing my body knows?
   why can't I convince it things are fine now..
   why can't I convince myself?
other title: fix yourself because no one else has the ***** to.
Amanda Stoddard Jan 2018
This cold makes my nose bleed,
turns my toes white and my fingers blue.

I'm having trouble coping again.
These times they take a toll on my insides.

This fear of everything is isolating me.
I have come to terms with inconsistency.
My limbs feel as if they are backwards
and I can't seem to stand up straight.

Everything I have come to know is different.
I haven't changed much, but I didn't stay the same.

Clinging to an absence because a presence will show it's face
and I'll be hanging by a thread again.

Talk me out of this isolation and seclusion.
Avoidance is the best tactic I know
so watch as I run away from it all.

But I'm still stuck inside this lingering chill
and wrapped up in this winter feeling.
Everything around me is frozen solid
and so I sit, lacking stability.

Nothing falls short but me and my expectations.
Since when is life so ******* daunting?

I am haunted by a faceless man
and he lingers in this winter air.
Oh what a shame to become this thing.

Oh what a ******* shame to become something
and be afraid of it all.

I am falling in love with isolation and lonely
it has been the only calm I have ever known.

Dissociation climbs it's way into my limbs
and I am a puppeteer at best.
My subconscious is pulling the strings
and I am inside a body I no longer recognize.

I try to remind myself of me.
But all I remember is a sad shell of a person,
a shadow just trailing behind.

I am wasting away inside of my own mind again.
I'm hanging from these frozen limbs,

my head's on backwards now too
and this past is all I see-
I can't seem to walk any other direction.
Frozen until I have seen it all.

Stuck inside an endless loop of
untying knots in my memory,
still trying to tie up every loose end.

until we meet again
the innocence I once had.
alternative title: trying to convince myself my feelings are valid is like trying to convince trump climate change is real.
Amanda Stoddard Dec 2017
I am on the receiving end
of an emotional hierarchy
on the power dynamic of control
and it is based at the core foundation
of my childhood
rooted inside the deep seeded
fear of isolation and abuse.
I have come a long way since then.

Since the corner
of my shut closet
became a museum
for these guilt pangs
in my 7 year old stomach.

But the shouts of my parents
still haven't diminished
and neither have these pangs.

A constant reminder
I am closer to my childhood
than I am my progress.

So I have to take a step away
from all of these things
putting me back into
that dark closet
into the Eminem show soundtrack
on the 6th grade bus
crying because I didn't feel loved.

I don't want to go back
to not eating for weeks
or showering for a month
just so I could get the attention.

I never had it anyway
so why was I fighting for the nonexistent?
why am I fighting, still now
for the constant validation
and acknowledgment of existence.

I am still closer to my childhood
than I am my progress
and I keep stepping back into
people, place and things that put me there.

every friend and boyfriend
reminding me of my father or my mother
and every minute of isolation reminding me
that there is no lesson that I haven't been taught
from loneliness and inadequacy.

So I should be thankful
I am closer to my childhood than my recovery
because that's where it started,
and for me-
that's where it ends.

Somewhere between the closet space
and basement walls-
I am buried there.
Amanda Stoddard Dec 2017
around me are civilians
struggling with what it means
to be normal.

stuck in a loop of society's
standards and how their parents
raised them.

A plethora of mental chaos
and the burden of growing.

around me is myself
struggling with what it means
to be normal.

lost inside the idea
of being in control of something.

Their normal has a face.
It’s an object, or found at a place.

My normal is void of
human characteristics-
it is all solidified inside
this lost memory that
rips my limbic system
into an endless limbo
of hyper vigilance and manicness
I am a vigilante at best.

My normal is foreign.

My normal is a girl
with a slanted face
sitting in class
wondering why
the tip of her pencil
feels like a vice grip-

why the words
from a professor’s
lips sounds like grooming-
when in reality
she's stuck in a trance.

She's stuck inside the time
she got bribed for intimacy

stuck in a time
where she thought trust
was lust and that little girls
we're supposed to be submissive.

She's hanging by the thread of her thoughts
realizing these are memories-
realizing she cannot stitch up the holes inside of them.

That all this bad ****
isn't actually a daydream
that she can just fidget and blink and pinch
her way out of.

So now she has to learn to cope-
while she has an hour & a half
to take an exam and her mind
is void of any information.

She has never been taught
a lesson that she didn't teach herself.

I have never been taught
a lesson that I wasn’t manipulated
into learning.

So forgive me-
Bc my wish to be normal
is your struggle.

Forgive me
because this trauma
isn't a competition
but I can't help feeling like
I'm losing
can’t help but wish I was
in the place of others.

Can’t help but feel like my childhood
is nothing but an ankle monitor
keeping me distant from myself.

I am carrying around this burdening
that no one has any idea what to do with.

I am drowning in the idea
someone else will ever be able to help me.

I'm drowning in the idea of solitude
and independence-

That loneliness will someday
feel like progress.

That this pencil
will no longer feel like a vice grip.

I am choking on the absence of words
just dead air and radio silence.

This salience,
here on this stage-
will swallow me whole.

The only place I can call home.
This type of normal chains itself to me.
Amanda Stoddard Nov 2017
I have broken down more walls
than I can count on these fingers
they are too busy clenched into a fist.

I have broken down barriers
in hopes of betterment and redemption
my arms have grown weak under this pressure.

I'm weighing the pros and cons
of survival on the tops of shoulders
so it's safe to say I'm grounded
safe to say these bones feel heavy

I speak only when spoken too nowadays
but the look on my face reads third person omniscient-
anyone can get inside my head
my body language is written that way.
Too fragile to speak up,
Too stubborn to sit down.

I'm tired of these walls
holding me back
and these barriers
keeping me on the outskirts
of my own life.
My mouth is just a drawbridge
these words drown
in the wading water underneath

I have broken down more walls
  than I have written poetry
only to realize I have built them myself
only to realize I have written them myself.
Amanda Stoddard Nov 2017
comprehension isn't in your bloodstream you are too busy apprehending these repressive tendencies. Everything is messy lately, and I can't seem to see things clearly. This can't make sense to anyone but me- and it never will. Memories are isolated events. My trauma is a movie only I have seen but everyone tries to write the review of. I'm tired of this being a competition. Like whoever has the most ****** up life wins in this potato sack race to the finish line- I'm far from fine I'm two steps back and trailing even farther behind. Everyone seemed to have had some kind of advantages, these genetics were defective for me, my motor skills and processing delayed and defective see I can seem speak on these things too clearly. Mumbling at the mouth of memory and retention, I'm trying to articulate what's piled on top of my heavy heart and this chest full of weight and ***** slate and angst. I'm having trouble marking the place on his face. I'm having trouble marking the place where I laid, where he laid, where I can find peace. I'm having trouble not having trouble. I'm alone in my struggle too. No one knows you better than you, but no one knows me like I know me and it seems this is factually accurate from an everyone standpoint. Am I okay anymore? Or is this void the only voice I will hear when I am being called back to sleep. Where will these secrets always be kept? Inside of the locks behind my retinas, who the **** forgot the combination to the safe. That would be me.
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