when all I would seek was flesh to consume me
so my eyes would hide behind tears so deep
and scars that ran so deep inside of me
so you wouldn’t see my pain
so my laugh would ring in the walls
so you wouldn’t see how I am dying inside
every single day
still now, even though I am healing,
still it feels like the maze of pain will never ever end
the mask falls
and I feel that people don’t really like me
maybe they just put up with me
because I speak reality to ones who don’t want to see it
and truth is most people don’t want to see it
but I grasped the straws and strings of my life to make it through

so when it’s late at night I am there in that place again
trauma dumping, oversharing,
wanting someone to see my pain
to grab my hands
to say I see you, I know, it’s okay
but I wish I didn’t want it so bad
I wish I could let the validation fade away already
I wish I didn’t cry so much
and miss my family so much
the one who broke my heart into shreds so deep
that all I feel is a deep piercing aching pain every day
like a knife in my heart, in my chest

all I knew my whole life was a feeling of wrongness inside of me
that I was born wrong
that I didn’t deserve to exist
when my father would crawl into my bed each night
and I hoped for death
all I wanted was to be a bird
and to wash my cuts away in the sink at night

so then when I grew up,
I ran from religion
I ran off to a faraway land
and soaked my bed with the scent of men who liked to prey on me
because I thought being prey was love
and the addiction became so deep of wanting men to see me
that it’s all I live for still
and yet it’s an addiction that I can’t seem to run from
no matter how many boundaries I put up

all I want is love, I scream
but I rarely, if ever, am texted first
my whole life I lie on my bed gasping in pain for hours a day
and when I leave my house and go outside
people ask me if I am okay
and I say yes
but no — I am not. I never am
even when I have some hours of reprieve
even when I am healthier
even when I am working on my mindset
my pain is so, so deep
that I don’t know how I will recover

because how does one recover from being sexually abused so severely, the way that I have?
how does one recover from being severely abused in almost every single manner your whole life?
how does one recover from starvation?

then I live in a land where people look away from starving children
and are shocked that I care
and laugh
what has died so deeply inside of you
that you can’t see to care about others dying in the ditch in Gaza two hours from you
as in pain as I am

maybe my pain made me see right
that we are all human
and no one ever deserves this

I spoke to the soldier the other night who almost died for no reason
and I think about another man on the other side of the wall, starving
and I wonder
yet one is called a hero
the other is the terrorist
nope
maybe both are just controlled
and stuck in a cruel world

it feels too harsh
to see too much all of the time
I feel that I am who I am — what I am — is too much for the world
always and all of the time
that’s it

I don’t know what to say anymore
I am so hated by my family and by so many others
that I don’t know how to get over it
I don’t know how to get past
being hated
for my existence on this earth.