I can’t breathe sometimes and I cough when I laugh because when I was 13 being cool never felt right to me.
In middle school someone taught me that the Outsiders were the wise ones, they were punks referred to as “Greasers” and I had never identified with anything before that.
I learned that I could stay gold if I wore leather jackets and held a cancer stick so I smoked in the woods at night with my friends and listened to La Dispute.
We would stay up on the black tops with *** in water bottles. We could watch the sun come up over the playground before sneaking back into our beds.
It kept me gold until I wasn’t

replaced is such an ugly word, only found in hospital rooms when organs fail, in bedrooms when your daughter's heart is ripped from her chest by that boy with no job

being replaced brought out the worst in me.
there is malice in all of us, we just can't feel it all the time
tingling in our fingertips making us want to punch concrete
i just want to see blood i don't care if it's my own
the malice in me lingers and can understand why Columbine happened and how serial killers sleep at night

the only boyfriend I have ever loved moved thousands of miles away and replaced me within 4 months. how dare I compare that pain to the death of a loved one i am sorry if you have broken your neck when I have only broken fingers

what I'm trying to say is I can't show up at your bedside with a knife and I can't burn the stuffed animal you have slept with since you were born

this is the pain I wish upon you: I hope that one day he is sleeping peacefully in a queen sized bed you bought days after purchasing your first apartment, I hope your curiosity leads you to his drawers. i hope you find my letters, read them and understand how much I loved him. I hope you feel sick thinking about how I was everything before you were even a thought. most of all, I hope you wonder what he wrote in his letters to me. I hope it keeps you awake at night. I hope that stationary in the bottom of my drawer haunts you. that is the part of him I get to keep. i hope you feel like he will never be wholly yours

this is the reality: she laughed and gripped my letters wanting to burn them. the feeling of satisfaction that the past is gone and can never be relived dulled the pain of jealousy. there is no winner and there is no loser, only love, lost love, time and the consequence of circumstance. if distance is only in the mind than i have to stop blaming the oceans between us. in her hands is a part of me i can never get back. the idea that he will never be whole with that piece of the past in my possession would mean that I can never be fully whole. maybe we're all better off burning the letters

HOW DO YOYU POLITELY TELL SOMEONE THAT WHEN THEY LEFT YOU WRAPPED YOURSELF IN THEIR MEMORIES AND THEY WERE THE ONLY THING YOU COULD FALL ASLEEP TO.

HOW DO YOU TELL SOMEONE THAT EVERY SECOND OF YOUR TIME WAS SPENT WORRYING ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT THEY WERE OKAY LIKE I WAS YOUR MOTHER BUT I WORRIED ENOUGH FOR THE BOTH OF US.

THE ONLY COMFORT I HAD WAS IN THE NIGHT TIME BECAUSE I KNEW YOU WERE SLEEPING AND NOT SUFFERING. YOU CHOSE TO LEAVE MY LIFE ENTIRELY BUT I DID NOT STOP WORRYING I TRAINED MY MIND TO WORRY ABOUT YOU AND I WILL NEVER HAVE THE COMFORT OF KNOWING YOU’RE OKAY.

THE NIGHT YOU GOT DEPLOYED THERE WAS SOMETHING COMPRESSING MY CHEST FOR HOURS I COULDN’T BREATHE I COULD ONLY PANIC I COULD NOT SLEEP IN MY OWN BED BECAUSE ALL I COULD FEEL WAS YOUR ******* GHOST THAT I USED TO CLING TO BUT NOW I AM BEGGING IT TO LEAVE ME ALONE

it is crazy how the ghost of you had much more to do with me than it does with you, you lingered in every move I made, I lost you but I still felt you so today I compared your memory to a mental illness and there are triggers all around me but I don't have panic attacks anymore

I haven't stopped remembering but I am realizing how masking insecurities with pretty little love letters can become toxic because every dot on every i of every "i love you" turned into a bullet that destroyed me more than it destroyed you and I can't remember if I actually loved you or had just completely lost myself because i wanted to drive off the road to see if you cared; maybe that is love but i hope it is not the kind of love that lasts forever

I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that I meant it at the time and that’s really all I have. feelings change more frequently than the weather.  all small talk consists of is the weather, the rain or lack of it, but do you remember how the sky looked the day your heart really broke? I don’t. you told me you hated small talk.

All I’m saying is death might affect children more than it affects us. they are gifted with the ability to only think about the present, so when they cry over a lost balloon let them. I am not who I was when I cried over lost balloons and even that is a little death.

I guess what I’m trying to say is I can’t give you every part of me because I trust you mean it when you say you love me now,  but I know one day you won’t mean it anymore and I need to have parts of myself left. I am not who I was a year ago and one day I will not know you at all.

at that wedding the priest kept repeating “love never fails” so I’m trying to figure out if what we had was not love or if he doesn’t know what love is

When I was in high school I had an English teacher who I thought “got me” and I sent her a song that meant a lot to me. She ignored it and I eventually got that band tattooed on me. In that same class we came to a topic that I felt very passionately about, that same teacher made fun of me for going “Sarah Palin” on my essay.

When I was in high school my uncle told me that he wouldn’t look at me twice if I were standing next to a girl in a pretty dress. He told me that if I wanted boys to like me I should change.  My mom told me it was my fault because I whined about boys not liking me. My mom told me that my anxiety is selfish and made up. My mom has done many great things for me. So has my uncle. Maybe it is selfish that I’m only writing about the bad stuff.

When I was in high school my biological mother got married and I found out via facebook. I was devastated and innocent and literally could not understand why I would not be in the wedding. I went outside to the garden owned by my parents who did not give birth to me and cut myself in the yard. When you’re bleeding you don’t worry about anything else.

The only biological family I felt close to was my on father’s side.  I felt like they accepted me for who I was- while I always felt like I was pretending with my adoptive family. Maybe the idea that I am more natural with my biological family is something I created in my own head. I am very lucky to be an adopted child with a relationship with their biological family. I felt bad for my little brother on having such a confusing family structure. I wondered if he understood why. I fear that he is being raised in a hyper masculine way that I morally do not agree with. My Uncle Billy loved me exactly for who I am. He died and for the first time I experienced real loss. Someone who truly loves me has died. This is what growing up is.  I believe my biological mother has decided that it is less painful not to remain in communication with me. I have learned that it is never easier that way. At least not for me.

Now I am living in Boston. I have a goal. I have a passion I want to pursue. I have Christmas lights and candles and artwork and tattoos and healthy friendships and big dolly and candy and hot chocolate and good music and a phone and safety net waiting for me back at home. I want to help others. That is my goal in life. I want to work in a group home or a homeless shelter or a **** victim crisis center or anything. I think I can save the world even if I can’t save the whole world. We all have little worlds that we carry around with us. We learn from pain, we become something of it, we make it count.

it’s when I’m trying to sleep and I think I hear noises by the door that I realize I no longer feel comforted knowing that my mom is sleeping in her room nearby, I can only save myself, so I put a knife in my room just in case just in case anyone ever came in to slit my throat, I realized I was living in constant fear and I did not choose to live my life like this did anyone choose to live like this.... my anxiety makes me sick mostly when I think of you

it was when you heard a fly buzz when you died that I realized you could make even a fly beautiful by putting it into a ******* poem and how the last thing you did before you died was make a bowl of cereal but that bowl of cereal mattered because you were making it for someone you love and that quote says everything you do will be insignificant but it’s very important that you do it I can’t remember it anymore but you didn’t die screaming for what your heart told you was right or embraced in the arms of the one you love you died making a bowl of cereal so whats the point

I am terrified of what to say when you ask me how my day was and I cannot tell you how my mom passed out with the stove on. I am terrified because my home life is so dysfunctional. my room reflects my introverted self, how am I supposed to let someone new in? I cannot tell you how the house reflects my mother’s broken strings and her attempt to replace all that was lost. I don’t know if you will still know me if I tell you the ways I’ve learned that loss is what defeats us in life. I don’t know how to explain this all to you or if you’ll understand. I am intimidated by the way your family seems to have it all together. I am scared you won’t accept me when you get parts of me you didn’t know were there. I’m scared you won’t understand, I’m scared you will