They call us survivors

I call us leftovers

They tell us we're heroes and deserve better than the hand life dealt us.

They use us as examples of inspiration and make shiny metaphors out of our trauma.

But.

But they never look at you long enough to see that you flinch when they reach, with greedy hands, towards you because to look at you too long would mean seeing the hand wrapped around your throat.

They are never around long enough to know that panic sets in while you shower and scrub at your skin until it's raw and bruised.

Sticking around would mean knowing that you were touched by Poison Ivy and they've heard it's contagious!

They don't watch when you're seventeen and crying into his shoulder, asking him to tell you he loves you, just so you can sleep because that would mean that maybe..you aren't that heroic afterall.

If they got too close they would see that you aren't surviving so much as submitting to being alive.

They sit on the edge of their seats gobbling up details about your so-called courageous story, eating up the nitty-gritty details because they know it will end in some form of you rises from the ashes.

But YOU didn't know that you'd be rising from the ashes when he was lighting his match.

When you tell them, you're still in therapy learning to breathe and count to ten, they have to realize bandaids don't fix gaping wounds, so they stop listening, notice the crows feet and crooked teeth,  and turn away because suddenly...you look like a victim