Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
Jordan Frances Nov 2014
I said goodbye to the tree that afternoon
The one I sat always sat by as a child.
As I began walking away.
I knew that night I had no intentions of waking up
The next morning
If the knife or the pills had their way with me
It was like a potent *******.

I said goodbye to my phone
As I turned it off
And stuffed it under my bed.
Maybe no one would find me, call me
And everything would turn out fine.
No one has to hurt anymore
Isn't that the point of this endeavor?

I said goodbye to my family and friends
Through chicken scratch on a bright yellow post-it note.
"Mom, I love you" really meant
Mom, you are my hero
Even if you have made a lot of mistakes
You are the gentlest person I have ever met
I can never repay you for loving me unconditionally.
Please, keep loving me even as I lay beneath the dirt.

"Daddy, I love you" really meant
Daddy, I just want you to think I am enough.
I just want to feel like you love me no matter how I look.
I just want to be Daddy's girl
That's all I have ever wanted to be.
Please, don't be mad at me.

"Heather, I love you" really meant
Heath, when you find me
And you probably will, because you're always sneaking into my room
Don't look at me this way
So decaying and lifeless and ugly
Even though I have never been as pretty as you
None of this is your fault at all
Please, don't hate me or be ashamed of me.

I said goodbye to you all
But goodbye could never say enough.
No words that I could string together
From any of the twenty-six letters in the English language
Would ever explain even the very beginning
Of how my life disintegrated within my hands
Like sand, it dissipated into the air
And became one with the wind.

I said goodbye to myself
For I no longer knew who I was
Clearly, I was meant to lose myself along the way
Because once I awoke, ****** and cut up
I decided a change must be made.
My life became a work in progress
And while I have been far from perfect
I am improving
And that is all I can expect of myself.

I said goodbye to suicide notes
Written in pages of books
My pen was my dagger
That furiously cut away at the paper beneath its blade.

I said goodbye to the pills, the knives, the abuse
And eventually, although it took another year and a half,
To the bulimia that held my life captive during the lag time.

Never again will I attempt to say goodbye to this life
That left scars on my hands and wrists
And blisters on my heart and soul.
Never again will I attempt to check out
Because I choose to live by saying
"Hello."
Jordan Frances Nov 2014
I stand in front of you
Closing my eyes, because I do not want to see the gun
I know this is a firing squad
And I am undoubtedly the target.
Take your bullets, tainted with hate and fury
Please, I pray,
Make them deadly.
But you stand there for a good deal of time
Taunting me
God, would you just shoot me already?
I am already half-dead
My limbs danging from my body
My heart on the outside of my seared skin
So why do you prolong this process?
Still,
You continue to laugh at me.
I am defenseless,
What power does this give you?
I continue to talk to the god
That I still, even after this ordeal
Manage to muster up some sense of hope in
Even if it is a false one.
"Let me die"
I repeat, over and over again
"As seeing his face is like
Launching a bullet into my chest
And having my heart continue to beat."
What's worse than dying?
Living like you are dead
Because you might as well be.
Jordan Frances Oct 2014
Oh, decrepit world where we live
Who chose you?
Who is your creator?

Some say it is God
But I do not believe that the loving Lord
In whom I have been taught to believe
Would make something so heinous
So deceptive
So evil.
I find it a bit ironic.

People literally die to get out of this asylum every day.
Those people take their own lives.
Other are so angry about it they resort to violence
And they take the lives of others.
How can human being be so inhumane?
I find it a bit ironic.

Every day, our species
Who are supposedly different than the animal kingdom
Commits ****, homicide, slander and torture
And we are supposed to be more intelligent and rational
Than the other animals who tread along this planet?
I find it a bit ironic.

So, decrepit world
Do your devices derive from hate
When you were supposedly built out of love?
Christians say this
And while I love God
I find it a bit ironic.
Jordan Frances Oct 2014
You took a twisted part of me
And made it utterly broken.
Will I ever be able to live a repaired life?
Maybe, but not because of you.
You told me I was fat
When I was bulimic
You knew I had an eating disorder
Yet we talked about it maybe once
And you continued to pressure me to be the best at everything.

No empathy in my home
No, not for a disturbed, attention-seeking child
Who is really more damaged and broken
Than you will ever understand
Even if you don't care to see that.
To you,
She is just a selfish spoiled brat
Even if that was true, who's fault would that be again?
Who is trying to make your life miserable.

I wish you knew
That I cry in my bed every night
Curled up like a little child
Wishing I was lovable.

I wish you knew
Every time I purged
Back in that dark time in my life
I kept playing back the words
Daddy wants me to be thin
He won't yell at me anymore if I lose weight.
Even though that is a lie that still penetrates every ounce of my being
Because I know I will never be good enough for you.

I wish you knew
Every time I looked at the scale
I saw your face
And the number always made you angry.
I would tell myself how you would be angry with me
If I did not lose at least ten pounds in a week
So I would go harder.

I wish you knew
Every time I even began to believe I was pretty
You took that dream from my hands
And squashed it between yours.
You stole a lot of my self-confidence
And I do not know if I can ever forgive you for that.

Every cut
Every purge
Every tear
Every drop of self-hate
Every bit of longing for acceptance
All stem from you.

They are all for you
So take them as gifts
And treasure them against your cold heart
As maybe they will finally thaw it out.
Jordan Frances Oct 2014
I carry my baggage with me
Like a sack of ashes.
I have been burned and charred
By various sources
They are all that remain.
And yet you complain
That they don't smell good
And that they obstruct your view
I'm sorry I ruin your idealistic scenery
Considering your eyes are closed to a ******* up world
And you make your focus
The residue it left behind?
I hate to break it to you
But ashes are the result
Of a terrible fire that continues to incinerate
Our flesh and bones collectively.
The human race will eventually burn to a crisp
And you're worried about the remains
That I use to heed warning to others.
Jordan Frances Oct 2014
You put too much pressure on yourself.*  How often have I heard that, from my parents when I used to rip my hair from my head after softball games and school plays because I felt like I was stupid and incapable? From my therapist when I would continuously tell her how much anxiety I feel on a regular basis, like the world is collapsing on my shoulders and literally pinning me to the ground?  Now, from various teachers telling me I will be fine when I have panic attacks with tears leaving trails on my scarred cheeks and cannot stop shaking because the fear for the future and the terror of letting people down seems to be the hands around my neck, waiting for me to black out? How frequent have those words met my ears since I was five and began to look at myself like I was ugly, or at nine when I felt the need to hide what I ate so I would binge in my room, stuff bags of chips in baggy sweatshirt pockets so no one would see me as I cried about my size, but I continued to eat because it gave me some warped sense of paradoxical comfort?  And then at thirteen, when I felt I needed to do something about it so my stash moved from my bedroom to the bathroom, the place I locked myself alone for hours and stuck an unwilling finger down my throat so that all of these things that made me so not good enough would find their ways out of my limp body?  A good deal of this pressure was self-induced, but it was also learned.  You see, being my daddy's girl, every little child's dream, meant looking the part.  It meant passing on the chocolate cake on my birthday even though I had been waiting for it all year.  It meant being publicly ridiculed in fast food restaurants when I would try to free myself from his totalitarian diet regime and I would immediately be subjected to social homicide no matter who was there as a tactic to force me back into my place.  Maybe that's why I still cringe when people come into my workplace and embarrass their kids over petty things that won't matter to them the next day, but will scar the child for years to come.  It meant being taught that my only goal in life was to look pretty, and that because I am a girl, my voice means nothing.  It means learning to think I deserve the kind of love that tells me I am worthless if I am not a size six.  Being my daddy's girl meant that when the first boy I ever loved called me a fat ugly ******* on a regular basis that it was nothing new to me, he was just more frank about it.  It meant that when my please, don't's and my I don't like this anymore's were silenced by a friend's unwavering desires for power and control, I figured it was because he cared about me because that's what he told me.  After all, being my father's girl meant that I was nothing more than a pretty face, a porcelain doll, who was only good for being someone's *****, even if I was combatting against his advances.  
Being my daddy's girl meant sometimes, as a child, I wanted to be a boy, not because I was transgender, but because I wanted to be something of value that was not solely based on the beauty I did not have. Because of all this, being my daddy's girl meant never being good enough.  If all I could be was attractive, and it became clear that I was not, then what was left?  My sister grew into the skinny robot he wanted her to be.  She was my daddy's girl.  I never was, and I used my voice to speak out against every value he taught me.  He was conservative; I became a raging liberal.  He claims to be Christian; I began to question religion.  He was a sexist, homophobic bigot; I am a feminist and human rights activist.  As in all forms of tyranny, they try to shut you down if you shout the truth from the depths of your being.  But my voice will not stop screaming.  Still, how I felt about my looks began to affect everything else.  My father would try to support me in my activities and in school, but when I looked at him, all I could see was a big glaring manifestation of YOU'RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH staring me straight in the face.  And while this snowball has been rolling and building up for years, I have to stop believing the lies.  I cannot blame all of them on him; society has taught me that I am not a model, therefore I am nothing.  The church has taught me that I must be subservient to some man and that I will never be anything without him.  In case you couldn't figure it out, that will never happen. Overcoming this is not easy, and while my thoughts still panic and franticly bounce about from corner to corner, while my mind still travels to evil, lifeless places, I must crawl through the darkness.  I must proclaim to the world that I am enough, whether I believe it or not.
Jordan Frances Oct 2014
I was a curious child, as most are. What's for dinner? Who's the mail from? How old is she? How much longer? Questions poured from my mouth as though it was a faucet and, as is the norm, my parents blew off the questions I asked at four years old. But as I grew further in my developmental life stages, my parents still refused to answer me. I was taught not to question so much so that when I was fifteen and failing algebra I did not know how to ask for help. Now suddenly it was expected of me to know what I was even though my inquiries had been dismissed along the way for years upon endless years.

Because of my socio-economic standing as an upper to middle class kid with clear problems in my head that my parents failed to address, I was told to be silent. When I questioned the rules, my society, my religion I was told to be quiet because I was just a little girl. I was just a girl. And that mindset is what teaches us exactly what role women should play, subservient to their male counterparts. Even when he is the fisherman with his subject sprawled out on a board being heinously gutted of their very existence, having their insides drained into a bucket and their eyes lifelessly roll into the backs of their heads and yet she is the one being blamed for just being a fish. She swam into dangerous waters and should have known that he would catch her and pick her scales and flesh from the very bones to which they were attached. But still, she never questions it because being born as a fish means reaping the consequences.

You taught me never to question authority. So when the first man to tell me he loved me used the phrase as a barbed weapon to get me down on my knees, I never thought twice. When the first man to tell me he would never hurt me as my ex did, I didn't worry that he would end up taking my "no" as fuel for his engine and allowed him to go harder. I didn't think twice when my cousin who was seven years older than me told me to kiss him in awful ways and touched me in ways that were worse. Authority, ladies and gentlemen, has beaten me to a very exhausted pulp.

You taught me to never question my feelings. That I was doing just fine on my own, I didn't need any help, help was just an illusion. If you must, discuss it with your therapist. You're not sick, you're just troubled. You'll handle this on your own. Just like I handled it so well on my own two years ago when I grabbed a kitchen knife off the shelf and dug it into my arm sitting on my bedside, praying I wouldn't wake up the next morning? Just like I handled it so well on my own six months ago, when I was crouching over the toilet seat made of cheap plastic 4-7 times per day, sticking a stealthy finger down my throat and making myself throw up so I wouldn't have to feel how much I hated myself or how much grief I was in? Do you know how it feels to have stomach acid burning up the inside of your organs and gradually eating away at your esophagus on the regular? To put it simply, it hurts. But I was fine with it. And just like I'm doing just fine now, where I'm having panic attacks in front of teachers because I see my friend Briana's strawberry blonde hair and freckles, the person she was before she became a ****** addict, everywhere I go? I'm sorry, I guess that was too many questions.

Do not try to silence me. I am almost eighteen now, and asking what matters. Which means each and every one of my questions. Stop telling me my questions are not relevant, stop telling me I don't matter. I am never going away because I am important. I will not accept that I can be splattered and gutted and thrown away simply because I am just a little girl. This little girl will continue to question everything, and she will be heard. I will be heard.
Next page