falling out of love was easy.
all you had to do was make a call,
break a heart,
find someone new.
i guess that’s only if you fall out at all. i guess i'm still waiting for that.
i've been waiting for a while.
longer than it feels and shorter than I tell myself
i have a fear that i’ll be waiting to fall out of love with you when i have canyons in my face from age and broken legs from climbing up this mountain.

you can't tell people that your heart isn't the only thing broken.
bedsides from just being damaged goods, they've heard all your songs before. they're tired of it. "move on, change the station please, this melody is making me carsick. you've had your time to mourn."
everyone had their fair share of breaking. nobody cares.

and no one cares about poetry. no one cares that a poet cries when they think about daffodils or that they feel physical pain in their chest when they think about what wasn't meant to be but it happened anyway.
a poet writes for themselves, and how selfish is that? they consider others only when their chest stops hurting and expectations boil in their brain.

You have dreams of big cities and fancy cars and you are surrounded by beautiful people
But your ship is drowning
You've been on this voyage for 18 years now and you've come farther than you ever thought you would have but you will come up alittle short
Just as always
You have such big dreams but larger deadly habits
The razors won't help you and you know that but
Somewhere in your head you have convinced yourself that if you drain out all your blood you will also drain out all the hate and be lighter than ever and then you can finally make it to shore
But, my dear, the hate is not in your blood it is in your head
You are the captain of this sinking ship but your depression is your first mate
Your depression has been the evil stowaway that has been sleeping in your brain for years now
The hate in your head can be traced back to it
You've spent the last eighteen years trying to track its every move
You've performed countless operation on yourself trying to make yourself better trying to remove your depression
You would have thought you were van gogh trying to paint the perfect smile on your face because you know people say smiles can cure depression but i guess you just didn't try hard enough or maybe you should have ate yellow paint instead
But no matter how you decorate the ship it is still sinking

Sixth grade was the first time I remember feeling out of place in my own body. I tried on a shirt from the year before and realized I wasn't the same size anymore. I felt strange for a moment, then brushed it off. I threw away the shirt the next day. By the end of middle school I knew I was bigger than my friends, but I tried to avoid thinking about it. I just wanted to fit in like the rest of them.

Freshman year I got called fat and decided to make myself invisible. Treated every food as if it an allergy. Lost 30 pounds in 60 days. Told my parents I already ate. Told my friends I was eliminating junk food. Told no one my secret for years.

Gained my weight back then lost it just as quickly. The never ending cycle of starving, binging, purging.
Starving, binging, purging.
Starving, binging, purging.
Nobody notices when I fall off track because disordered eating is only cared about when the victim is skinny enough that you can see the evidence. I have been terrified for four years to speak out for fear nobody would believe me when I told them.
No one expects a bigger girl to not know how to feed herself.
There is something to say about a culture so warped that I get upset by the fact I don't have a stereotypical eating disorder body.

Sometimes I wish it was more obvious, so at least that way they could see how hard I'm trying to be perfect... To fit in.
America, am I not sick enough for you already?

losing you was the beginning of finding myself
the prodigal me had finally returned home but i had been
divided equally in two
you threw your half away
you squandered your wealth in wild living
and women that were not me
i longed to fill my heart with
happiness that had once overwhelmed me
i couldn’t find healing in your hands anymore
i spent months searching for arms
i could trust again

but i couldn’t find those either

the first time i realized
i had taken half of you with me too
i was standing in the bathroom looking in a mirror
describing body parts with your name
this was the first night i took a blood red pen to my skin
and started labeling my arms as madi
my legs as madi
my stomach, my thighs, my neck
madi madi madi
mine.

its hard putting shattered pieces back together
and healing does involve hurting
it also involves recovery

if you would have asked me 12 months ago
which direction i saw my life leading
i would have never pointed you here
sometimes life has a nonsensical way of working out
you always end up where you are meant to be
you will figure this out the hardest way possible

but loving yourself will become the easiest thing that you do
eventually
time will heal all wounds
eventually
you will come home to yourself and not be disappointed
eventually
this version of me was dead and is alive again
she was lost and but i have found her

and im so happy i did

i guess some would say that its just easier to push the ones you love away, instead of sticking around and watching them leave you instead. but absence is absence and leaving hurts too, because either way someone’s being ripped away from you and i don’t think that dull ache ever truly goes away. we just grow numb to it, become unaware and pretend that breathing isn’t hard. even though it is. even though it kills you sometimes just to take a deep breath because shards of everything broken inside of you never truly go away, they just resemble into something else that you either love or hate and end up poking your lungs when you find someone new, letting you know “oh hey! this is scary!” but the point of this is to say, absence hurts like a ***** no matter how it hits you. and maybe its insensitive to say, but you need to appreciate the people you have right now because you never know when you will run out of what seems like an endless succession of tomorrow’s because everything does come to an end at some point. so please, with everything inside of me, im begging you, make the most out of today. tell everyone you love them, shout it as loud as you can, scream it. im not much of a person for saying i love you unless i truly mean it, but please, gather what’s inside of you and tell them. tell them before its too late, appreciate them, call them, text them, go hangout with them, hold them close because when you have a tomorrow that comes and you lose someone you’ve loved with every fiber of your being, that’s what ***** you up inside. it leaves you broken, so broken you can’t even fathom enough life inside of you to breathe for a while and so you become blue and you kind of fade away into the sky and you go away for a while, you vanish from all that you’ve known because when someone you love is ripped away and you’re forced to say goodbye, it’s kind of like hearing every “i love you” and “i hate you” all at once. it’s deafening, numbing, overwhelming and its not something you come back from easily. and i know it hurts how nothing is promised forever but sometimes there’s solace in that. because that means the bad won’t last forever, this darkness won’t surround you forever, these wounds will not bleed you dry forever. so please, hold onto the things close to you even closer. and love. love with everything you’ve got, love until it makes you ******* bleed and remember, you choose who you bleed for. so when you bleed yourself dry, i hope you can see it in you that it was worth it. i hope the person you bleed for also bleeds for you. i hope that that the person you love, loves you back just as much. i hope your heart heals, and more than anything, i hope you find it in you to love when there isn’t much left. love will save you if you let it. please, let it.