One.

When I was 14 my back started hurting.

And it didn’t stop.

It’s been 5 years

It still hasn’t stopped.

I remember the first night it got really bad.

It had been building all day

Like a hunger that I didn’t yet know

Was waiting to swallow me whole

It clawed its way into my mind,

Lacing tendrils through every thought

Until they were no longer my own

I remember pacing the living room

My hands shaking

My eyes watering

I had never known pain like this and

I didn’t know how to make it stop

So I did what any little girl does

I looked to my mother

And she…

She looked as scared as I was

I didn’t realize it until years later,

But in that moment

In the back of my mind

I decided that I would never let anyone

See what the pain did to me again.

Because I had to hurt,

But nobody else did.

So I locked it away in my chest

And fashioned a mask out of smiles and lies

And it fits so perfectly on my face

That I don’t know how to take it off anymore.



Two.

I was 16 when I had my first discogram.

They pushed needles into my discs

And pumped them full of dye

So that they could watch

While it seeped out of the broken places

I laid there face down on a table

In a cold room that over the years I would come to hate

I gritted my teeth,

Clenched my fists,

And tried desperately to keep from crying

The nurse told me that she was surprised

That I didn’t scream

Most people scream



Three.

One of the side effects

Of being a pastor’s daughter

Is that an entire church knows

About all of your problems

Every Sunday I walk into

The building that is supposed to be a place of rest

And well-meaning people ask me how I’m feeling.

I hate lying to them.



Four.

I started collecting notebooks

In high school

There’s a shelf in my room stacked with dozens

Of journals waiting to be filled with beautiful things.

Sometimes I feel like I am sitting on a shelf

Waiting to be filled with beautiful things.





Five.

Once a woman told me

That God gives his hardest battles

To his strongest soldiers.

I know she meant well,

But I just wanted to tell her

That I was tired of being

So.

****.

Strong.



Six.

I was eighteen when I realized

That I didn’t want to be alive anymore.





Seven.

I was nineteen when my doctor said she was out of ideas.

For five years every time I went to her office

There was another test she could run

Or another injection that might work

Or another doctor to refer me to

And then another

And another

And another

And then there just wasn’t

It was like I was watching

While somebody else’s future

Collapsed

Like learning that someone else’s pain

Was never going to stop.

It couldn’t be me

She said she was sorry

And I walked out

And cried in my car



Eight.

I’ve been trying to write this poem for years

I have half a dozen versions

But the words never quite felt like mine

As they tumbled off my tongue.

I wrote and this girl that emerged from the letters

Was so broken but so strong.

It took me a long time to be able to recognize her.



Nine.

For years I have been chasing

The version of me

That might have been

If the pain had never come

I didn’t know who she was

And I felt that I owed it to her to find out

It took me years to realize

That I was chasing a girl

Who could never exist.

Because the pain

Shaped me.

It sanded away rough edges

And built up walls

That I’m not sure I’ll ever be able

To tear down.

For better or worse

The pain made me who I am

And I’m finally starting to like

Who I am