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Ashley Rodden Jun 2018
From scrapes and bruises
to the familiar abuses
I kick and scream but it never changes a thing
I could spill my guts and wear my heart on my sleeve
But nobody said it was going to be easy
This is not the woman I hoped to be
I'm always just trying to stop the bleeding
I guess I deserve it
All my faces are an alibi
And it comes out wrong all the time
I don't know the words but I hum along anyway
There's nothing familiar to me anymore
I no longer feel alive
All I can taste is this sickness
And it makes me crazy
I'm in the same place I've always been
But I'm trying so hard not to be
So what am I? Who am I?
I don't want it, don't get it
Can't seem to surface, feel so ****** worthless
I'm desgised as an alibi and I'm half the person I ever wanted to be
Ashley Rodden Jun 2018
You do what you do
        And I will do what I do best
Resenting every word you've ever said
         Load your words and fire with haste and regret
We're lost,
                  lost in our own minds.
Where do you get your facts from?
You don't change for anyone.
To celebrate the past we hate for attention
And hang it for everyone to see.
                  You said too many things that you meant
And I no longer think for myself
                  
                   Confused, whom do I go to now?
How can I trust you?
                   Break it down before it's even built
Making sounds just to be heard
Making mistakes just to feel guilt
Setting traps just to see hurt
                   You talk a lot, but should I, do I even care?
Suspecting the worst,
It's not crazy, it's called art.
Ashley Rodden Jun 2018
I often wonder how to make it back home
And why it feels like all the effort goes unnoticed
The pressure keeps on building up and closing in
And now I swear I've forgotten how to swim
Why is it always easier to just walk around
I miss the music that influenced us to talk for hours
That made us want to stop and smell the flowers
For just a second it's all I ever wanted
Now I feel like every star I used to wish on is falling out of the sky
Now we can't even find the time
And if we did, I doubt you would even look me in the eyes like you once did
Everything is just a story now
And it's practically impossible to word it out
If I could find the peace of mind to press rewind
I'd do it in a heartbeat if I thought it would make a change
I would freeze an entire moment in a second
If I thought it would make a bit of difference
I never meant for us to be alone
Ashley Rodden May 2018
And it gets worse
People start to get angry with me.
They tell me,
You are not trying.
They bombard me with wise words
which others have spoken or written.
They tell me to snap out of it.
Or to look within myself.
To change my energy.
Cry out to the Lord.

And do you know the only way I really get fixed?
The only way,
The way that someone who doesn’t know how to love themselves gets to be able to love themselves,
Is by being given,
over and over again,
the unconditional love they didn’t have.

However, Do you see what I'm offering you?
It is the challenge of finding a way to love unconditionally.
To give unconditionally.
To find in yourself all the blocks to unconditional love
which the difficult personality that I am forces you to discover.

This never was about me.
This never was about the frustration of the bottomless pit.
This was never about you learning wonderful techniques that you could offer to loved ones in order for them to be like you.
It was always about you.
I've already got this.
I knew what I was doing.
I have this.
My higher self is looking on,
smiling,
and nodding at the absolutely brilliant job I am doing of playing out my role.
My bottomless pit role.

Do you get it now?
Even a little?
The enormity of this gift?

The challenge is unconditional love.
The opportunity is unconditional love.
The journey is back to unconditional love.
Do you catch the energy of that,
the excitement of it,
the power of it?
Don’t you just love the way this all works?

Oh, and if you happen to be the me, thank you!
There is much love and appreciation for you here.
We stand in awe.
Ashley Rodden Apr 2018
I find it funny how your heart doesn't work, and that tattoo on your chest spells hurt. And how predictable. You're just another shark who smells blood, trying to figure out where love sleeps and **** it like it has to be stopped. I don't see the reason in your logic, I just understand the plot, and if I don't find it out, I swear I'm going to pop. Just another meal for the vultures, picked into pieces and buried under the boulders. Until the last cracked bone is found, I'm just a victim with my soul torn out of me and shot to the ground, without the glory. Broken and that's the way that you like it with the war horns fired up, and I should have asked you what you wanted before you flashed me those fangs

What did you want from me? You're knocking on doors trying to wake the beast. Head full of thorns, you want to settle the score.

I've been living in this winter you've provided me. Eating all the pages of this history inside of you. For what? I've taken all the pain I can, and plan on jumping off this ship before I lose it and never know who I am. Before this vessel ever gets in sight of land, I'm going to dive into the waters underneath it and take my chances until it drowns out. You've got a perfect way of killing me, an angel in appearance with a smile like a guillotine and I don't think that you can ever change. Pain is your nicotine, fighting me is the flame and it stays that way. Cause everything is frozen in your steps, and this blade is a trophy for your unexpected ways, you're a monster, and I can smell it rotting in your teeth. Just hope that you can figure out what you've been looking for and finally be free.
Ashley Rodden Apr 2018
I'm finding it hard to manage
Any close relationship without
The fear I'll vanish
All of this has been hard and
I'm not denying it
I'm just writing this as a product of my environment
So please listen
They say family is everything
Its more than just a house, a white picket fence, and a wedding ring
Its blossoming life and standing together through everything
Always trying to take the people you love with you when you go
But im a prisoner in my own body quarantined from my soul
Spitting in the faces of the ones trying to show me hope
Ashley Rodden Apr 2018
I want to invite you to come with me
on a walk inside the mind of,
me,
"The bottomless pit."

I'm the “nothing is ever enough”
The “I always need more”
The person who seems to be unable to hold onto anything
anyone has ever offered.
Who begs you to say something helpful or comforting one day,
but then needs you to say it all over again the following day,
and the next.
And the next.
The person who can’t seem to find a way to use anything you say to them,
anything you give them.
To hold anything.

Ready to put on these shoes
and take a walk with me?

The world, is a really frightening place.
Started out that way.
Mother wasn’t really cut out for mothering.
Didn’t have anything to give to a baby apart from practical care
—given in a no-nonsense kind of way
—because she hadn’t had it herself.
So, inside, she was a bottomless pit too,
hungry for what she never had,
resentful of being required to give what she never had to someone else.

In fact,
truth be told,
mom was even a bit envious of her little girl.
Why should baby girl be the center of the universe when she,
the mother,
had never been given that at all?
Living life as if it owes her.
Believed that I owed her, too.
I was her second chance.
I should give her everything that her own mother had been unable to give.
No blame,
It was as it was.
It’s as it is.

Fairly early on in life,
I learned that I come second.
That I didn’t deserve.
That good things were not for me.
That life was not kind,
or comforting,
or soothing or giving.
Rather, life was punishing,
taking and begrudging.
But something even harder came with that.
I grew up unable to hold anything.
One of the greatest of human pains there is.
Growing up empty.
It feels frightening.
Joyless.

It’s to be untouched by anything good,
to be unable to remember it,
or conjure up the feeling of it.
Everything is fleeting and temporary.
It goes in but it just falls right back out.
Like trying to hold onto water it's,
"The Void."

See, you can only hold onto things if you have been held.
If your life has included being physically,
emotionally or psychologically held.
If you have felt
and known that you were existing in another’s heart and mind.
We only know we exist because we first discovered
that we existed in the heart and mind of another.
And if we haven’t had that,
moments vanish.
Others’ words vanish.
At least, “good” moments and “good” words do.
“Bad” moments stay because there’s no way to soothe them.
And “bad” words stay because they are all we have known,
so familiar and trusted.

Oh and it doesn’t end there.
It gets worse.
As an adult, you continue to feel like a hungry,
needy child.
Just like mother was.
You feel so bad about that,
so ashamed,
so inadequate.
You hate and despise yourself.
A horrible person for being so full of
hurt
and anger
and resentment.

And the worse you feel about yourself,
the more you try to compensate by being
“good.”
Trying hard to meet everyone's every need,
and resent it while believing that you are bad for resenting it.
No one is happy in this arrangement
—there is duty here, not love.
Although most would insist on calling it love
and most believe it is love,
Most don't really know what this thing called love actually is.

I go through periods of the darkest,
most desolate,
depression.
I will catapult between anger and grief.
I will cry for days.
I will walk out.
I will shout and think cruel things.
Then will be overcome by guilt and remorse.
And shame.
Oh, always the shame.

And I try even harder.
When it gets really bad,
I will ask for help in my own way.
I'm clearly in so much distress that others are eager to try and help me.
Giving hugs,
words of encouragement,
practical offers and words of wisdom.
And I will expresses my gratitude
and appear to absorb it all
and feel better.
And the people will feel gratified
and content that their help has made a difference and somehow
filled this "Bottomless Pit."

However, in "The Bottomless Pit",
all it has actually been is a plaster.
It has helped temporarily.
But the void
—the bottomless pit
—remains.
Everything is just as hollow,
empty,
frightening and meaningless as before.

I am still a “bad” person and I still hate myself.
I genuinely try to do the things I have been advised to do.
I read the books.
I write the love letters.
I say words of affirmation as if they are sacred,
magic rituals that will bring about some kind of miraculous healing.
I try to love myself like everyone tells me to do.
But always,
there is the void,
always the bottomless pit.
Always the inability to hold onto.
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