He doesn’t understand how broken I was.
How I wanted to be somewhere else,
anywhere else.
How I wanted to be someone else,
anyone else.
How I wanted to sleep endlessly because only while being unconscious were things okay.
How I wanted nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
I didn’t even want to be okay.
I just wanted it to be over.

Well, that’s a lie.
I wanted something.
I wanted everyone else to be okay.
I wanted to take away their pain and watch them flourish.
I was torn between thinking it was selfish to leave because someone might miss me
(a remote chance at best though)
and thinking it was selfish to stay and force them to watch me die a little every day.

Everything was torn and fractured and incomprehensible.
I was a vase shattered into tiny pieces and I couldn’t bear to have anyone cut their feet on my rough edges.
What I didn’t realize was that maneuvering around my broken pieces was just as difficult,
just as exhausting.

So I’m trying a little bit harder now.
No;
that’s a lie too.
I’m trying harder than I ever have.
I’m trying to show him what needs to be shown-
the dark pictures that stalk me in my dreams.
I'm trying to voice what needs to be uttered-
the twisted thoughts that haunt my waking hours.
Oh, my perfectly imperfect love,
I am trying.
And I think,
I think I am growing to be so drastically
better
but I am terrified,
almost to the point of paralysis,
to fall again.