I was once a girl
Who played with her toys
I was once a girl who played
Baseball with boys

I was once a girl
who got ripped to shreds
so many times
I would one day need meds

I was once a girl
Small and fragile
slapped and grabbed
so I learned to be agile

I was once a girl
who let her guard down
So now I am the girl
who always has a frown

I was once a girl
happy and thin

But now I'm the girl
who always wonders

What could have been

My body spun
From one side of my garage
to the other.

In between the pillars of poles
creating space between the cars
parked in the two car garage

perfect family, right?
not even close

I unlaced my skates
tossing them in a case,
unorganized as my chaotic brain

I leaned down to pick up
a mess of what looked
like plastic

like a broken water container
crushed by the weight
of a basketball tossed without looking

being the good girl I was
I picked up the charred plastic
placing it in my hand to
throw it in the trash

I dropped it in the can
letting the pieces fall
one
by
one.

As I wiped my hands
I found a piece I had forgotten
it had the label of Prego on the side
I realized then
It was a broken spaghetti jar

I ran upstairs
to help with dinner.

I asked my mom
what I could do to
She said
"You can run that blood
under a cold water faucet"

I looked at her confused, saying
"Where am I bleeding?"

She turned my arm over
showing me the cut
glazed over my forearm
I hadn't even felt it

I didn't know
that was the moment
I would find an advantage
to not feeling pain

and an interest
in the impure
realization
that bleeding
wasn't scary...

that it couldn't hurt me
as much as the rest
of my life could.

Memories of you and me
Play in my head like a movie

People always blame a woman
For not leaving a bad relationship

"Can't you see what he's doing" they ask

"Yes of course I do, but it's more complicated than that!"

I get touched and I fight back and I raise my arms
in defense and push you away and run away.

"If he's hurting you, why don't you just leave?"

That's a brilliant question,
one I ask myself every night
as I curl into the smallest ball I can

Attempting to protect myself
from any exposure I may have
on my body

"Why don't I leave?"

It would seem like a simple decision

Just leave.

But being with you is like being in a room of darkness

And I keep running into cabinets and broken glass
that bruise and cut my body
Then someone turns the lights on,
And I realize that I'm in an empty room
One with a door just twenty feet from where I'm standing

So I run toward that simple door but then,
******* IT! You turn the lights off again
And you put your arms around me
As if you love me

So I hold my breath and I count to five
As I wait for you to release me
From you ever present grip,
Whether it's physical or not

So I scratch and slap at my body
Trying to relieve it
From the clinging feeling of disgust
that your "love and affection" haunts me with
Years after experiencing it

WHY DON'T YOU LEARN???

WHY DON'T YOU CARE???

Why does your internal understanding
of personal respect not exist?

These are questions that neither you nor I
Will ever be able to answer

So they linger...
Like a balloon

With it's string attached to my finger
as I walk away from you

Whether we realize it or not
We all use disguises.
We hide parts of ourselves
In fear
Or in scheme
We play tricks on people
Fooling them into believing
This part of us exists
Or doesn't
But the difference
Isn't that some people do it
And others don't

It's the question
Of whether or not
Any of us experience sadness
Of toying with peoples emotions
But some people are raised differently

Some are taught to keep their hearts
Close to their sleeve
While others are taught
That the imperfections of humanity
Are better left unseen on them.
Some people stand out
Unafraid to bear their soul that represents
Pain and Love and Bravery
While others masquerade themselves
Like spray paint on a brick wall
Of the intercity.

Neither one is right or wrong
It's just a personal choice
Some people choose not to blend
While others are terrified not to

Smart and quick
You stole something from me so quietly
I wouldn't even notice it was gone
Until much later in life

Pain follows me because of you
Flashbacks creep in at inconvenient moments
Because of your talents

Yet you sit in your house like a prince
As the town honors you with awards and praise
But it's okay...

Because I get awards too.
I get awards for living, surviving,
breathing another breath
These are the standards that I get to live by

You are prideful, living and judging
On a success scale of one to ten

My question to you is this...
How many points do you give yourself
For stealing a young girl's innocence?

Being abandoned is not the same
As being alone
You can be in a room of a thousand people
and feel more lonely than you would
on an island by yourself.
Being alone is a physical act
Abandonment is the feeling of utter aloneness
When you know the people beside you
But also know they have no interest in you
Not the fake you that pretends everything is okay
But the real you
The one that wants to scream
"Sick, in pain, helpless, unhappy!"
When someone cordially passes and asks how you are
So many minds think that people have abandonment issues
when a father neglects to come home
or a mother leaves her children with the nanny
But people don't realize that so many times
True abandonment comes from houses that sit on hill tops
And go to dinner parties
And have barbecues for their children's teammates
But then forget to tuck them into bed
Because they're drinking
Or working
Or both
"I'm good how are you?"
Offers the little girl inside a 30 year old
Who still feels that loneliness
Despite being in a room of people
Where she know's she supposed to feel love

Because that feeling of abandonment stay with you
Whether you're 15 or 50,
No matter how many people love you
It's so hard to forget the one that doesn't.

It's the blend of black and white
The collapsing of good and evil
Like parallel universes becoming one
Like the pull of an angel to the dark side
Or of a devil redeemed
Or like two children at play
rolling down opposite sided hills
Until they meet in the middle of a valley
But gray is not just two colors combined
It is a feeling too
Like an uninvited dark cloud
Looming over head
Crowding you in an empty room
Gray can even be a sensation
A feeling of breathlessness
Despite knowing that your lungs work perfectly
It is the color of numbness
Of no personality and "I don't care"
Its the color of not having an appetite
And a lack of social interaction
Gray is the black and white feeling of a panic attack
When the lights start to blend together
But that slowly turn black as you start to disassociate from the world around you
And you only hear your ears ringing and your heart beat

Heart beat...

The one thing that makes us real
The one thing that we all have in common.

BUT we have more than just hearts
We have minds

Minds that make the human race diverse

Gray is the color of diversity
It represents the complete blend of black and white

To think of the world in black and white would be a crime
Not because there is never a right or a wrong
But because when you see the world in gray,
You witness a world of beauty, pain, error
Emotions that don't exist in clean margins

I love the world that I see in gray.

Can you see it too?