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.

he would sit in his room
and draw space ships
that could only be described
as something from star wars
or star trek

and he'd do geometry on the floor
his school books scattered
and punk music
would be playing on his
boom box

game informers stacked high
in tens and twenties
all over his bookcase
cozy against star wars
and hardy boys

the wood frame bed
simple and pure
until tainted by a name
of his first love
scratched in with passion
and heartbreak

he lied quite often
and was a sore loser
his mood usually consisted of
being short fused
and even more short fused

and then he moved
left for good
not visiting for another three years
and then three more after that
each time
he gets older
and less of the thirteen year old
i had known
when he lived
at home

in high school
despite the last bit of it
being spent as overweight
and with major lack of confidence
i found myself indifferent
to everything.

maybe it was because of the depression
and the abuse
or it was everything combined
but i wasn't excited or upset
about graduating.

i didn't have anything
to look forward to,
the life i imagined for myself
after high school
was a coffin
and i couldn't see anything past that.

sometimes i found myself thinking that
if i failed my senior year
i could stay another year
and maybe that would mean
another year for me to live
before i met the end.

mostly,
in those last few months
i found myself growing fonder
of the people that spent their time
teaching me the things they knew
and i had begun
to entertain the idea of becoming a teacher
since i thought
that i would get nowhere
with art or writing.

after i graduated
and realized i wanted to live after all
i spent little to no time
looking into becoming a high school teacher
it all seems too much of everything
too much money, too much time
not having enough time
that's the thing holding me back
my excuses that keep me stuck
and flailing around
wallowing in self-pity
in the pig sty of my room.

maybe if i took a leap
took a chance,
grew a metaphorical pair of *****
(or just got a shot of testosterone)
i would man up
and do the **** that it takes
to get where i want to be.

let me tell you this story
of how i felt better
after a while

first it was my brother that left
then it was my mom
and then my father
who isn’t even my father
wasn’t even around
always too busy to play a board game,
leaving me to play Stratego alone
my brother too old to play with
a younger sister
who plays with his hot wheels

but my father
who didn’t help me
when i needed him most
who didn’t listen when i
made it so blatant that i was hurting
who didn’t hear me when
i was sobbing so hard
and didn’t realize that
i was trying so hard
to not be there
at all
ever

and then there was him
a boy who said he loved me
but wouldn’t listen to me either
said i didn’t have the right
since his parents were split
since one

and there was also him
again but with a different face
who said he loved me
but was with me for the intimacy
who saw my cuts
and instead of listening,
slapped them,
which stung
which made me tear myself up
some more

then there was him
but in the form
of a feeling
that told me he loved me
and kept me warm at night
leaving me heart empty
and my soul bare
it felt right
to be there

but my father
wasn’t my father
and getting to the point
i think i’m trying to make
he’d rather help his girlfriend
and her daughter
than help his own blood
even if she claims suicide,
claiming it’s only a phase
but the scars show it true
that it was no fad

and oh,
i’m not allowed to cry
it seems i’m trying to manipulate
by showing my feelings
i’m not allowed to show affection
because then i’ll be
manipulating
and i can do no right in his eyes
everything i do
is
manipulating
and betraying

and it’s no wonder,
he says,
i have no friends
because i am so selfish
and
worthless
a *******
that will never amount to anything
ever.

he screams,
you do nothing for me
i do everything in this house,
he says,
all you do is take and take
and i’m sick of it
i want some appreciation,

he yells,
connie wouldn’t do this to me
because she loves me
you’re just like your mother
manipulating
and a liar.

please understand,
after being told so many times
by multiple people,
that it seems
i have begun to understand and accept these as truths
and that i really
have no worth at all
and the feeling i have come to love,
(a sense of numbness
that is mine
and no one else can understand)
kept me
simply on the edge
until that night,

but once again
i have gone off track
this is getting much too long
and from the beginning
i’ve been trying to explain
that i don’t feel this way
all the time
anymore

and while i want to
rip apart my flesh and
ruin my hair
i’m starting to feel better
and as if i am something quite nice

staring at the blank page
i find myself thinking
quite low of myself.

wondering to myself
absently muttering out loud
as if adding more sound
to the white noise
will give me a sense of validation
that i still exist.

the hum of the laptop
and turquoise hexagon sun
mixes with the sound
of the car doors closing outside
and the people sitting
in their chairs, lazing about
staring at the television screens

what else can i hear?
closing my eyes, i stop
taking a moment
to let my worried mind rest
forgetting about my financial crisis
to bathe in the sound
of my silence.

with my eyes closed
i type with confidence
i don't fear my words
when i can't see them
my eyes feel hot
under my dark eyelids
as heavy as they are
i am surprised i don't
slouch and fall into slumber
right here in my chair.

in the second it takes
to flutter open my eyes
and reread the words i just wrote
i have to remember
to stop myself before i nitpick
and change what came
from my heart
and at the time felt right.

if only
i went through life like this more often
then maybe i wouldn't feel so down
or ******* myself
because honestly i'm not that bad
nor am i as dumb
or silly as i feel
and maybe next time
when i go ice skating
i won't be such a little *****
about how i look to other people.

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've noticed that i talk about myself a lot
when i write and i wonder if that means i'm self-involved
or selfish or something that starts with self
because i hope i'm not or i'll feel quite awful about myself
but there i go again
with those self words.

in younger years
i remember trying so hard
to gain the affection of the opposite ***
and i'm not really sure why because well

in middle school there was this girl
named dezarae and everyone loved her
because she was thin and wore make up
and her hair was always nice
just like her clothes that accentuated her
blossoming *******

i think there was a boy named kyle
or something similar to that
i'm not sure anymore
but he was always around her
as well as me
since i guess dezarae considered me her best friend
and at first i liked kyle
but then i liked her

it was around that time that
i met this other girl named amber
who wore glasses and had long hair
that didn't always look nice
and her clothes weren't the best
just like her teeth
but i remember she was as thin as a twig
and just as flatchested as i was

we became the best of friends
and i felt equal in her company
my feelings for her grew
when we would spend friday nights together
at each others house
depending on what week it was

but i remember her and i speaking one day
gossiping about everyone at school
like dezarae and i don't know why
but i lied when amber asked me
"well i heard dezarae was bisexual
she likes girls and boys
isn't that disgusting?"
i replied with
"oh gosh what
that is just
so gross"

i was so confused
why was it so wrong
to like someone who was just the same
as you are
because i liked amber
in a way that i should have liked a boy.

four years ago
my freshman year
i met a boy with dark blue eyes
who added me on myspace
and chatted with me on aim

he didn't really speak to me
or ask me any questions
he only knew what he did
because i talk so much

and somehow
we started dating
which i still don't understand why
because after the first week
i had a feeling in my gut
that i would regret this
in the long run.

we felt the high
and the ecstasy of first love
along with first everything else
including betrayal and agony
the only kind you can feel
when someone you thought
you love does something so
so awful to you.

the first winter we were happy
i think and we made plans for next year
that we broke the majority of
and in the summer we made promises
some that i shouldn't have

a year had passed
and i thought i would
be spending a few more with him
but that winter
i learned that love can grow cold
and freeze over

maybe i had changed too much
or it was him belittling me
telling me that everything i liked
was childish
and a waste of time.

the next year
i had decided that
that would be all i would put up with
i did not deserve this grief
or to be told that
i was too easy.

a friend that morning
had spoken with me and him
and walked with us through the halls
of the beginning of our junior year
and when we were alone
the friend said to me
'your eyes look so dead'

and i will never
forget those words
or forget
his cries on the phone
that night
when i finally
set myself
free

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.

i cannot write anything
it's all in my head
and i can see it but
it won't come out

no matter how hard i push
my mind is constipated
and laxatives aren't helping
i'm not sure what to do

i can write ******* and
tell myself that's good enough
but it's not and it's so
******* frustrating

and depressing how
unhappy i am with my creative self
i am not creating enough
and i feel stagnant and stuck
no matter how much **** i use
my mind is still a dry desert
and it's painful to keep trying

why do people act the way they do
honestly i can't understand it
but then again i don't even know why i do the things i do
i think i'm thoughtful when i'm alone with pen and paper
and i think i'm artistic when i put paint on a canvas
spending all of my time and money into trying to become myself
when i thought i already was

why does she get angry at me
i don't get it, what have i done wrong
probably a lot of things
i did tell her i hate her when i was twelve,
even though i wrote her a letter and drew her a picture
and apologized every day for the rest of my life
i guess i'll never know why she yells at me

and why does he not like me
i thought he was supposed to since he fathered me
but i guess if one isn't around enough
a bond is never created
maybe that's why i wasn't worth anything,
and he didn't mind pushing me out of the house to make room
for the new woman in his life
i suppose i'll always come last on his list of priorities but i don't mind
but i do wish i had a father

and why weren't he and i born closer
instead of being five years apart
maybe we would have been best friends and
helped each other with homework and relationship problems
i could have seen the warning signs
and he could have seen the ones for me, and maybe
then our hearts wouldn't have so much wear - and - tear

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

i prefer to brush my teeth
to the point where my gums bleed
and pull the floss down hard
between my pearly whites,
grinding the thread back and forth.

i get chills down my back
when i get a papercut
and i can see the blood
slowly come out in little round *****,
or when i rip a hangnail down my thumb
and i can see the fresh layer of skin.

my body goes numb
and my mind draws a blank
when he bites at my neck,
even better when it leaves a bruise.

the feeling i get
when his hand suddenly meets
the bare skin of my lower body
is pure ecstacy, i could only imagine
what it would be like
if my brain was on a high.

the sting and the should-be negative,
or unwanted, emotions
are what i strive for in life.
i like the feel
of the pain
but not when i'm alone.

i suffered from
a disease called
depression.

it started when my
mother left
because she wasn't in love

and i was the only
one around
to feel his rage.

a few months later
that was when
i was done

i told the guidance counselor
that i was ready
and she asked me if i was sure

"without a doubt
if i am not stopped
you won't see me tomorrow"

and she called him
explaining the dangers and
sent me home.

the only thing
he was worried about
was how people saw him

what people were
going to think
when they heard the news.

how could he have
a dysfunctional daughter
when he is so perfect?

i was sent to counseling
and like i expected
it didn't help.

she was kind
but with her religion
she tried to show me new light

and don't get me wrong
there's nothing bad about it
but it's just not my style

and with her christianity
i could never fully
express how i felt.

while i didn't mind
wasting his money
i ended it early

"yes of course i'm better
no longer do i wish
to slit my wrists".

the next month
i did just that

since i was a child
i felt like i didn't fit in
with all the other
children

i didn't understand
the way they worked
i couldn't wrap my mind
around the way
their minds
worked

and i'd hate to sound pretentious
or as if i'm better than them
because i spent my time reading
and lying about the boys
that didn't actually
throw my flip flops in
the water

i'm not sure
why i wanted their attention
or their approval
and i'm not sure
why i even wanted their friendship
since we never
had anything
in common

but this begs another question
that i can't answer either
which upsets me greatly
and constantly has me asking
"what if"

if i hadn't cared
what the others thought
in middle school
would i have
'gone steady'
with the boy everyone
made fun of
even though i thought
he was cute

but that's all right
because i am glad
with where things are
in my life right now
even if i sometimes
spend nights thinking
about all of those what ifs
because my brain somehow
can't shut off
with all of its
white noise
and troubling thoughts

i have no internet
and i'm at the house
of the child i babysit
except he's not a child
he's sixteen
and i have no idea why i babysit him
except that i get paid well
and he's in a wheelchair
so i basically do nothing
the whole entire time.

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.

this one time
when i was a kid
probably five or four
and i still lived in california
my mom took my brother and i
to meet some kittens

that was when i learned i was allergic
and that i couldn't touch my eyes
or rub my face into kittens fur
unless i wanted to end up
sniveling with red swelled eyes
and scratching endlessly at my skin
where their sharp claws innocently landed

my neighbor
when i first moved to kansas
had a cat i think
i'm not sure my memory is fuzzy
i think i was eight
but it was such a loveable cat
until it clawed up my back
and mom had to clean with
something that burned
to lessen the swelling

but i love cats
i really do
if i had to pick a dog or a kitten
i would certainly pick both
because i honestly couldn't pick

now at nineteen
i have my own loveable cat
all white and gorgeous
so soft like a blanket
and cuddly like a puppy
his eyes different, a gold and a blue
he's the best thing

he's like a disease
stuck in my mind
his constant abuse
yelling in the back of
my brain

i cut and tear
and pull and
try to rip it out
drain my blood
and give to others
in hopes to create
something pure

i just want
the words gone
i don't want to
listen to this abuse
anymore

it's been two years
since i've left him
so why can i
still hear it

i thought that
maybe if i cleaned
my insides
the words would
disappear
but

they haven't and
some days
it ruins me

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

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.

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.

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 wish i didn't have
to be the parent
of my mother

i wish i didn't have
to constantly listen to her
complaints about how
her husband doesn't
satisfy her needs

i wish i didn't have
to listen to her cry
and feel the pain
she feels because
it hurts me too

i wish i didn't have
to be the punching bag
for all of her grief
because i have enough already

i wish i didn't feel
so selfish
for wishing all of this

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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

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?

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.

"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."

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

sometimes it sneaks up on me
like a dark shadow
a mist that shrouds me
trying to protect
but doing the opposite.

ever since it
crept into my life
i have had the hardest time
getting rid of it.

the sobbing does nothing
to help and the one thing
that does i cannot do
in fear of upsetting him.

when i am alone
with my thoughts
they finger my insides
pulling plugs
and implanting
awful ideas.

all alone
i am scared of myself
of what i might do
because i can sneak through
the apartment
bottle of aspirin in hand.

the only thing
that keeps me holding on
is the idea of a better tomorrow

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"

i used to cut my thighs
all the time
it started my junior year
and it was my secret

in forced intimacy
this other boy saw them
and in response he slapped them
making them burn with fury
he left and didn't speak to me
instead, he sat at his computer
like he always does
and blogged about it
while i sat alone in the basement
in choking sobs.

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.

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.

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 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.

i used to write such
pretty words

where have they
all gone?

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.

bjorn sits and lies about
mostly on his back
sometimes on his side
usually all wrapped up