I’m in line for a rollercoaster ride– the tallest, most terrifying ride built since I’ve been alive. My heart pumps faster, leaving drumming in my ears and veins. More quickly my veins expand and shrink. 1, 2, 3, 1-2-3, 123, as my therapist explains what will happen.
“Is it at your eye level?” she asks with all the kindness she can muster. Nervous and sweating, I’m not sure what eye-level should or will be in this cushy chair. I tell her it is.
This is my first EMDR treatment, something my new psychiatrist told me I should try. The therapist wasn’t so sure I was ready for the treatment after our first few sessions together, but after spewing my guts about being sexually abused as a child (which came after all of the complications with my parents’ addictions and mine, my abusive relationships, my abortion, my suicidal tendencies, etc.), she said it seemed like we were in a spot to try.
She’s set everything up right away, barely leaving time for us to do our therapy-patient speak.
“How have things been since last week?”
“Have you spoken with your brother about your parents?”
“How are things at work?”
I can feel the sweat already bleeding through the back of my layers I wore to stop the sweat from going into her chair that her other patients will absolutely be sitting in five minutes after I get up and walk out the door.
The light is in front of me, a boomerang with a red dot in the middle. I ask her what it will be like, how I will know if I’m doing it right. She gently explains to me every person’s process is different with EMDR, so there is no real “normal,” which frightens me even more.
I think I may do it wrong.
Doing it wrong is a feeling that has stuck with me since I was 4 years old, when my mother told me what I was doing to my sister’s body and the neighbor girls' bodies was wrong. I was allowed to explore my sexuality, but I was doing it wrong.
But the childhood abuse isn’t even why I’m doing EMDR; what brought me here was my PTSD from my **** and my abortion and my abusive relationships and my substance use disorder and my self-harm and my anxiety and my oversharing and my self-hatred, not the childhood abuse.

Now

I am writing this to inspire other women and girls who have been in similar situations that I found myself in throughout my life. I would like to say that I am stronger now because of the things that I talk about in this book, but what one wishes to say and what one has to say are different things.

As I write this, I am hitting a vape and drinking a big *** white claw. I am watching videos and reading articles that made it into the news from my past. I am feeling sorry for myself in ways that my younger self would not approve of.

But I’ve seen other women’s stories told in writing. I’ve read them and I’ve cried for them and I’ve felt jealousy from their ease of sharing.

For many years, I’ve wished that I had enough conviction and strength and determination to write my own story to share with others who might be experiencing the same things, and I’m trying to finally do that now.

I’ve gone through different kinds of therapy and have been communicative with my loved ones about my troubles. I’ve spent countless days drinking ***** and attempting to drown my sorrows away. I can’t remember how many hours I’ve spent crying about things that will never be changed. I don’t know how often my mind wanders to the past to find myself when I was weightless.

I do know it’s been too much, and that maybe trying to do what so many of my idols have done, by writing and sorting through feelings by seeing letters and words and sentences on paper, I may find solace, or know that I’ve shared and that I’ve tried. So here is that attempt.

Then

We lived in Detroit when I was little. My mom tells me it was a small house where my brother and sister shared a bedroom. I do remember sliding down the small staircase with pillows and crashing into the bottom. But after we all grew, and the neighborhood grew to a bit of ****, my parents were determined to get us a bigger house in a safer area. We moved to Howell which was pretty much a farming town. Our house was being built all new, I remember the smell of the basement when our parents took us there to look at it.

I don’t remember much around the time when the house was built. I do remember making friends in the neighborhood; younger families with kids our age, specifically girls my age, or around my age.

I was probably in kindergarten when I met the older girls in the neighborhood, I knew they were older than me and I looked up to them for that.

At that moment, the pieces of glass exploding from the windows of her city gently moved backward and glued themselves into their panes. The flames from bursting from buildings curled themselves inward, clearing smoke from the sky, wiping away a soft sun that showed everything was right again.

"I miss you," he had said. "I miss you."

Sweet things remembered go

sour

in the now.

Dragging pieces from you     s l o w l y
that you once
       choked
down     somehow

Didn't they look soft
when they lit up your world?
The way their budding promises
came to your lips unfurled?

Like dandelion skeletons
                        slipping             through the wind
Sweet moments that
built you a
home

Dance
v
i o l  e
n t
in the end

Remembers best while the worst falls back. Forgetful Girl, where'd you leave your worth this time? Forgetful Girl, repeated patterns, they won't change your mind. Forgetful Girl, is the pain the only one you won't lack? Forgetful Girl, finding faith at the alter of their eyes? Forgetful Girl, burning your knees hoping they won't lie? Forgetful Girl, always running to the past. Forgetful Girl, it's all the same, close your eyes. Deep breaths.

I said I'd get away from this
yet find myself in sin

With men who work and use and
steal the parts of me once lived

I swore I'd leave this me behind
yet here she is tonight

I want to run but shriveled legs
can't go far in the night

I want the hold of holiness
whatever that may be

Tightly wrap and warm my heart
that's longing to be free

I need your hold of holiness
whoever you may be

Searching for them
with such forced grin

Will I be holy?

Carousel
Slow down slow down
I can't keep up my strength
On and off and staying here
I have no time to waste
Yet I'll stay and swing and listen well
Faster but I will fall
Hang on until I can't no more
Spin me through it all
My bones are weak and I'm afraid
I'm gonna hit the ground
Carousel
Oh carousel
Make me lost not found

I'm bright circles inside rotted wood, cut open on the edges of your mind

Endlessly talking about rebirth, waiting for spoken word

Cold days, dark nights, I'll stay in place

Footprints in dirt forever will be mine

Did you know to settle me before leaving me to die?

Taking all my warmth away so you could stay alive

"Airing our ***** laundry."

"No one likes you anyway"

"Attention *****"

"Selfish little *****"

"Stupidest thing I've ever been a part of"

"All my friends say you're crazy"

"You just love confrontation"

You asked me not to air our ***** laundry
So here it is
As clean as it was
The first time we met

When you live below someone
and you both live in a building
built in the 1920s
you become friends
even when you've never met

I once watched people walk into a hole filled with water in the ground.

Someone told me they were washing away their sins, but when they came out, they looked the same.

I didn't bathe in a hole
but today I look different.

Sometimes, one of us calls the other,
throws a small stone and listens to hear the reply of ancient echoes.

Last night was longer,
about Ginsberg, alcoholic tendencies, the history of us.

He was drunk to the point of almost-constant repetition and forgetfulness, which it seems he always is, I think.

But still, we talked,
because I don't mind.

The bottle makes the truth come swimming out his lips.

"You're so handsome now," I said. Because it was true, he was.

And always was, even back on Myspace,
on back decks.

Maybe I was born with something in me and its only goal was to implode. Maybe it's expanded so much it's bigger than my heart or any other ***** in here, and maybe now it's so large it controls my brain or it's causing me to collapse inward with it.
It's like a tumor but one that keeps you alive and speaks of bad ideas, *****, tormented secretive, painful, backward, muddly, inflicting kinds of ideas.

It's a lot more work than you think you know it is
Living like this
Being her
******* crazy **** who's drunk 362 days of the year
******* dumb sack of **** living in a box
******* bad friend, lonely girl, *******
Gotta pull her while she kicks, objecting to society
"I'm going to **** myself"
Can't. Won't.
"I hate myself."
Not enough.
"I'm a good person."
Try harder.
"I'm beautiful."
Only for a minute.

My ugly came
when the struggles leaked out
and turned white skin
to a canvas of punished pink lines
It came with the baby, too soon too abruptly
but when baby came out
it only went deeper
My ugly came
when the city showed us that not all who walk near
have pretty intentions
It came in a bottle, labeled and dated
in each tiny pill I pushed down my throat
My ugly came
after all the love left, as if it were the only one
to come back
After my ugly came
with the world and its harshness
it showed me
such beautiful sights

For years I begged
universe and god:
Happiness.

I forgot its warm embrace
the want to get out from under the bed
the courage to put bottles down

Today I beg
myself:
Acknowledgment.

I ignore the cold world
that held me so tight
the way it taught me to be

she has scars
like stars

too many to count
but enough to tell stories of the past

When we were young
you held me up
so high
I couldn't see the ground

But I had been buried
so long
it scared me
to be close
to the sun

she has pages on the floor and stains on her hands
she's forever with tears on her cheeks

she has knives in the drawer and holes in her walls
she's the girl that no one will keep

you are a full moon
and I am the sea
I thrash and I burst
when you're close to me

we walk around with lips pulled tight
because we are living in darker light
we press our bodies, dying and thin
into fear and sadness, let it come in

do you lay on the floor
wishing for everything you had before?
When you get drunk
do you sit in your bed
thinking about things you wish you had said?
When you get drunk
do you take a nice knife
put it to skin and watch yourself slice?
When you get drunk
Do you stare at the ceiling
wondering if there’s some better feeling?
When you get drunk
do you lay on the ground
asking yourself why he stuck around?
When you get drunk
do you look in the mirror
promise that girl she'll see things much clearer?

My cousin's eyes
Your loud truck
The leaves falling in Marquette

My mother's hair
"4 Missed Calls"
The end of your cigarette

My new scars
Old Coke cans
The soak on your blanket

My love for you
Our Scottish blood
The songs in the basement

These red things
They haunt me
But I'm getting used to it

The knife
has
a slowness about it.
Politeness, a kindness.
It has
a grace period.


The gun
absolutely
does
not.

The daggers in your voice
they're the reason I fled.
No following me;
you stayed snug in your bed.
You stabbed me with my own
most shameful secret
when minutes before,
you promised you'd keep it.
I ignored all your calls
the words rang in my head
I don't think
I will ever
Forget what you said.

we're fading like the bite marks
i left on your skin

and we're as false as the fibs
you quickly caught me in

Love came easily to me

it was never sparse.


That's how


I touched so many others

trying to break your scarce heart.

Is it the red crescendoing of trees lining the icy lake?
Or the pebbles popping under the rubber wheels of my old car?
Is it the warmth of picking up wool scarves from their summer cocoons? Being shaken out and wrapped around cold necks?
Is it this lower state's familiar weather, blending brisk wind with bright sun? The way it heats the second-floor windows in the frigid mornings?
Is it the scents of sage and roasting meat floating through the door, welcoming me home?
Or the mismatched pairs of shoes kicked under the hallway bench?

It might be this last bit of Cabernet slowly tumbling to top my cup, or the ceaseless squeak of my childhood bed.
But yes, something calls me here, back to the beginning.
Back to the autumns of our home.

She thinks

she can wear those things:

Delicate.

Like nothin' *****

Ever happened.

She set him on his mark

the bottle in his hand

Lips were wide apart

he heard her secret plan

She gave over the knife

a little kitchen thing

white skin turned red and brown

that's her beloved sting

She said let's go again

There was worry on his face

She counted to 10

He got right back in place

when
I fall
to my knees
in
this emptiness
the loneliness
sounds
louder
to me

First bitten kisses
that bleeding lip
ashes from our past
in this blanket
I wrapped them up
just to say goodbye
Wrapped up,

just say goodbye

Before you left
you said
please, don't cry
take care of yourself
you'll be all right
You wrapped me up
just to say goodbye
Wrapped up,

just say goodbye

Last ***** glances
from up way up high
you took me up there
birthday midnight sky
We were wrapped up
just to say goodbye
Wrapped up,

just say goodbye

You are like a ghost now,

a ghost who's just tired of haunting me.

the jelly's empty jar
the unlocked door's lean
the bed's right side
the bathroom's golden gleam

the open window's draft
the blanket's red stain
the shelve's missing plate
the lightbulb's naked string

the floor's dusty coat
the tv's big blank screen
the night's silent cry
the closet's clothesless beam

you
are   beginning
to be                    
                                    gone.

i open your
door and i  expect
to
                                         cry.    
but  nothing            
                               ­      comes.

you
are    starting
to                        
                                        fade.

my love

you
are   beginning
to
                                         end.

in those short summer days
i ran away from home
i kissed you in the sunshine
when you were not my own
in those short summer days
you had a mattress on the floor
and the first time i met
your mother was right there on that porch
it hurts too much
to write about it now,
how long you have not loved me
how long since you've known how....

for some reason
small pieces of hope
continue to float
in my direction

you give me a reason
to hang by the throat
when you say "i won't
come back in your direction"

tomorrow is when all the things i write come true.

we'll wake up

smiling, and you'll say       it's happening

and i'll say yes,
quickly.

tomorrow there will be stains and spills

in the bed,
in our bed,     because we won't care
because we never ever have

tomorrow

i will touch your skin
and it won't feel so dangerous. tomorrow

the sun will come and

we'll know it's

just

for us

tomorrow

hasn't come yet        but sometimes        it feels like it's already

here.

tomorrow

hasn't come    yet

and we can't   say   that it certainly
will.

there were many long hard nights

you had to remind yourself to breathe


but there were one thousand more nightmares

telling you to hold your breath

She

is a song he plays with closed eyes,

heartbreaking and angry,

volumes of many shameful pasts

singing through her chest.


She

is a book he reads with open hands,

her stories scrawled into skin,

like a braille

only he can speak.


She

is the box in which he keeps his heart,

****** and beating

trusting that it's safe.

the knives

in this house

are sharper

since you left

the bed

harder

my dreams

darker

For weeks, which felt like years, that small room was the whole World and every thing in it.
For days, which should have been their own, one linked and looped with the next and taught me to shame the sun.
After one week, I found out that a bed was like an aging body; the more it was used, the more I could feel its once-sturdy frame bend and sag, and the squeaking grew and the metal groaned below my sweating skin.
After two days, I found out that a bed was also the most dependable of life rafts, which safely kept me floating above the forever-blackening sea, where I’d once sworn I’d take my last wet and feeble breath.
While this one-room World swallowed fears and held trembling hands tight, it began to whisper in the night; one wall repeated rumors it heard from its opposite: warnings of the Outside and all the dangers it could bring.
“Those you pass on the road will stare with the knowledge that you are out-of-place, that you do not remember normal,” whispered the plaster on my right.
         "And the many men leaning in to corners of brick could yell or touch or chase, you don’t want that again, not again, right?” hissed the wall to the left.
        No, I do not want any of it, I replied through a hazy dream.
After their whisperings stuck, I discovered that the notion and act of sleep had the ability to slyly slip away, no matter how hard I tried to hold on.
         Sleep. Slep. Seep. Spl. Shut. Shh. Sleep? Silence. Close. Dark. Down…
When sleep became a habit of the past, anxiety became the habit of the present and the terror of the future.
For weeks, which were just one stretch of daylight, I did not know sleep, but I still knew the comforting space of World and the safety the floating bed wrapped around me.
For days, which were wholly lost and never found, alcohol seeped from my pores, while empty ***** fifths created new altitudes of the floor.
For months, which were truly months, I sat in the small World with depression’s darkness, and I found I could live with no real desire to see my toes touch the existent, dreadful ground.

Her heart is still half beating, her head repeating, all that way, bordered states, remember perfect days, pretending that he stays? It split, the voice, mimicking his ways, loudly, being carried, tapping, thumping, bleeding, bumping, spitting, screaming, dripping from cracked hands, drowning the faces, once soft, now numb.