Resting is not easy
when you spend your days in fear.
How could you sleep when you can’t forget your demons?
How can you remember what happiness feels like
when everything around you is grey and petrified-
faces solid as stone,
cold as ice.

Life is all about memories.
Remembering the good,
spending lifetimes trying to forget the horrible.
Growing older means the good memories
become a sort of bedtime story;
a happily ever after.
But how can we have bedtime stories when sleep is impossible?
How can we have happily ever afters
when the end is already grey and petrified?

You don't believe me when I say you're the most handsome man I've ever laid eyes on,
And I don't believe you when you tell me I'm the most beautiful girl you'll ever love.

My hair is black and blue
Like a bruise
Or my heart.
And my ex's name tastes like the ether she's been sniffing to get my name out of the creases of her favorite sweater.

The cigarettes I smoke,
They smell like the toast I will inevitably burn in a couple of years while I'm making your breakfast before work.
And some days I look at photos of the ocean
Just to see if I can find the same blue that's in your eyes.

And I know it may not count for much, but when her and I used to joke that blue was the color of love, she always thought of her own eyes while my head was flooded with longing for yours.

I was coming down from a two week binge the day you found me again.
I spent a week thinking I was just imagining things. I spent the following week trying to tell myself that you'd never be mine again.

Two years ago, you left me in a puddle of fear and apathy
With the bitterness of every single "I love you" still in my mouth
And when I spit, it was like venom.
I always told myself that I'd never be in love again.
For two years and three days, I was right.
But here I am, two years and four months later, head-over-heels in love with the boy who made my heart sing with his voice and my soul drown in his ocean blue eyes.

and while it isn’t something that everyone wants
it’s something that everyone has
three years ago I learned how much I took life for granted when I tried to take my own life
three years ago I watched my mom cry in my hospital room when she realized she took my life for granted as well as her own
three years ago I heard my daddy screaming at the nurse when they told him what I’d done
You see, my dad has always been a cynical man
but not a day went by that he didn’t tell me that life is a beautiful thing
that can give out terrible situations
“expect the worst and hope for the best”, he’d always tell me
three years ago, I was expecting what I thought was the best as I swallowed a bottle of pills
three years later, I realize I was doing neither of those things
but rather I was saying “***** it” and quitting
I wasn’t expecting the worst because I was silly and thought my life was already the worst
and I wasn’t hoping for the best because I was naive and thought I’d never see “the best” again.