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 Dec 2017 boringwonderland
Kaity
They call us survivors

I call us leftovers

They tell us we're heroes and deserve better than the hand life dealt us.

They use us as examples of inspiration and make shiny metaphors out of our trauma.

But.

But they never look at you long enough to see that you flinch when they reach, with greedy hands, towards you because to look at you too long would mean seeing the hand wrapped around your throat.

They are never around long enough to know that panic sets in while you shower and scrub at your skin until it's raw and bruised.

Sticking around would mean knowing that you were touched by Poison Ivy and they've heard it's contagious!

They don't watch when you're seventeen and crying into his shoulder, asking him to tell you he loves you, just so you can sleep because that would mean that maybe..you aren't that heroic afterall.

If they got too close they would see that you aren't surviving so much as submitting to being alive.

They sit on the edge of their seats gobbling up details about your so-called courageous story, eating up the nitty-gritty details because they know it will end in some form of you rises from the ashes.

But YOU didn't know that you'd be rising from the ashes when he was lighting his match.

When you tell them, you're still in therapy learning to breathe and count to ten, they have to realize bandaids don't fix gaping wounds, so they stop listening, notice the crows feet and crooked teeth,  and turn away because suddenly...you look like a victim
Splitting pain throughout my head
Can't help but wish that I was dead
Foggy memories crowd my mind
Making me a long for an earlier time
Before the hits and brain so damaged
Back when I had problems I could manage
Words come out in a jumbled mess
Stumbling and stumbling as a try to confess
That though now broken I was once whole
That I can conquer this injury and become the me of old
Four times recorded when my brain did falter
Became countless Sundays praying at the altar
Father heal me from the lingering pains
Please, let me be whole again
There’s a certain disharmony in the way of things,
and how it turns humans into monsters. I saw a monster turn a girl
into a woman with her clothes on the floor,

and he carved ‘liar’ on her chapped lips. I reached out when
she stood before me, holding a razor in one hand and whiskey
in the other. She had dashed lines on her wrists

and shattered glass at her feet. I feel like screaming, but my gums bleed
from a mouth full of broken metal wire.
I cannot tell you the story that sits on my shoulders like a child,
too young to understand the weight of himself.

Now my eyelids have been peeled from my face and
I cannot look away from the girl when she comes home after school
and asks me for help with her homework
because the least I can do is solve a few math problems.
This poem contains a trigger warning for self-harm and ****, which I have tagged as well.
 Dec 2017 boringwonderland
alice
2 men,
that's it.
2 men
have known me,
inside, they fit.

Doped out
of my mind;
it's hard to recall.
Bits and pieces,
flashes of memory.
I was a living rag doll.

Barely breathing,
he takes me from behind.
Pulls my hair,
and says,
"I'm gonna make you mine!"

I think it happened
three times,
but who really knows?
When your brain's
as high as mine goes.

I can't call it ****,
I was a willing participant.
Numb to the bones,
so with it I went.

When it all fell apart;
my secrets exposed,
he wrote me something
that was no longer prose.

His words were razor blades,
slicing the skin with ease.
I kept myself in my own prison;
over, my heart began to freeze.

"A willing **** victim",
is what he called me.
Sick to my stomach
for allowing him in,
I lay my head on the pillow
to cry for a 5 year old sin.
Inspired by the most hurtful words ever uttered to me. Written before I could accept that this man had indeed ***** me.
driving down a windy road 35 miles per hour at seven thirty in the evening with flowers and balloons in the back seat shouldn't have ended with me being suspended sideways for thirty minutes while they tried to make it safe to get me out of what was left of my first car and no matter how many times i draw a bath i can't get rid of the feeling of my left hand covered in my own blood and the small slivers of glass that are still in my hands or the swollen over-sized bruises that adorn my legs and my face  

and regardless of the scent of lavender and apples i cant look at my damaged body anymore

did you ever really love me at all?
Uncertainty fills the air
And suddenly I'm not so sure.
Nostalgia begins to decay
But why?
Heavy, heavier...
I inhale and sigh with, what, exasperation?
Creation?
These are all mere distractions
To prevent myself from colliding
With myself,
With how I feel.
Emotional trauma, Part I -
Coming soon to a childhood near you!
We laugh it off
But it does not leave us.
Nothing can leave us
As easily as you walked away
That night.
I will not forget what I saw.
Engraved in my brain
Causing me to crumble
Tumble, tumble...
**Crash.
 Dec 2017 boringwonderland
bess
There is no such thing as a child of an alcoholic. There are children, and then there are alcoholics. One will never harmonize with the other.

Because alcoholics are never parents. They are shells, empty casings of love mixed with a burning taste of whiskey.

They are echoes of slurred, “Goodnight, I love you.” and “See you in the morning.” Each word filled with love, but blinded by the haze of liquor, so strong it fills your eyes with tears.

But most importantly, a child of an alcoholic will never be a child. No matter their age, they have gained the experience of those five times their age. They have watched life end with each tip of the bottle, but begin again when the sun breaks through their window.

I read stories about children who spend their days without a care in the world. And as a child, I wanted nothing more than that for myself. I wanted the carelessness, not the impossible burden of responsibility and secrecy that I held, hand in hand with resentment and hatred for the people who raised me.

There is no such thing as a child of an alcoholic. It’s not that we don’t exist— we do. But a child will never be a child when their parents can never be a parent.

— The End —