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