You are like a ghost now,

a ghost who's just tired of haunting me.

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

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.

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.

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.

She thinks

she can wear those things:

Delicate.

Like nothin' *****

Ever happened.

Love came easily to me

it was never sparse.


That's how


I touched so many others

trying to break your scarce heart.

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

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


The gun
absolutely
does
not.

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

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.

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.

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