you feel like home after a long trip away,
grandma's kitchen and consistency.
earl grey tea with honey,
slipping into bed after a day that felt like an eternity,
you feel like all of that is good and right and whole.
thank you for loving me this way.

you are the river.
you're not the dirt that washes through it.
you're not the animal that drinks from the shore.
you're not the leaves that float in the current.
you're not the heat that dries the bed.
you're not the pollution that floods the stream.
you're not the frost that freezes the waves.
you're not the rain that floods the banks.
you're not what passes through you, harms you, oppresses you.
you are the river.

maybe i don't know much, but i do know about the fires inside of me urging to be extinguished.
they feel much larger than i am.
they scream for any means of relief.
so heavy they might as well be an extra limb.
the human heart has unique versatility of loving so hard, feeling so deeply, but also experiencing so much ******* pain.
whether it be anger
resentment
or just outright sadness,
in whatever form it manifests, it's loss.
your sanity, a person, your equilibrium.
in whichever way you grieve, a loss is a loss.
but, you've got to hold on, my love.
human beings are crafted far too beautifully to fall short of anything but going down swining.
i bear witness to the flames turning into smouldering reminders that the world is so **** tough.
but when relief comes, it comes.
it doesn't feel much like it now, but the darkness does subside.
in the same way that the earth begins to repair itself after all of this devastation, you too can be begin again.

- show me a map of the battle wounds, but markers on the places that cut the deepest.
-don't cry anger, or pity, or knives. just cry.

his whiskey arms
unconvincingly,  your lungs are not composed of broken glass and tissue paper
there are no "i love you's" in whiskey and coke flavored lips,
strong hands,
the back of his truck
and there never was
someday, somebody will love your feeble insides
it's all in a matters time.

"he used to write poems about me," mum says.
she's pouring her first glass of whiskey and her hands are shaking, but she doesn't feel it.
it has been proven difficult for her to feel much of anything anymore.
she's on her third glass now.
she says,
"he was so in love with me."
cut to glass number 5 and i swear to god she's crying liquor now.
she says, "i can't believe he's gone" and says "goodnight."
and gets in bed right next to him.

i don't know how i'm supposed to do this* on my own
this is: learning how to kiss no one goodnight,
leaning how to not sabotage relationships because suddenly i feel exposed.

* life in general

it'll happen someday, and it will be beautiful.

i forget where i lost the girl that just loved and loved and loved, but i do miss her.

i'll see her again someday, and it will be beautiful.

a child version of you holding a map of outdated versions of yourself saying,"there, right there, that's where you lost the war with yourself."

you don't get better on the days where you feel like going,
you get better on the days you don't want to go,
but you go anyways,
overcoming the negativity from a tired body,
or an unmotivated mind,
you will get better.
it won't be the best thing you've ever done,
you won't accomplish as much as you would when you feel good,
but it doesn't matter.
growth and healing is a game that we all play,
and the ****** days are very important.

this year has been all about learning to hate you as a self-defence mechanism

there will be days
where your very own breathing is exhausting, the four walls of your bedroom the only safe space.
days where the world doesn't accept you,
you were not meant for this life.
living, breathing, screaming epiphanies that the world would be a much greater place without you in it.
for so long, i was in a place with no sun.
the smell of day old liquor and blame,
a mother so broke within her addiction and self-destruct she's not even whole anymore.
you were only 9.
here, there were no flowers.
growing up was a nightmare- the coming, the going, the always going.
dropping everything and leaving is her strong suit.
the baby brother you felt you had to protect,
the questions.
"why are you always so tired".
the predisposition to the dark entity making a home inside of you was called for.
years plagued with lost innocence and trust issues.
no fight in the whole **** world left in you, but carrying on anyway.
but, every once in awhile, out of the darkness, would emerg something you loved that'd bring you to life again.
small joys- a candy sky, laughs with a friend, all the universe's way of sending tiny glimmers of hope. strength to continue.
faith in the words, "this too shall pass".
living is difficult, and living is difficult for everybody.
but it is in these moments of turmoil that we cannot succumb to the bad days, bad months, or bad years.
healing, loving, and growing through these hardships is easy to say, but hard to surmount to.
it is struggling, two steps forward and one step back.
again, and again, and again.
it's trial. it's error. it's trial again. it's more error.
it's holding on to the small hopes. not allowing our hearts to grow cold. having the courage to continue. choosing the carry on.
i find my strength in the bodies of water much larger than i am.
it's in family. blood or chosen.
it's sunrises.
sunsets.
falling in love.
with people or places.
kind strangers.
it's realizing you've started dancing again.
its healing, loving, and growing through this tough life.
as long as we are breathing, we must keep dancing.

confront this dark entity which found home behind my ribcage.
i want to tell him to give me back what was rightfully mine.
give back the 13 year old i was with so much life beneath my eyelids,
the time before i became all too acquainted with the monster under my bed
the 14 year old that realized that the hollowness in her chest was what would become a very old friend.
i want him to apologize for the wreckage he caused upon my body,
i want the time back trying to him him with sharp objects, trying to **** him in bed sheets of boys who do not cry, trying to **** him by wrenching over a toilet bowl trying to remember where i even met him in the first place.
i want the nights back where the four walls of my bedroom became so concave,
the nights he'd call me 'baby', telling me to never love something larger than he was, even myself.
the happiness he enticed me with but kept so far out of reach.
i want to say to him, "i see you", "the scars have faded now".
to the old friend that has grown with me,
i have tried so ******* hard to say goodbye.

mum smiles as she offers a cube of sugar from her upturned palm,
greedily, of course i accept it.
salt.
there are some mums that warn you to never (ever, ever) touch a hot stove top,
and there's ones that throw you right into it and ask why you're so afraid of fire.
this is what abuse is.
knowing you're going to get salt, but still hoping for sugar after twenty-one years.
i still have a stomach ache.
i hope at some point in this lifetime you can find it in you to look at the woman i have become properly, in spite of you, and feel proud.
when you're taught to see the world through nothing but fire, nothing feels safe.

- here's to still hoping for sugar instead of salt.

you are on the floor crying, and you've been crying for days now,
but that is your brave.
that is you getting through as best as you know how.
no one gets to decide what your tough looks like.

they say you usually end up with someone just like your father,
which is kind of ironic,
seeing as you always showed up.
you were 3,000 km away and you still managed to show up everyday,
with a little more love,
a little more strength,
a little more courage than you had the day before.
apparently you weren't unavailable enough,
flightily enough,
you didn't let me down enough.

your parents.

you have your mothers' eyes,
your father's tendency to never call back.

her stubbornness,
his indecisiveness.

her strength,
his lack thereof.

you are not your parents.
scream if it helps.

one of the hardest things i ever had to admit to myself was that during my most fragile years, i allowed others to treat me the same way that i treated myself (lack of self-worth stains everything the colour of itself)
the only person i ever lost and needed was myself.

names eventually stop tasting like stomach acid
2. the light does come through
3. don't call him back

someday, someone will be soft & gentle with your heart and you'll be glad you kept it open.
you're gonna wonder why you ever considered quieting down.
2020 will be soft and forgiving.

i am noticing that the things that make me anxious are the things i wasn't allowed to do as a child

- ask for help
- slow down
- make mistakes
- need attention

i hope you feel so proud of the progress you've made.
i know how you suffer, how you've suffered, how far you've come.
to all those who remain fighting, and to all those who've fought,
i know how you fight and i am so proud.

white-walled ER at 3 a.m., so silent despite muffled groans and the lady in the room next to yours with auditory hallucinations, you could've almost heard mum when she broke.
morphine does funny things to people.
the doctor thinks she fakes the pain,
write "broken goods" on her chart.
she's in a million little pieces,
i think but never say.
words never come out the way i'd like them to.
show me what's damaged and why.
childhood was not pink dresses or blueberry pancakes,
it's mum dancing, yes, metaphorically.
her head filled with so much fairy dust and abandonment issues.
a body so filled with self-destruct it asks your depression if its dark enough for you.
slurred words and confessions,
the morphine or your mother talking?
bedtime stories composed of her last words being "more please"
somebody teach me how to forgive myself for not being able to save everybody.

ten. it ****** the life from your mother, who wouldn't go to work or quit her opioid addiction or do any of the things she probably should have.

twelve. and it was in you too, in the quiet moments of perpetual anxiety and childhood trauma that had not quite identified itself yet. it moved right in, and it decided it likes the view.

fourteen. it exploded in your world. it's in the girl who had it all and in the teacher with a tan line where her wedding ring used to be.

sixteen. absolutely by now, you had met it too. a sort of absent numb. swallowing darkness. a blackness. but it wasn't you, it couldn't be. just a voice, perpetually angry and tired. your bodyweight you're too tired to carry.

mental illness does not have a face. it takes over in small, sly ways that only those who have lived it know the colors.

it wears the bodies of the girl dancing, the skin of the girl that sits at home with battle wounds (sometimes, this is the same girl). it inhabits the man always frowning, the boys always making others laugh. in the chests of poets, artists, musicians. it's clever. it camouflages well.

it may be in you. it is in me.