i shared my secrets, flaws,
insecurities, and vulnerabilities with you
tenderly drawing hearts along your
back and spine with my finger
hearing you whisper
"don't ever leave me"
in my ear, sending chills down my spine
thinking that this love would last forever

four years later and
you are using those secrets
and insecurities against me
throwing vile, cruel words toward me
i am no longer of use to you
and you say i won't be in your life
despite leaving me on all of your
social media

so i have taken the first step
removing you bit by bit
from my life,
someone that can surgically remove me
from their life and replace me a few months later
is not someone that i want
in my life.

blocked from my life now
the only avenue left for you
is by phone, and
deep down i am dreading the day
i see your name pop up on my phone again.

sometimes i wonder when you
started the process of devaluing me
it was subtle, starting with little things
"you don't touch me enough"
so i start to touch you more,
show you more that i care
then it evolved into
"you're not goth enough,
not funny enough,
you don't do enough for me,
you don't go out enough"
more and more it continued
"you don't tease me enough"
and i realized that this was
never a relationship
i was something safe,
that would give you attention,
love, and a place away from your
sisters to stay.
in the beginning you were so charming,
considerate, taking time to learn about me
as i did the same
going on trips and being told
that i was the first person that you said you loved
in three years
but then i remember little conversations
you told your ex best friend before you met me
that you love them.
i wonder now, if anything you said
was real
or was it all a ploy to get something you wanted
easy access to a supply of love and *** and attention.
i remember feeling like i
was going crazy because you would
tell me things didn't happen that way
or tell me i said something when i knew
i didn't. i thought it was my fault
that i was somehow gaslighting you
and didn't realize it.
but now i see the truth of the matter,
and why you didn't want to work on the relationship.
i was given an ultimatum of having to get
therapy or you will leave, but when i asked if you would ever go back
you said you didn't need it.
after four years of trying so hard
to be there for you, to help you
thinking that you would do the same for me
i know now that you didn't have a connection with me.
already you're with someone new,
just a few months after leaving me.
i saw you without your mask for the first time
clearly i could see you for who you are
scared, insecure, pushing people away before
they realize what you're doing.
i still have so much compassion for you despite it all.
after everything i love you unconditionally,
and i believe it is what you have wanted from me all along.
to be wanted in the background, so that when you
grow bored of new people
you can come back to me as if nothing happened.
i only wish the best for you,
to live a life with ease and to be happy
but i feel like you will continue this pattern
with so many after me
just like you did before me.

thinking back to the time
we had reconciled
i remember how you wanted me
to touch you, and i said no
and you kept asking
asking if you could touch me instead
i kept saying no
but felt guilty, feeling like
i had to please you
to make you stay
remembering this, i wonder to myself
if all of this has been
transactional to you
and i try to check the facts as
i sift through more memories
of the times where love was withheld
and yet i still love you
because i've learned two things
can be true at one time
i can be disappointed,
and still be in love

i have learned how
to be alone
since i was a kid
i know how to entertain myself
and find appreciation
in whatever i have
i don't have to fill my time
with things that
don't mean anything to me
just to pass the time
i don't need to fill
the whole inside me
with someone else's
arms
the connections i create
are ones that i want
to nurture
because i wouldn't spend my time
on something
that didn't matter to me
the quiet in my life
is comforting
something i have
always had
and will have for
the rest of my days

you're doomed
once you've realized.

growing up you had told me
that i wouldn’t amount to anything
just a lazy *******
my existence meant nothing more
as inconsequential as a lonely ant

ive looked for validation from you
in the forms of other people
a boss, a lover, a friend, a hook up
ive traveled the globe
and even signed away my freedom
to find it

and finally after ten long years
i think ive figured it out
you can go to hell you
******* *******
i don’t need your *******
validation anymore

letting people in is such a scary thing
my mind becomes occupied with the thought
that i might be too much of
whatever i am
all of the
“what if im too talkative?”
and all of the
“is it okay for me to feel this way?”
and then the thought if it’s okay
to ask for validation that
i truly am loved for what i am

it turns out
all i needed to do
was ask aloud

walking through the halls
analyzing each painting i pass
wondering how someone could have
such skill

what a surprise when i read the
signature as my own
when could i have created something
so lovely
and why don’t i remember how
to do it again

“i just want to live!”
the scream echoed through the empty halls
as if i was the only soul around

i guess it might be time
to open the castle gates
and start letting people in again

im haunted by guilt of
something i could have never prevented
the last message sent to you plays out
a broken record that can never be fixed
wounds that will never be healed by words
things i wish i could have done
but now can only play out as fantasies
your corpse rotting in the graveyard we used to play in
this is something i never imagined as our future
and you’re somewhere i can never visit
we’ll never reminisce on old times
and ill never hear you again say my name
there’s only so many times i can apologize to the sky

how does it feel knowing
that this has all been done before
just in different places, with different people?
life is just repetition with
slight adjustments, history repeating
over and over until time ends.
different voices, different kisses,
spending irrelevant time over
things that shouldn't have mattered
that much.

what have i been doing with my life?
i know who i was when i was younger,
full of life, wanting to get out of that
little town, just wanting to travel,
see the world, didn't matter if i had the money.
full of dreams, ready to take on the world
didn't matter what i was told.
what happened to that spark that was
lit inside? been told so many times
that things like that just aren't possible.
memories like a movie reel,
running from the cops at midnight,
losing the smokes in the bushes,
tripping on acid through the park,
breathing in the sunrise behind the apartments,
feeling peaceful.

help me fan the flame that
i know is still inside.

you're doomed
once you've realized.

i enjoy my time alone,
but i enjoy my time with you
even more.

i enjoy the soft kiss from
my kittens sandpaper tongue,
but i enjoy the gentle pecks on the cheek
from you even more.

i enjoy biting into a ripe peach,
a long drag of a cigarette,
but i enjoy the taste
of you even more.

you have suddenly
begun to spill over into
my regular life.
filling in all the cracks
that haven't been filled
in a while.
my heart can't help but wonder
how long you'll
be around, but
even if it is just temporary bliss
this is definitely worth it
for whatever pain i'll
endure in the end.

how many times do i have to restart a poem now,
just to be satisfied with the first few lines
even though it doesn't really matter much at all.

i know i'm content with life as it is
but i wonder how many times i would restart my life
before i'm satisfied with the outcome.

all those what ifs don't matter, i know,
and i know my emotions have been complicated,
i apologize mostly to myself.

the higher the emotional high the more i fear the comedown,
can't stop from thinking of the end
trying to remind myself to keep present.

haven't been here much lately,
minds been elsewhere, some other city,
and i'm not sure what triggered it.

trying to disconnect, the intense fear of abandonment,
reminding myself nothing lasts forever,
but i get attached so quick to anyone that seems to care.

have i just been closed off
from others for so long that when
someone seems genuine i start to panic?

i know i have nothing to fear,
but i can't help but get ahead of myself.
i think i just need some fresh air.

i know i'll be fine in the morning but
my existence just makes me feel so
uncomfortable.

not sure where my passion for life had gone
not sure if i even had it in the first place
it's a lot easier to not bother trying
because then no one will give you a second glance

maybe it's just all in my head
and it's just one of those good few months
a stretch of time where i'll create endlessly
even if it is, i'll take what i can get

nothing needs to last forever,
if it's good, i'll take it
and let it go when it needs to leave
eventually it'll come around again

when was the last time i took a moment for myself
at first it was good with you, and i realized i could be myself
mostly accepted, even with the sadness
the first few nights you held me tightly and comforted me to sleep.

months later you got tired of my constant sadness, of the nights i
couldn't stop crying for no good reason.
the ache in my heart didn't cease when you came into my life
and i think that hurt you.

you threw out my antidepressants claiming i didn't need them anymore
because i had you in my life.

two years later my heart still ache, and part of it was from you.
the pain you caused me, when you belittled me, and called me a crybaby.
before you had been so charming, so caring
and now it was as if you'd been replaced, complacent and apathetic.

when you told me you were no longer in love with me
i fell apart, i apologize, i shouldn't have begged you to stay.
weeks later when you said you didn't want me anymore, i sat quiet
on the couch and accepted it completely.
people grow apart, it's only natural. it's how we live.

i've become content with how things are now
and remembering the person i am, and who i am becoming
without you in my life i can see things more clearly.
i hope you do well in the future and you find someone that
makes you happy again, and that you can make yourself happy.

i hold myself at night when i cry now
and i seem to be sleeping just fine.

getting ready in the morning i see the scars on my thighs
from the days in high school where my life was falling apart
and my skin was my outlet.

the scars are a milk white now, interesting as i'm already quite pale
running my hand over them i can feel the indentation from
where the blade sank in.

i remember the nights where i'd be crying and listening to some
kind of edgy, angsty band and how numb i felt as the
blade swam over my skin.

how good it felt, to have something real that i could validate and
how interesting it is that i no longer crave that pain
instead all i seek is admiration.

things aren't always as bad as they seem,
honestly it's not my fault.

the way things ended up, i couldn't have prevented it
how could i have known that evil lurks in friends?

i try to tell myself, it'll get better, i'll forget it
but sometimes at night i can't help but feel those pervasive hands.

and the way that i cried, and
how it felt like an eternity before it ended.

her face haunts me at night,
knowing someday she might come looking for me.

i can't provide her with what she hopes for,
i'll never be the mother i was supposed to be.

so many regrets, and at the same time
deep down i know i couldn't have done it any other way.

the way i am, no matter how much of a mess
it's how i'm supposed to be.

that's what i tell myself, sometimes it helps
sometimes it just makes me feel even worse.

of all people, why me? forcing eyes shut
trying to imagine a different past.

after a while i would have thought that i'd get everything figured out
it took a lot of pain for me to realize that things don't always turn out right
never taking the right precautions, putting all the blame on myself
turning inward forgetting to look toward the future

i became who i had been, the person i never wanted to see again
looking in the mirror and wishing for a funeral
trying to hide myself from my peers, only to have prying hands force themselves in
learning to bite my tongue, telling half truths
running to the finish line

letting the walls down i hoped that this would be the final time
telling someone the secret that's been haunting me,
only to find that halfway in it wasn't what they wanted
too much of a burden, with too many issues
no one wants to be censored

easy to fall in love with, even easier to fall out
eventually i'll get to the point where i'm content instead of
this empty feeling of nothing.

this isn't what i expected life to be.
i had the whole world in front of me,
everything was a possibility, there were no limitations
nothing was holding me back besides my own self-doubt.

throughout high school they told me
that i'm wasting my potential, that
i'm not trying hard enough
even though i felt like i was using all of my energy
just to get through the day,
wading through the mud
in order to make it to the end.

now as an adult i'm told the same,
that i'm able to become an incredible person
and achieve great things so long as i try,
as long as i work towards my potential and not
waste it.

what potential do i have?
if i've spent all this time climbing to the top
just to hit a wall and i don't remember being given any equipment for this part of the obstacle course.
there's nothing to scale the wall, no cracks nor holes,
nowhere to go.

pressing myself against the barrier i realize that
maybe the wall is just myself, keep me from ever unlocking
the part of myself hidden away after years of abuse.
i left high school, but i never left the mud pit.
now i can wade through it as if it were nothing but air,
but i know that everyone can see the filth i'm covered it.

i'm not sure how to pull myself out,
i don't know how to rinse myself of this dirt that's caked on my skin after all these years.

for seven years i believed that i had no right to say
that i had been abused because it wasn't physical,
like my friend who was beat by her drunk father on
a daily basis.

my abuse was only on an emotional, psychological scale
and while sometimes his hand slipped or gripped too tight on me,
i honestly wouldn't count it as abuse.

recently i began reading into this and while it's not
as talked about as physical or ****** abuse it still counts
and it carries over as children grow up from these experiences.

even experiences that i didn't think counted as emotional abuse,
from times when i was far younger than just a teenager.

the abuse i've dealt with hasn't made me any stronger than i was,
it's made me the exact opposite;
instead of being the person i was before, bright and optimistic,
i'm apologizing constantly for things i don't need to and
second guessing myself and others intentions.

constantly i wonder if i'm bothering someone,
am i being too much of myself? am i allowed to speak?
does my opinion matter? is it all right to assert myself?

after being told for three years that i don't matter,
and there is no point of me for existing and that
it's no wonder i don't have any friends,
i'm trying to break myself out of the box i've placed myself in
and it's so **** hard.

i'm not sure when it started but i think
it began about eight years ago and since then
i've had quite the struggle dealing with it.

maybe it was the divorce,
the break up, the abuse,
being abandoned by my mother
and friends

or maybe i just snapped inside
and all the liquid began to ooze over
filling up all of the negative space
inside my brain.
sticky black tar growing thorny
flowers full of doubt.

been having those bad days lately;
either i binge and crave attention,
or i spend all day sleeping not even bothering
to feed myself.
reading or lying on the floor in a
pool of my own self-loathing or
drinking excessively and crying.

sure i want help, i want to get better,
i'm aware of my own disease even though
i tell myself that it's all right and i'm not that bad
because i'm not like that person and i'm not
making any attempts on my life right now
even though i spend a lot of my time thinking
about it.

sure i want to get better, but i think life
would be more terrifying without this
disability, this burden, constantly weighing
itself down on my shoulders.

who would i be if my heart was fine?

constantly at the back of my mind
the idea is there, whispering to me when
my mind is idle.
telling me that it's still possible.
you can still do it.
no one will find you either,
they wouldn't even think or wonder
where you are.
they'll knock on your door and
when there's no answer they'll
be curious and when
they find you, they
never would have expected it.

so why don't i just do it?
crying, my heart aches.
empty, numb, unmotivated,
and when i'm high i'm really
******* high and on cloud nine
but i crash so hard that i can't
handle this reality even though
i've got the good life.

i'm still so unhappy,
and i don't know how to get happy
and this bottle isn't helping.

spent the week in town, expecting to hear from loved ones
only to be reminded there aren't many left.
arrive looking my best to the show to
meet her and remember fond times just to
leave and spend the night with the bottle.

he didn't even show up to my
military graduation, and he didn't
even show up to my high school graduation,
and he didn't show up to
any events when i was a child, and
he wasn't there for my birth.

how many more chances am i going
to give to a man that doesn't put forth
any effort to be involved with his
only daughter, and how much more
of myself am i going to put out there
to be hurt and disappointed?

not sure why i get offended
when i find out i wasn't invited to a social event
because i know, i'll always politely decline.

my father is the worst sort of person.
he is the kind of person that will
make you feel loved, important, and
part of the family. he'll show you off
to friends and extended family like
a trophy and you will feel amazing.
the minute you step out of line, and
your perfection disappears, and humanity
shows, my father will abandon you,
strip your titles from you, tell you are
worth nothing and he'd rather see his own
daughter become homeless than let her
stay on his couch for eight weeks.
he has never been a father, he has been
a man that is willing to pay for things
once in a while if it will benefit him
but he will not take any blame and
he will not try to grow and he
will not love you unconditionally.
he will never be your father, and he
will never care and i have come to
accept that.

i spent the last weekend with
my older brother and his girlfriend
from mexico, and it'd been seven
years since i'd been in san antonio
and the first time in my life
i'd ever seen my brother without
my family.

he's grown so much from since
when he left, and he is an amazing
person and in ways we are the same
and it's interesting to connect with
someone you never spent a lot of time
with, and it's interesting to
talk to blood and be thankful
for the fact they exist.

it's quiet, and i sit and wonder
by myself in the silence why
i haven't been accepted as your
daughter yet.

already fell to the concrete
on my knees begging for a place
to sleep, somewhere to bathe,
instead you ignore my pleas for
help and you cast me out
even farther than before.

doing so much, just for you to
love me and i'm not sure what
else i can do, do i not fit into
your plans?

don't bother coming
to my graduation, don't
bother trying to be apart
of my life, get rid of all my
things if you have to
but the fact that you'd
rather me be homeless than
let me sleep on your couch for eight
weeks

you disgust me, you
are a horrible father and yet
i still love you and i
just want you to love me
too

there's one thing
that i will be sure
to never do again,
and that is to cry
alone in my bed
at night.

i like poems that sound pretentious,
that use big words that i never think to
use when i'm writing,
poems that go far just to prove a point,
wanting attention so bad that
they'll throw out words they're not
even sure what they mean.

i like poems that take a minute,
two seconds, to write,
poems that are created from a fleeting
thought, a quick moment,
trying to keep the pace with the brain
quickly, quickly, get the thought out
onto the paper,
don't bother rereading, it's perfect the way it
is, raw, and unedited,
true emotion captured
in just a few keys.

i apologize if this makes me seem like
a selfish child, but i am just trying to
get some understanding of the situations
i've found myself in.

it seems like i've never had a father around,
for the majority of my life.
despite the fact that here you are,
with good health and plentiful money to
supply your new wife and children,
and yet i am in the oven?

letting me slow cook, set at an unpleasant
two hundred degrees,
you pour words of distaste and disrespect
into the bowl you've placed me in.
telling me that i've done nothing for you,
despite how much you've done for me.

your lies make me turn inward and cry
silently, as i've learned that trying to talk about it
with you does nothing except give me the reply
"i take no blame for this."
i've figured out that nothing is you fault.
actually, you are the embodiment of perfection,
you have it all.
look at how far you've come in life,
divorced twice, second wife,
new successful children that you didn't have to raise,
a son that is on his way for greater things.

where do i fit into your perfect picture?
problem child, attention seeker,
unsure of how to speak to me, how to teach me
instead you poison the water and watch
me choke.
you must have control of the situation,
the moment your hands slip is the moment
you begin to flail and i understand this
and i forgive you for your deceit.

do i have daddy issues?
yes, i think i do.
i think i have issues with men,
getting close, everything in general.
it's not just his fault, it's not just the fault
of watching parents love crumble
or the verbal abuse of an old lover,
it's how the child reacted.

i was quick to get older,
quick to drink, quick to ****,
as soon as i'm older, everything will be better
but i was wrong and now i'm left to pick up
the clothes, and slowly sneak out of the
strangers bedroom.
careful not to forget the keys,
not to wake the child,
not prepared to handle the tears this early in this morning.
this late in the evening.

he will take no blame for the problems in my life,
i won't even give him the chance to accept blame,
that would be giving him too much
and i want him to have nothing.
no part in my life,
no part of anything.

you told me once you were proud of me,
and the tears i kept in the jar i think i'm
finally ready to pour down the drain.

there is something comforting in knowing i'm all alone.
lights in the living room and kitchen are all turned on,
keeping the room well lit is important while alone,
and the sounds of the apartment shift and creak
it's a cacophony of fixture and mix tapes
something that i enjoy, something that heats through me
right down to my organs.

when i was a child, my brother was five years older than me
and my father was never home, and my mother was always painting,
which left me a lot of time for myself.
at first i was confused, bored, unsure of what to do with myself,
lonely.
then i discovered that my stuffed animals and beanie babies could speak
and i gave them the power to show me their world, the
beauty in story telling and seeing colours on the ceiling.
staring long enough i could see the shapes move, as if i had just
taken acid.

it's a gift i thank my family for giving me.
the power of being alone means that
i will never be lonely, and that
words will always be with me and i will
always see the colours on the ceiling.

grasping tight on the rope
slipping until my hands burn
squeezing, so i don't fall into the tar pit,
eyes shut, ears closed off from the outside world,
unwilling to look and see
that the black pit beneath me is just
a void of a harmless nothing

born in southern california,
i grew up in a small neighborhood
with various sorts of people.

the woman with the red door
owned dalmatians, and her home
was filled with glass decorations.

riding my barbie car around the cul-de-sac,
eating vanilla crisps with the other little girls,
pretending to cut their hair in the attic.

although, after those memories,
it starts to get confusing
and i can't remember much anymore.

after i moved from there,
we moved more often and i can't
seem to remember which house has which memories.

i do remember, beautiful roses
growing in front of the house
left by previous owners.

is it possible to miss someone that
you barely spent any time with
and the only memories you have
are ones that others have explained to you,
cute little anecdotes, of how i used to call
him a nickname because i couldn't pronounce
his name, and how i used to always want to be
by his side, despite the fact he didn't want me
near him.
i remember playing hide and go seek,
dressing up in my minnie mouse tutu
while he was darth vader,
with all the lights off and flash lights in hand
we would hide beneath the couch,
inside the storage room,
under his bed.
sometimes we would even have light sabers.
he taught me how to play video games,
showed me how to play well at Tekken
and he let me play the beta for WoW.
he would tell me all the stories there were
about video games, and computers,
this does this and you can do that if you have this,
it's all a foreign language to me but
i enjoy listening.

i only knew him until 2006
when he left to go to where he thought
was home, and it hurt to
know he wasn't in the house anymore.
i couldn't go downstairs, and hear him playing
Blink 182 or Green Day, and there would be
no more flash light tag
and while i never knew him well,
we were never best friends,
i still miss him.

i'm never sure who i am,
just a person going through
a routine until i die?
or trying to seek a great perhaps,
trying my hardest to find reason
in coincidences and signs?
i've never been a fan of swallowing pills,
they were all too big for me
and i got sick too often,
it's just one of the talents i have.
i hate how i think of certain people
when i see things that remind me of them,
innocent objects;
cds, certain words, types of cars, every day sounds,
but i know i'd be lost without all the memories.
yesterday i saw a comic, and i thought about
two at the same time and i tried
my hardest to think about neither
i don't want to know which one
will warm my heart and chill my bones.
i was once too sick,
my throat was stuck closed
except to let me breathe
and no one could force any pills
so i had to get a shot,
and i remember the way the cold liquid felt,
how it spread underneath my skin,
it was painful, horrible,
but at the same time it gave me relief
and i realized i enjoyed the feeling.

sometimes i end up leaving and
wishing i had done a few things differently,
like what if i had ran back over to you and
spilled my guts onto the asphalt,
what would you have said?

if i had followed my gut in the beginning,
i could have saved myself a lot of misery.
although, isn't it important to experience misery?
to mold yourself into something better,
a thing that knows now what is what
and what isn't nice.

bitter, better, greater, lesser
a being made of elastic flesh and split ends
soft to the touch but hard inside
feeling delicate, sharp like a knife,
willing to cut deep.
i would love to cut deep into you.

"everything you say is so formal"

what's in between being content and being ill at ease
for i haven't discovered it yet,
and yet i am in a mood of ecstasy
the thought of speaking causing my stomach to tighten
twist, turn, sick of the moths stuck in my body.
ecstatic, elevated, on another level.
at peace with self yet still trying to
dig out of the dark,
i can't seem to get the dirt out from underneath my nails.

there is a constant sadness
that i don't like to talk about with other people
because they don't seem to understand
unless they have it too.

it makes me feel like i'm trying to make myself a victim
or make it seem like i'm a survivor of some horrible disease
but i'm neither, just a girl with tar in her brain
trying to keep from drowning.

the good things feel amazing and the
awful moments feel like i'm dying, two extremes
with no happy medium, the only in between
is a feeling of hopelessness for a brighter day.

overcast, cold weather warms my worried heart
and when the snow starts to fall i feel at home,
wrapped in a blanket of chills i fall soundly asleep
hoping to wake up from the dark dream.

i write lies to make myself feel better
false words that make me hope i know what i'm doing
because i'm lost and don't know where i'm going.

a constant battle of wanting to starve and to gorge myself,
seeking a happy in between is difficult
and most of the times unpleasant.

differences are created and personalities split,
never knowing who i am or how i actually feel
i could try to read words of old but it doesn't help.

too often i change, and i obsess over all the figs
sylvia plath wrote about and it scares the **** out of me,
what if i choose the wrong fig, the wrong path?

closing my eyes i know all of them are dying,
my parents know of this feeling quite well,
who else did i inherit it from?

if i could scrub all the scars
off my heart and body,
i would in a heartbeat
remove the disease that plagues me.

when i was younger,
i didn't fit in right with the other kids.
i was always thinking about other things,
reading books, drawing, and writing about things
that were far too old for me.

i would daydream of a world that was different,
where magic lived and i could be an adventurer,
all i would have to do is crawl through a door
but there was never a door. magic isn't real.

maybe i've become bitter as i've aged,
my parents divorced the first time while i was in third grade
and i watched my mother date other men and
my father crumple in sadness.

a year later, they remarried each other
and i thought that true love existed and mommy and daddy
were going to be together forever
no matter what.

my brother seemed happy enough,
though i never saw him much because of our age gap
but he would play games with me sometimes and yell at me
and call me dumb other times so i assumed he was okay.

though sophomore year mommy left daddy again
because he was more of a best friend than a husband to her,
which i understand that feelings change and it's okay
and during the divorce both of them came to me in private
to talk about what was going on,
he did this, she did that, so upset.

i had a boyfriend that begun mistreating me at the time
but i was strong, i thought, i can handle this and help everyone
at the same time and everything will be okay
but mom left and dad got a girlfriend and i was nothing
and everything just died in my hands.

maybe i am bitter,
my heart is breaking constantly.
i remember how it felt the first time it broke,
and the all the other times,
what i was wearing and how my hair looked, where i was
how i clutched at my chest and wailed in misery
and now i just silently lie in bed
on the covers listening to music.

i feel defeated.
i wasn't meant for this life, it's too much for me to handle.
others can take moments like this in stride,
get better and move on but where do i move on to
what am i supposed to do
i don't have any answers and i've been around for twenty years.

i'm defeated.
and bitter.

it was so much easier when
i would date the boys that thought of other girls
and had no problem
leaving me on the side of the street

"i think i understand now.
i know what's wrong
maybe. i'm nothing
special.
so, i think i'm
done.

x"

"it's august 16th and
i'm feeling a bit better.
michael broke up with
me and then unbroke
up with me. he says
he loves me and then
he turns around and
acts mean to me. i
don't get it. it doesn't
seem right. just saying."

i remember being in grade school
and wishing i was as small and thin
as the oriental girl that had beautiful penmanship
looking at myself, sitting in the chair
wondering my legs squished and enlarged
against the plastic seat.

why didn't i look like her?
my only memory is remembering how awful it felt,
knowing now that the brain holds onto grief
easier than happiness.
i was self-conscious even though i was just
ten, a young lady budding into the person i am today
but my looks didn't come around until
sixteen, peaked, and declined.

now again at nineteen
almost twenty
suddenly i see myself, i think,
here i stand in the mirror looking at all the errors
flaws that i was given,
a crooked, bent nose, and
fat elbows with creases that remind me of
an old man's face,
but if i take a deep breathe, and
look at myself after i just took a run
i'll see that, oh my
there's collar bones sticking out!
and there really is no extra fat underneath my chin,
oh, what was i thinking,
why did i possibly think my thighs were too fat?
my ribs protrude right here, and if i trace my finger along
i'll find my belly button, sunk into my waist,
right down to where my lady puffs up
like a cute balloon

a lot of things are a great inspiration to me
so many things catch my eye and make my heart swell
like i've never felt it swell before, feeling as if though
maybe it'll just rip itself right out of my chest
perhaps i'm just too over emotional, because
i'll catch myself tearing up at the littlest thing
that makes me feel like
"****, maybe i can be better than i am
no **** that, i know i can"
or even if it's just a movie about a kid named hiccup
who shows that he's better than all of that ****
to save a friend and show the world that there's more than just this
man, i'll just be a baby in tears, holding myself in a blanket
"thank god there's people like that"
great fictional people, that i admire more than anything
and then other great nonfictional people that do such amazing things
with their amazing words and the power of their voice
never before have i been so inspired
watching youtube videos while i sit on my *** and imagine a better me
in a better place.

i get caught up in the hype and i never push myself to get to where i want to go
and that's the downside of the major inspiration shot
leaving me buzzed for hours so that i can't even catch a wink of sleep
lying in bed staring at the christmas lights that i've hung in the room
strands of the string already dying because christmas joy isn't meant to be left up all year round
where is the joy in the sparkling colours if it's always there to see
the disaster and sadness is a constant need in everyones life
to help push the young dreamer off of the deflating air mattress
stressing to her that this isn't all there is but first things first
is to get out there and remember the old cliche
that if there's no pain there is no gain in the end.

so what if i had an awful childhood
and i drew the short straw and got the dysfunctional family that
has left me with some serious daddy issues that, ****
maybe i won't ever get over
but **** it if i'm going to let it go to me,
and **** it if i dated a boy that didn't give a **** about me
that he gave me a broken heart and stomped all over my feelings
even though i turned around and did the same to another boy down the line
well how about that
it just went full circle,
and i know i'll have those days where it hurts to even get out of bed
but i do it to get where i want to
reaching my hands out for the better day that i know is just around the corner.

i read somewhere that
talking about your problems with other people
makes the problems worse
because you're always thinking about it
maybe that's true?

maybe if people just never
talked about their problems with each other
people would be less sad all the time
and more open to positive thoughts
because their mind would never be
on the negative?

no journey is ever easy
or effortless, and i wish i could
tell all these ladies at work
that they don't have to follow these
silly diet fads or weight loss plans
because i understand, miss, ma'am
i was there once, overweight and
so terribly unhappy
i'm only where i am now because
of the time and effort i put into it
spending money and time
on foods and activities
that help me better my body
and my mind
so please don't ask me what food you should eat
or what i did to look how i look
you need to learn it on your own
the want and desire needs to be yours
just please don't starve yourself
because that's not the way to do it

there is no reason behind my words
no secret meaning
or abstract thought
please don't read into it too much

because that's what i do on a daily basis
reading into words of people i don't know
and my heart and head turns into a quick panic
leaving me breathless
just oh goodness

like, sometimes i just wish my brain
could be as simple minded as my words
like, how i wish i could pull oatmeal out of the microwave
and instead of being steaming hot
it's nice, cooled off
as if it was just pulled from the freezer