Today I showered for the first time in 6 days / I changed my clothes after 2 weeks / somehow it all feels better this way /

I ate breakfast at the table / alone / and I didn’t cry / I sat there for longer than I had to / let the sun from my windows warm me up / and for the first time in months / I felt okay again /

I took a nap mid day / worried I’d wake up further behind than I was before / but my chest was still light / my bones weren’t weighing me down / I’m beginning to see / that happiness can last more than an hour /

Tonight I’ll go to the store / I’ll buy food I probably won’t eat / and I’ll see someone I went to high school with / and maybe I’ll cry in the bathroom / but maybe I won’t / I’m learning how to deal with other people seeing me /

I don’t know if I’ll feel this way tomorrow / or if I’ll wear these clothes for 3 weeks / not leaving my bed / but I pray tomorrow is easier / I hope I’ll wake up and see the sun / eat lunch somewhere other than my bed / I hope my body remains light / like it’s supposed to be /

I don’t believe in love because one of my earliest memories connected to it is the day my dad moved out and my mom’s new boyfriend moved in. The same day I realized my dad would never again tuck me into my bed, the same day I realized he would no longer be there when I woke up or had a nightmare or wanted him to push me on the swings in the backyard. Remnants of him disappeared so fast I questioned if he ever lived there to begin with. To this day my little brother doesn’t remember a time when our dad roamed the halls of our first childhood home. Most days I envy his ability to look back and not remember the life before. Most of my memories are stored into my head as before and after the breakup. I have to rack my brain to remember if my dad was on that trip to the beach I remember so fondly, or if my stepdad was the one watching my siblings and I build sandcastles.

I don’t believe in love because I watched my dad break his own heart over and over when it came to my mother because to him she was the only woman that mattered. To him she hung the moon and painted the stars and brought sunlight to his life. I remember him listening to here without you by three doors down on repeat. I remember how he didn’t have an apartment at first so he stayed on my grandmothers couch. I remember being happy to play with my cousins when we visited my dad but not understanding why we had to go to my grandmothers every time he picked us up.

I don’t believe in love because my dad and my mom had a fairytale love story, one of those ones you only see in movies. The type that seems like it was pulled right from the script of a romantic comedy, like the universe was hell bent on them saying together, even when everything in the world was trying to keep them apart.

I don’t believe in love because both of my parents got remarried to people who were never comparable to each other. There are still days where I catch my dad staring at my mom with love in his eyes, it’s been sixteen years but I swear he’d take her back in a heartbeat if she asked. Sometimes I catch her looking longingly at old photos, her thumb gently tracing the outlines of my dads face from when he was younger and life hadn’t hardened him into the man he is now.

I don’t believe in love because on the night of my 21st birthday you looked at me from the passenger seat of your car and smiled shyly as you told me you liked me but three days later you told me that we just wouldn’t work out.

I don’t believe in love because after you told me that you liked me back you said that if I had said something three months earlier we definitely would’ve been together. I don’t know how I tainted myself in those few months but my biggest regret will always be being too big of a coward to tell you before I did.

I don’t believe in love because you shattered my heart and gave me false hope and stopped talking to me for two months without a single explanation as to why but I can’t stop looking at you like you hung the moon and painted the stars. You still bring sunlight into my life and I’m finally beginning to realize why my father still looks at my mother like she’s the only girl he’ll ever truly love after everything they went through.

Growing up my mother taught me
How to drink until you don’t feel pain anymore
She taught me how many calories were in an apple
And that the only way men would love you
Was if you were skinny
And kept your mouth shut

My father taught me how to hold a grudge
That’s too big for one person to carry
He taught me that words mean nothing
Promises will only leave you disappointed
That they’re never going to show up if you’re waiting for them to

I grew up thinking pain and love were synonymous
Sometimes I forget that they’re not
There is no forever,
Only for now

Someday love will grow tired of you
And leave you for her boss
Love will grow tired of waiting
And marry the first person that shows up
Because isn’t settling better than being alone?

When I was a child I believed love never died
It didn’t take long for me to learn
That love was never alive to begin with
It’s an object used to fill the empty spaces inside of you
So you might feel whole again
If even just for a moment
Until the magic wears off
And you move onto the next one

I don’t remember what it’s like to not be depressed
Which is to say depression is the only constant
In my life
The friend that’s always there
But we’re not really friends
And sometimes I forget that

Depression is a wolf if sheep’s clothing
Disguised as good days
And false happiness
That shatters at the drop of a hat
I’ve learned over the years
What fake happy feels like

Depression is my conjoined twin they couldn’t separate at birth
We share a heart
Without them I don’t know how to be anything
So at times I find myself
Romanticizing my sadness

I was once told if I wasn’t recovering
Then I wasn’t trying
But it isn’t easy to break up with
The biggest part of you
Over the years I’ve fallen in love
With my sadness
Depression is funny like that

Some days I’m more scared of being happy
Than I am of being sad and I need to change that
Depression is no longer a friend I want
Sometimes it’s better to be alone
Than to suffer together

Reasons I’ve convinced myself I’m unworthy of love:

1. I cry. All of the time.
2. I can never fully give myself to someone
3. I listen to folk punk far too often
4. I’m reckless with other people’s emotions
5. I break my own heart but never know when to give up
6. I laugh in every situation. Especially funerals.
7. I live to please others and never myself
8. I give up opportunities to better myself in case they hurt someone else
9. I say sorry more than anyone should ever say sorry in a lifetime
10. I annoy the people I love
11. I lash out at the smallest things
12. I have attitude all of the time
13. I cause myself problems but never try to find solutions
14. I’ll never love myself, so how could I expect someone else to love me

You begged me to save you
So I cracked myself open
I unzipped my skin and stepped out of my body
I allowed you to inhabit me, use me for shelter
I’ve always been the person people climb into when they need to be saved

The worst part of swallowing you whole was the stomach ache
You were too much for my body to handle
Soon after you abandoned me in the middle of the night  

The hardest part was trying to fit back into my skin again
You stretched it out and now it’ll forever feel too big
My body is a hand me down I’ll never fully fill out
It’s been five years but I still feel like a thief in a strangers house
Unsure if I’ll ever get to come home

You tell me that you’ve been loving
Old school rap lately
And send me a song that you promise has been a bop
For a month now
And suddenly I’m reminded that you love
To change your tastes

How you listen to a song on repeat until the lyrics
Leave a sour taste in your mouth
And suddenly you want nothing to do
With it

Maybe you got tired of listening to me
Late nights in your car and movies on your couch
Became stale
And you looked for something new
To peak your interest

I have a habit of loving a song forever
Once I fall in love with it I never stop listening
Maybe that’s why I still feel torn up
And you’ve moved on and we don’t talk anymore
But you never miss an opportunity
To show me your changed taste
Each month
New songs filling up my Spotify
I make playlists with titles like heartbreak
And hazel eyes
Entirely made up of your music that changes
Like the seasons

When I was fifteen
You made a home in my bones
Now every summer flowers
Grow out of my ribs

When I was seventeen a garden
Grew inside of me
I couldn’t breathe
Through the daisies in my lungs
But your eyes were sunlight
I couldn’t live without

I’m twenty now
My flowers have wilted
The garden is overgrown
With weeds
Everything I touch dies
My green thumb is gone

It’s been over two years
Since my garden has had sunlight
I’m beginning to forget
What it felt like
It’s harder to breathe
Through wilted flowers
Than fresh roses
I didn’t think it could be harder
Than when I was seventeen

I am not a gardener
But neither were you
Yet you filled my bones with flowers
Now I don’t know
How to keep them alive
You never left an instruction manual
On how to survive
In the winter

If I were lucky enough to love you again I would take you for all that you are. I’d fall in love with you constantly stealing all the covers. I’d love you when you won’t stop fidgeting when you drive. I’ll fall in love with you despite our foot height difference and I’ll run to keep up when you forget that my legs don’t go as fast as yours. I’ll fall in love with your off key singing and the fact that your car is more closet than vehicle. I’ll love you when you promise to quit vaping and then don’t. I’ll love kissing you, even when you taste like iced coffee and menthols. I’ll love you on nights when sobriety is hard and your blood is 90% whiskey, when your body is more pills than cells. I’ll love you when you try and push me away. I’ll fall in love with the freckles on your cheeks all over again. You’re selfless and vibrant. You’re loving and hilarious and oh so alive. If you allow me to love you again I promise to love all of you, for as long as we both live, I swear to love you immeasurably.

I have always been hard to love
But am quick to fall in love
My father called me tree hugger growing up
Because I have always cared deeply
for everything living
Expect for myself

All the boys that broke my heart
Said I was too hard to open
All I heard was that I’m not pretty enough to work for
Maybe that’s been the truth all along

Now I break my own heart to save them from trying
It hurts less if I’m the one pulling the trigger
So I tell people I just haven’t found the one yet
When I know deep down I’m a lock that never had a key
Nobody will ever fit me perfectly
And I need to start accepting that

I never thought of the smiths as romantic before I met you
But one day you laughed and daisies sprouted in my chest
Now I can’t stop listening to Morrissey

At nineteen I broke my own heart
You mended it with kindness
And as we rang in the new year I bloomed for you

Within nine months I was a flower garden
But then September came
My flowers died from the cold
Meanwhile you were growing flowers in another girl’s garden
And I was too blind to see you never planted any in mine at all

Growing up my father taught me
that if you weren’t first then you were last
so to me second was never an option
yet I have never been someone’s first place
I have never stood proudly wearing
the blue ribbon for winning your heart
and I’m convinced that I will never
know the thrill of a winners high
I will never be the best
so I will always be last

I used to think being plan B
was better than not being a plan at all
but being the backup plan will never
feel like winning
and now I spend my nights wishing
I was never in the race to begin with

Participation ribbon hearts
collect dust on my bookshelves
I’m always present
always taking part in the competition
but I’ve never come close enough to winning
to wear anything but a badge of
broken hearts and humiliating effort
to try so hard but always lose in the end
is to be a willing participant
in proving that I will never be enough