grace

grace Sep 2015

dried blood bonds your jeans
to your skin
bright red gashes
where scar tissue had been
ripping fabric away
for beads of blood to bloom
head in your hands
on the floor of your bathroom
0 days clean
the relapse into madness
knowing you're ******
from the first tally
stinging showers
and red bathwater
drowning yourself in
symptoms of your disorder
red becomes a drug
pain becomes a solace
stuck in a cycle
of destruction to calmness

0 days clean

is an end

of a beginning

poem about what it's like to relapse

#cutting #depression #mental #tw #selfharm #bpd #trigger #personalitydisorder #borderline

grace Aug 2015

ugly bird

I unfolded myself today.

it felt like pulling apart a paper crane's wings

and flattening out the paper

to see the creases and folds and torn corners.

they were always there

but I couldn't see them.

fold the crane back up again

it's not standing nearly as tall

I know it's better to leave things be

but my weakness is my curiosity

I just wanted to know what I was inside

but now the crane's thin, paper wings

are much too crooked to fly

so much angst and self loathing you'd almost thing I was a teenage girl. oh wait

#love #paper #reflection #selflove #ugly #inside #crane

grace Aug 2015

okay

it's hard to just let it be.
it's hard to accept and move on.
it's hard to be doing well for so long
to have it all come crashing down at once.

I don't believe we suffer to learn a lesson
or appreciate our lives more.
sometimes
****** things just happen
and we have to find a way to heal.

I can make something beautiful out of this pain.
I can grow, I can move on.
I can't go back to how I was,
but I'll make it work.

I'll make it work.

(hopefully)

****** day

grace Aug 2015

I have never been in love.

It will happen someday
but I'm not looking forward to it
because all I've ever seen
in regards to love
is manipulation and abuse
and being guilted and used
and I don't want to be on either side of that.

you told me I was in love
I was too young to know
that the second the back of your hand
met my 13 year old face
I should've left
but hearing bottles break in my head
from my empty, numb childhood
convinced me to stay instead

I got too close too fast
and started to feel trapped
under the weight of keeping you happy
I contorted myself into something I'm not
stopped letting myself open up
I spit venom at your feet
and walked off
to afraid to look you in the eyes
too numb to say goodbye

I didn't get that close
in the few months we had
but enough to trust you and tell you ****
then feel the burn like acid in my chest
when I left temporarily
and you left, period.
After, of course,
letting me buy you a plane ticket.

I never got close to you
I clarified that that's how
this was supposed to go
but I could see the way you looked at me
in the aftermath of ***
and heard you call me beautiful
so I left...
now I think of us in bed
and cringe, still full of regret

I can feel myself getting close
in the sense that when I leave
I want you to want me to stay the night again
you make me feel protected
and the feeling of that alone
isn't something I expected
and in fact it scares me to death
I keep waiting for it to get ******
but so far, nothing
(convince me to leave).

you used me as a punching bag.
you used me for attention.
you used me for money.
you started to love me.
you...still unclear.
all I know is that I've never felt
textbook style love
without the undertones
of intense apprehension
and fear of the unknown
honestly,
I'm scared as ****

Different stories, one theme.

#love #relationships #dark #morbid #romance #falling #dating

grace Aug 2015

fog

skin pulled taut
by stretching fingers
veins darken beneath olive skin
fingers pull knuckles pull tendons
strings seem to stretch from fingertips to shoulder
movement like puppetry
dry nails break and peel
from bending backwards
caused by coal ropes
you twitch
reach
move
but
not on your own
you are not your own
I am not my own

A poem about not feeling in control of your own body while dissociating

#dissociation

grace Aug 2015

the blur of your clarity

you are quietly resting
in the back of my mind
I forget you're there
until I'm alone at night

you are the empty sounds.
the white noise background,
sometimes that silence is deafeningly loud
you are the hum in my brain.
the noise you can't place,
gentle and strange both sound like rain
you are the tuning in.
the forgetful mind full of gin,
realizations and moments of second guessing
you are the selective.
the choosing to take or give,
hearing your breath in memories I relive

I'm no good at this
Feeling is a peculiar thing
It's so confusing
I don't like it

you confuse me, you are crystal clear.

grace Aug 2015

sincerely ******.

looking at my body
I am sincerely unhappy
when I don't manipulate aspects of it

when I'm standing naked in front of the mirror
vulnerable and anxious

I want to scratch my skin off
pick off pieces revealing something beautiful
flake off flesh revealing something ethereal

rub off the fat and the scars and the ugly
but I can't do that
and it's just so hard to love me

#love #body #selflove #ugly #bodies #bodyimage #distortion