one thing that used to disappoint me was that all of the superheroes and book characters i admired had eyes blue as the ocean, or emerald green, even grey like a thunderstorm, but never brown like mine or yours. brown was plain, common, nothing special.
well, that is someone else's loss if they refuse to see how truly beautiful you are, and i will selfishly stare into your eyes forever

for they are the color of espresso with a splash of milk, and you make my heart race like a double shot
i feel like making lists and conquering the world if it means i can keep waking up to the smell of you in the morning

they are the color of the mnms i set apart when i was younger because i thought they had more chocolate
and even if it wasn't true, the thought was sweet enough to make me happy

they are the color of kindling and i am burning to ashes then rising like a phoenix, ready to set myself on fire again and again just to feel your warmth

they are the color of baked bread and i've been starving for a love like yours to sustain me

they are the color of fresh soil and i want to bury myself so i can love you until i die and then turn my body into a garden of your favorite flowers

they are the color of a knot in the trunk of a sequoia tree, and i am imperfect but growing and even though my love for you does not come without mistakes, it is still the largest thing on this planet

breathe.
the clock slowly ticks down to end my twenty first year.
breathe.
i think i was expecting something a little more dramatic. loud music, flashing lights. at the very least a few friends beside me and a strong drink in hand.
breathe.
but maybe i don't need so much excitement anyway; i've had two full decades of it and it's been enough for a lifetime.
breathe.
in fact, i spent most of those years hoping that would be my entire lifetime,
so many times thinking i would die before this day
so many times desperately wishing i would die before this day.
breathe.
so maybe tonight's spectacle will just be the first breath i take to begin the rest of my life.
maybe it will be the fact that i choose to breathe at all.

...

breathe.
i am still here.
breathe.
i know now that wanting to die doesn't mean you hate life. and loving life doesn't mean you have to be scared of dying.

breathe.
i must keep reminding myself again and again that i am loved despite the fact that i'm alone on the couch with nothing but a blanket for company.
breathe.
the smiles of my friends flash before me one by one, loosening the knot in my chest.
breathe.
i know the planet is beautiful, but god, it cannot compare to the sound of my friends laughing, as if their joy were weightless. carefully, i stitch pieces of it into a patchwork umbrella for the next rainy day.
breathe.
i have looked love in the face and i am slowly thawing.

breathe.
i see again every time i fell on my face, every time i pushed someone else down trying to get up, every clenched fist and tightened jaw.
breathe.
i have had to fight too hard to get here. but i guess that really means i learned how to take punches and maybe throw one back every so often.
breathe.
my knuckles are constantly bruised and my skin scars too easily. i am not allowed to forget the hell i've dug my way out of, and i am thankful. it makes the sun feel a little warmer every morning.

breathe.
lately i've been speaking a little too quickly, tripping over words like the world's clumsiest track runner. there is too much going on in my head to keep up with my mouth.
breathe.
and is my voice too loud because people are complaining about how i can't whisper, also everyone else needs to talk so should i just stop now...
breathe.
...no, this is still a hundred times better than when i never spoke at all.

breathe.
i am learning how to gently fall asleep in an empty bed
breathe.
more importantly, i am learning not to call the bed empty when i'm already in it.

breathe.
it seems i have reached the age when my grade school self thought i'd be an adult with everything figured out. she is yet another person i have disappointed.
breathe.
still, i am slowly realizing that no one else really knows what they're doing either. and that's okay.

"What does it feel like to be borderline?"

I have never been able to explain BPD in a way that satisfies me. What I experience becomes trivialized by attempting to put words to it. Words are so direct and they are so obvious, and they aren’t even close to capable of capturing the complexity and the mystery that is BPD. But I can try.

It feels like black and white and nothing in between.
Every thing, every person, every place – they are either good or they are bad. I am either good or I am bad. Constantly changing, never the same. Good girl, bad girl. Good self, bad self. Good friend, bad friend. Good mother, bad mother. I hate you, don’t leave me.

It feels overwhelming.
I don’t feel sadness, but anguish. I don’t feel upset, but hysterical. I don’t feel joy, but ecstasy. I don’t feel anger, but fury. Not love, but infatuation… obsession. It’s exhausting to feel so much. Relationships are endless cycles of love and hate and pain and bad habits that I can’t seem to break no matter how hard I try. Every new face that enters into my life is someone who is capable of abandonment, and it has become so much easier to shut the world out than to invite heartbreak into my home with open arms.

It feels empty.
At the core of my being, I am nothing. I’m an empty shell surrounded by the chaos that is my emotional havoc. Remove my emotions, and I am flat lined. Remove them and I no longer exist. No direction, no sense of self, no core identity. At the peak of an emotional breakdown, I am everything. I am every negative emotion in existence and then some. And I’m so alive with fury, with desolation, with misery, and with so much pain. When it becomes too much for my body and mind to handle, it disappears in such an eerie way that I’m left questioning whether or not what I just experienced was real. I switch back and forth from being too alive that it physically pains me, to being consumed by nothingness. Nothingness is sitting alone on my kitchen floor in the middle of the night wondering whether the chill I feel on my shoulder actually exists or not. Nothingness is staring off into space for an hour wondering when my body will allow me to exist again so that I can move.

It feels confusing.
Like not knowing the answer to a series of questions. Who am I? One question I feel that I should know the answer to, yet… nothing. My favorite color is yellow, because that’s what it was when I was a child. Decisions are impossible – how do you decide anything without a stable sense of identity? I’m sorry that I couldn’t tell you what I wanted for dinner tonight, but that’s because I was trying to decide if I’m the type of person who likes Mexican or if I’m the type of person who likes Italian. I wake up each morning with a new definition of who I am, only to be let down by myself each night for not living up to the me that I decided to be that day.

It feels needy.
Endlessly, and hopelessly needy. I need to be appreciated. I need to be validated. I need to be wanted. I need to be loved. But I need these things in a way that is so much more than anyone is capable of giving me. It feels like such a small favor to ask – to be loved by those who are supposed to love me. But no one seems able to meet my expectations. It leaves me pathetically wondering whether or not anyone is capable of caring about me in a way that makes sense to me. And although I already know the answer, I still need to be loved so desperately that I search for it with everything that I have. It’s endless messages and too many phone calls. And it’s the knowledge that my actions are only perpetuating the likelihood of abandonment, but I need love so ******* badly that I have no choice but to continue.

It feels irrational.
Being capable of thinking rationally only makes the irrational behavior so much more miserable. The knowledge that behaving in reaction to emotion is irrational does not make me any less likely to do so. I’m constantly walking towards a cliff, muttering to myself, “Don’t do it, you’ll regret it.” Only to fall off the edge anyway. And every time I fall feels unimaginably more painful than the time before, but I don’t know how to stop.

It feels bright.
When I love, it is the single brightest thing I’ve ever felt in my entire life. It’s so bright that it burns my eyes in a way that makes me see a life that I could have never imagined on my own. Without my darkness, I am on top of the world. Ecstasy is just as intense an emotion as misery, except that for me, it’s coated with anxiety and fear. I never quite know what to do with happiness, and before I have the chance to really enjoy it, it’s gone.

And it feels like being lost.
Lost in loneliness, lost in the vacillation of my emotions, lost in the insanity of knowing absolutely nothing about myself. My emotions are a language that I cannot speak, and they are winning the war that I am struggling to fight.

I buy the cheapest cigarettes
that I can find
sometimes subsisting solely
on my own fears

too busy counting
and alphabetizing
all of my past traumas
to get to work on time

I’m too young to
feel this old
I’m tired of being
so tired

I’m still waiting
for my life to start—
I’m dreaming of a day
that I can feel young—

as young as these
bones that creak under me
and this flesh that bulges and
sags

as young as these eyes
that do nothing but stretch
and dilate
I’m always so afraid

but I don’t see ghosts anymore
it’s trite to say that what I fear is myself
but I know, I know how evil I can be
and I’m afraid of everything

how do I keep going under
the weight of myself?
why do I try when all I do
is waste so rapidly away?

"Right here," [points at heart] "you're dead."
"And right here," [points at head] "you're twisted."
Borderline personality disorder.
A curse.
I am alone, empty, freezing, starving, withering.
I am sorry.
Always sorry.
Sorry to so many.
I am doomed.
I am alone.
I am twisted.
I am desperate.

How do you explain that your bones are the coal used as breeding ground for a fire? How do you explain that there's a fire raging inside of you, setting every inch of your body and thoughts ablaze? Like a wildfire destroys the forest, this pain is knocking me down and smoldering me.
But how can you say you're in ashes when your body is unbruised?

No collapsed limbs, no heaving lungs, no unconscious mind -only puffy eyes and a tired tongue?

How do you explain that the tightness one gets in their throat upon hearing unexpectedly terrible news is a common feeling of yours - a side effect of the blood that runs through all of your veins? That even though you know you can do something, the words 'you physically cannot' are flooding your brain like a drug and poisoning every choice you try to make?

How do you explain that every move you make feels like walking on a tightrope that seems to never end. How each step sends a shiver down your spine; trying not to fall, trying to finish the task, trying to stop the anxiety -but you can never reach the end because your destination keeps switching from left to right despite the progress you've made.

How do you explain that you're dying when everyone see's you as perfectly alive?

NJ2016

Three in the afternoon and everything is fuzzy
You feel the familiar prickling under your skin and welcome it with open arms
But you can’t feel your arms
This vessel isn’t your body
But at the same time it is
You’re watching yourself lay there hopelessly while you pray and scream And cry
Oh, God, please don’t let me die.

But you aren’t dead
But are you even alive?
A bittersweet medium where nothing is real and your chest is on fire
You live in the flames, you feel yourself escape the trap of gravity
And you are floating
The bed you lay on is no longer touching you
You are in the air, weightless, but only for a few moments before
You crash down to earth and farther
And farther down more
Falling into endless
Painless
Void.

Am I alone?
Am I real?
Words ramble off the tongues of a homely face
But the words got mixed up in Google translate
Foreign words ringing in your ears and you can’t tell if
If you are really experiencing everything you are
Or if you’re just playing make believe with yourself.

Back to nothing.
Always everything but.

A wind chime old and rusting on your grandmother’s porch
The song not as clear as it once was
The new tune so softly eerie that to a passerby it seems just fine

Waking up five minutes before your alarm
Sitting on your bed, wide awake
Just watching the time tick pass, minutes of your life
Until you’re past the time to go

In the idle of traffic, you become aware
Of all the movement around you
Babies whine, horns honk, people sing
Yet here you are
What are you doing?
Are you doing anything at all?

Your bed is a coffin, dusty from the days you don’t open it at all
The sunlight is foreign to your eyes
People prance around you, basking in its glory
They don’t even blink at your inability to see the light.

In the cemetery,
Gravestones surround you,
Bodies of the lost and souls of the ******
You can’t help but resonate somewhere deep inside your soul.
Not that you wish to be dead, no.
Just that it seems you already are.

there's a tumbleweed ricocheting off the barren walls of my heart.
there's a tumbleweed rustling within the bleak walls of my brain.
I am breaking apart,
I am going insane,
No,
I simply am going.
I am going,
I am gone.

The sheets yet to cool and the sun yet
to rise, I've already practiced an easy
goodbye– but seeing you wreathed in
sheets, sleepy, pleased, feels unkind when
you're just a dream I have sometimes.