My life is not poetic.
I grew up sick on the bathroom floor
I learned that my stomach was broken and it would be until I was twelve
I learned how to swallow pills
I learned the directions to the hospital
And all of my doctors' phone numbers

I grew up at four in the morning
Horrified that if I cried too loud my parents would wake up,
Lonely and isolated,
No one to reach out to,
I learned that everybody else knew how to fall asleep

I grew up in hospital waiting rooms
I learned how to spit out the same information over and over again
I learned that I wasn't allowed to cry when they stuck needles in me
I learned that my body wasn't mine anymore until they learned how to fix it

I grew up like a lot of other people
Except I couldn't go on roller coasters
And I was good friends with the school nurse
I stayed home most of December my fifth grade year
After hospital tests, my daddy didn't make me go back to school.
First grade me remembers falling asleep in the MRI
Fifth grade me remembers giving up on therapy
High school me cut herself because she was afraid of getting sick
My life is not poetic
All the stuff in between sounds pretty

But some days I still wake up alone on the bathroom floor
Out of medication and out of hope because I was the small percent that didn't grow out of my genes when I was twelve
High school me has flashbacks to the hospital waiting rooms
I remember the face of the nurse who did the ultrasound
And the one who did my second x-ray
I grew up afraid of my own broken body that nobody quite knew how to put back together