I married the knight
instead of my Prince Charming.
My heart is empty.

There is no way to get rid of your demons besides exorcism.
Mine must be as buff as Marines the way I talk about them,
Exercising, jumping jacks, squats.
Those ******* have been around as long as my gap tooth has been closed.
I have given them pet names. One is "What If," the other "Past." They like to dance merrily on my tongue as I talk to myself wandering around my house.
They like to be written about, self absorbed and aware as they are that they exist.
What If is the one that yells "hey, hey, look over here!" Past is an introvert, hiding shyly among my innermost workings.
Occasionally, like most super buff dudes do, they get drunk and want to play. That's when the danger starts.
What If is a flirter. He really likes to hit it and quit it with my emotions. Past is that sappy guy that sits at the end of the bar and doesn't say a whole lot, but you can tell he just broke up with his girlfriend by the way he sighs into his drink.
These drunk ******* really need to knock their **** off, if only to let me sleep soundly for a single night.

This is for the people who don't have the suicide hotline number memorized just in case.
For the people who have never cried sitting across from a counselor because their lives are actually perfect.
For the people who have never chainsmoked a pack of cigarettes while their brain flirts with the danger of "what if..."
Whose hands don't shake uncontrollably with the memories of what used to be.
This is for the people who haven't drank an entire bottle just for the peace of sleep
The people who haven't wondered if waking up isn't the scariest part of their day
This is for the people who weren't diagnosed with PTSD, Anxiety, and Depression all in a spin of words.
The people who don't have to hold themselves together with fake promises that survival is only half the battle.
To the people who have never met the call of a razor blade with the skin of their bodies.
This is for the people who say that mental illness is just whining.
Do you realize just how lucky you actually are?

In between drags from a cigarette I can barely taste around the metallic punch of anger, I glare at you.
This fight, that fight, words we don't really mean thrown into the pile with other words like "blame," and "fault" and "whatever." Repetitive jabs meant to engulf and inflame sore scorch marks from past spats.
Between me and you is this smoke, fanned across my line of sight in a way that almost blurs you. Sometimes I wish I could blur you, sand down your harsh edges and pull you back into this calm reality in which I live.
But drag after drag, night after night, the same old fights and the same old cigarettes,
I guess it's the only reality I've ever known.

After him, I swore I'd never fall in love again. Swore it in contract and oath to God and in the eyes of the state of Ohio. After him, I promised I'd never love another boy.
I never meant to lie, to be so madly in love with someone else that it consumes my entire day. To be needed so much that my marriage might be shoved to the back burner. I never meant to be so deeply mad about someone else, to put their needs before my own; to care more about them then I care about my own life.
I never meant to love so deeply this brown eyed boy, this young soul, newly loveable. This boy with the same eyes as his father, as my husband. This boy that will someday call me mom.

Where did I lose myself?
Between lines of paper I stopped filling with my daily musings,
around corners of the walls that hold my family now,
or in my brain, where the illness has swallowed me whole and spit me back out more times than it has not?
I have become an even more fragile soul than before, now relied upon to keep an entire new person whole. It's a curious task when I'm falling apart at the seams.
Where did I go? Hidden amidst old thoughts and harrowed poems, new smells and insomnia,
I have to know the answer to this.
Did I allow my soul to escape between breaths, allow the words that twisted their way through each crevice of my soul to escape me when I decided I had to be more? Did I heal myself just enough that my sicknesses are actually all in my head?