Today I woke up and I was not myself. I mean, I haven’t known who I really am in almost two years so it really shouldn’t have been a surprise. The splitting of the mind comes from unforgivable trauma and weak bodies trying to form apologies. It doesn’t feel like different people inside of me yet but I have had different people inside of me and one of them was unwelcome. My fertile grounds were turned over maybe for better soil maybe so I couldn’t see his face maybe so he could be made Stranger. My Way or You’re Dead Stranger I Don’t Care If This Isn’t What You Want Stranger Tell Anyone And I’ll Deny It Stranger. I don’t know his name but his hands ripped my mental into two different pieces the way a beggar reluctantly breaks bread with a wealthy man even though they both know the beggar needs it more. The numbness broke over me like a cracked egg and seeped over every inch of my body until the other half of me cleaned myself up and said “Don’t worry, I’m here now. I’ll take care of the pain.” Last year I lost three people in three months to drugs and I watched one of them die from my front porch, each of their deaths pulling another piece of my mind away from the others, further splitting me into the million little pieces I had already been reduced to. Every drink burning its way down my throat, every blade fed to my skin has been a welcoming parade for the different parts of me trying to drown myself back to normal thinking that hopefully the flood would wash myself back together would wash myself holy but God, am I so full of holes. I am so terrified of waking up because I don’t know who is going to be there when I do. I don’t need names for them because they are still me, they just have the control. I sometimes feel like the metal claw being fought over by children because they can’t choose which stuffed animal they want and sometimes no matter how precise they are no matter how patient they are sometimes I still miss what they’re looking for sometimes I never know what they’re looking for. I am just too broken to keep working.