I feel beautiful
but only when I'm hungry
Only when I can hear my stomach begging me to eat something
Only when I can feel myself losing weight
Only when they say, "you're getting to thin, you're doing great!"
Only when I'm drinking a bottle of water in the span of a minute so that I can be full
Only when I'm starving but I push the plate away.

I feel beautiful
But only when I'm counting calories
Only when I'm running that extra mile to stay slim

I feel beautiful
Until I'm looking down at my thighs and I see that they touch
Until a girl says how curvy I am when I'd just like to be flat and slim
Until I step on the scale and it laughs and says I've gains a few pounds

I feel beautiful
until I look at myself in a fullbody mirror and think, "GROSS"

I feel beautiful
when I haven't eaten for 3 days and no one notices
When I'm popping a rubber band to my wrist saying, "you're not hungry your just bored" over and over again
And my stomach replys, "I'm dying, why are you doing this, feed me"

I feel beautiful
Until the girl next to me is thinner than I am
Until daddy tells me I'm getting fat
Until I hear the boys in the distance say that they'd never, ever, ever date big girl

I feel beautiful
But only when I'm dying of starvation
Only when I'm literally empty on the inside

I felt beautiful
Until I realized that fat is an insult
And i wondered why
Do we not glide the same why?
Do our stretch marks make us inelegant?
Are we unladylike because we eat?

I feel beautiful until I don't anymore
Until beauty is too much in the eye of the beholder
Until I am not allowed to be the beholder
Until beauty is a category of waist size double zero

I feel beautiful
Because I'm allowed to
Because the number on the scale does not define Me
Because I Define me

You taught me that everyone that wasn't a christian was going to hell.
You taught me that we were the prime example of a good christian family, even though I had bruises on my skin.
You taught me that girls should wear makeup and do their hair and wear pretty dresses, and are good for nothing except being a housewife,
you taught me that my talents should be used only enough to get money so I can live in a big house with kids and be a good wife.
You taught me that homosexuals should be strung up and gutted for being sick and diseased sinners.
You taught me that boys who don't dress like men are homosexual ***** nasty sinners.
You taught me that I wasn't good for anything
You told me that you wished you could raise me all over again, so maybe I wouldn't be such a disappointing sinner.
You told me I couldn't play with boy toys, because that's a sin,
You told me I could only wear girl colors.
You told me to only read books about good girls who do good things and not books on adventure and crime.
You told me I was ugly.
You told me I was fat.
You told me I could be somebody someday, but it wouldn't be so because I was ugly and fat and stupid and good for nothing, so I better stop dreaming.
You called me a liar when I said my father hit me.
Even when you pulled him off me as I breathed what would have been my last breath.
You didn't take me to the doctor when I laid in my room screaming in pain for an unknown reason,
You called me a ***** and a ****
and that my friends are disgusting.
You claimed I had no free will and that everything I did, was me just trying to be like all my nasty sinning homosexual friends.
You said all I did on the computer is watch ****. I was a kid.
You said my pains and sorrows and feelings and thoughts and ambitions were me just being dramatic.
You never called the police
or divorced him sooner,
you just got another job and left me alone with him all day.
You called me a liar no matter what I said.
You blamed me for your woes and your weight.
You prayed and begged and cried in front of me,
trying to understand where you went wrong and why I was such a sinner. I was a kid.
You didn't raise me.
When I twisted my ankle on a field trip, it was another parent who iced my ankle.
You didn't pick me up from the school play at 10pm,
I waited and waited- it was another parent who came back to check on me, and took me home.
When I woke up with ****** knuckles and ****** walls, you didn't care that I had been punching the walls in my sleep you didn't do anything to help.
I ran away from home three times and each it was my sister who came to get me, never you.
When I fell through a window and that piece of glass lay pointing at my heart, for I was too light to have my body push down through it, I wasn't relieved, I was disappointed. You didn't stitch me up, my brother is the one who cleaned my cuts and bandaged me up and down.
You didn't help me, it was my sister who taught me how to push our dresser in front of the door when he was on a drunken rampage with a baseball bat, so it would buy time for us to hop through the window and down the street.
It was my sister who held me when I fell of my bed and took the skin off my nose.
It was my brother who read me stories of a brilliant boy named Artemis Fowl who went on adventures.
It was my sister who screamed for him to stop when I played too loud and he smashed my head against the wall.
It was my sister who taught me how to cook and clean
and bought THE LABYRINTH so that I could fall in love with David Bowie and learn to be a girl who didn't need anyone to save her.  
It was my brother who lent me his clothes when he grew so I could get out of those nasty pink dresses with lace that covered every inch of me.
Every time I spoke you said I was a liar and that I should sit down and shut up.
You badgered me for being rude when I didn't speak in public or with family and when I do you laugh and shush me, letting the other people know that I like to exaggerate, I like attention.
and then you scream at me for being rude and that I should sit down and shut up sit down and shut up and that's what I did.

From birth, you said I shouldn't exist and that I was heartless and nothing and cold and dead inside. You blamed me for the world and you still do.

This all happened before I was 8 years old.

When you went to Italy last summer, you went without a word and left me with no food or money. It was another family that sheltered me. It was a man I've met only twice who has become my only father figure and texts me to make sure I'm okay and picks me up and feeds me and gives me a place to stay and helps me indulge in my interests and tries to heal me and treats me like his own daughter.

This is still all you do.
You expect flowers and a card
and chocolate
and the world at your feet
because you have given me the world
and raised me
and cared for me
and loved me.
But when I do the dishes for you as a favor, I can only think about whether the knife I'm cleaning will be plunged into your heart, or mine.

For the woman who tells me I look ugly on prom night, who calls my friends sinners and curses them  tells me I'm fat and nothing and punishes me for things I've never done and won't leave me alone in the doctor's office so that she can "Correct" everything I have to say so that I can't get anxiety or depression or anger medication or a thorough checkup on why my body hurts everyday. To the woman who cries and screams to this **** day that she doesn't understand why I'm a disgusting monster, how she doesn't understand how I turned into a freak. To the woman who openly despises every inch of me that tries so hard to be happy and love everyone and everything,
Happy mother's day.

You are the sad love song I hear on the radio
You are the boy causing my friend grief and heartbreak
The empty beer bottles scattered all over the floor
The dark eyes staring back at me in the mirror, eyes that are not mine . Ones I do not recognize
You are alternate side parking on a thursday morning
You are all the reasons why not to leave my house on a rainy day
You are the little girl walkin the street alone looking around for the caring parent who will never be there on time to pick her up for school
You are the fighting couple in the middle of the street everyone walks by and doesn't pay attention to
The crushed up cigarettes on the floor that took someone's life
The wrong lotto ticket that the family on 6 was depending on
You are the emptiness in the poor mans stomach
You are the smoke coming out of the angry mans ears
You are the green in the jealous mans eyes
You are the deserted street no one dares to walk on
You are the outcome of a helpless soul
You are the feeling of anguish that rushes over the lonely widow
You are the voices of the unheard children
You are the letter that was never received
You are the lost the destiny
You are the never ending tunnels
The aid who never came
The hope which started to fade
The life of that fine young land
The reasons why we get do mad
You are thestory I can not write
You are the fear on thst dark stormy nigt
But out of all these things you are the one who ran back into the falling towers .
The sun that's hiding behind the clouds
The boy who plays his guitar on the street that doesn't give up
You are the penny that goes to charity
The older brother that protects his siblings
The mother who is strong even though her husband left her
You are the one who keeps the world going
You are the kids who made a difference the ones who didn't let anyone change them
The one I go to when everyhing feels wrong
The one that listens
The one who knows
You are the story that will never be able to be told for you are the story I can not write , too many different sides of you . So many my fingers just can't type



You arethe story I can not write but you are the story that will be a legend for ever .

I think my lips are chapped because I've kissed so many boys who don't love me.
You ask me 'what do you taste like?' I don't think its very **** to say regret and sadness.
You say 'when can I taste you' My taste has been passed around so many tongues there is nothing left for you.

He tells me 'I'm here for you, I'll always be here for you' as he kisses my neck. The next week the bite mark on my belly is fading and I can barely remember the colour of your eyes.

My sister says 'you will change your mind' she says, 'all woman want to be mothers'.
I have stumbled in at 4am with the taste of strangers in my throat to see my mother sitting upright waiting for me, I think of the night I spent crying on my mothers lap in a&e;, certain I couldn't make it through the day, the way my brother scowls at my mother, my sister telling her that 'you could've done more, you could've walked away.' I. Dont. Want. Children.

My mum tells me she is old, she is tired. She desperately needs a man to hold doors open for her and carry her shopping. I am trying to remember that needing someone does not mean you are weak.

My grandmother gave me waist beads to encourage fertility. She says 'god gave you those hips to birth children'. Ive never told her that i lost my faith in god the year i lost my virginity.  And if there is a god, i don't want his ******* fertility. I want to break these beads and let drugs engulf me to prove my grandmothers blind faith wrong.
I laugh and pray before our meal and kiss her forehead, 'god bless'.

He tells me 'i know youre *****, its natural'. I laugh and play along for his delight. 'women are just like toys, television, easy puzzles'. I think of my father beating my mother, my fathers face all the men ive walked past in the street. My mothers face is my own.

'if you don't want boys to touch you you shouldn't wear tight clothes'. I think of all the boys who have run their fingers over my back when i was dressed in clothes from neck to ankle. I wonder if god is a sexist man. I wonder if there's any men who aren't implicitly sexist.

He tells me, 'I'll spend hours on you, I'll make you believe in god again'. There is nothing I can do but laugh. I ask him, 'does your mother know you speak to girls like this?'
He ***** his teeth, 'do you always have to be so difficult?'  
I kiss him but I think of his mother, foreign and lonely, 2 sons and no husband.

He says 'you need a real man' I think of all the other boys who have told me that before leaving me.
He wants to know why I'm in hospital so much, 'how are we going love each other when you can't tell me what's wrong with you' I don't want to tell him that I've cut my arms so badly I can see god in my blood, and sometimes the voice in my head screams so loud I black out. I kiss his chest. He doesn't ask again. I resent him for that.

I've been ignoring my fathers phone calls for two weeks because his voice sounds like absence and I don't want to hear another 'I love you' from a man who doesn't know my secrets.

I'm sorry I'm not 'perfect'
I'm sorry my hair isn't as thick as hers
I'm sorry I'm not as blonde
I'm sorry I need glasses
I'm sorry my eyes are almost black,
          not blue or hazel or something pretty
I'm sorry my nose is big and pointy,
          not small and cute
I'm sorry my lips are weird
I'm sorry I'd rather write and read
           because I can't sing or play very well
I'm sorry I'm not curved in all the right ways
I'm sorry I can't afford nice clothes
I'm sorry I'd prefer to help the community
           rather than get straight A's
I'm sorry I'm a really religious Catholic
           not a really religious Baptist
I'm sorry that we're not twelve anymore
I'm sorry that I'm not worth the effort
I'm sorry I'm ****** up
I'm sorry I love you
I'm sorry I'm not *her

How am I supposed to feel
When you tell me I'm the one
But make me feel second best.

They say that love is one of the best things that could possibly happen to you. I on the other hand disagree. I think it may possibly be the worst thing alive. It ruins us. It makes us crave something we can't have. It tears us apart. It breaks our hearts.

All I know is that I once loved.
All I know is that I still love...still love the same person.
The person I hurt the most, and crave back so much. My other half.
I miss the way he held me, the way he made me feel special.
I miss the good and bad moments.
And yet..I know that he is not mine.
That..that is what hurts the most. That he is someone else's now and no longer mine.
I always wonder "what if..". But then I remember all the little things and the big things that ruined it all.
Regrets...so many regrets.

And now..all I'm left with is the memory of him and the hope that maybe, one day I'll get a second chance from him..
Because I swear to god I won't **** up again. Not if my life depends on it.

Her tears flowed down her cheeks and though she was crying over someone else he wish to be the tears that flowed down her cheek and over her rosy cracked lips. She was in no way perfect. Flaws where speckled on her body for everyone to see yet it was never her flaws  that kept him away. It was the same reason he knew she was sitting in the bathroom letting her pain ruin the makeup she placed on her eyes that hid the pain from the rest of the world. That crushing feeling she would never love him back or they would ruin what they "had". He also knew she was waiting for him to rescue her but the hero was afraid...he was human not demigod after all. As she climbs to the mirror to  catch a glimps of who she actually was he looks in wishing he'd gone to her.
Tomorrow she will wear that smile that he looks past. She was always transpartent to him thought everyone thought she was so happy. He could see the pain and instead of stopping it he continued to pray to be the tears that fell over her rosy cracked lips or the hair that got caught there when the pain grew too much.

he probably did not die. he probably did not lose his phone and he probably did not have a legitimate reason to do it. so do yourself a favor and stop constructing his excuse when he's probably just busy trying to avoid you.

2. you are not worth less than you were before. your kiss is still as fierce, your touch is just as kind as it once was. don't let him take more than he deserves. do not let him change how you feel about your worth.

3. i wish i could tell you that this is all leading up to you finding the love of your life, but i don't want to lie. your person may be hiding in the details, and sometimes they will not want to come out.  

4. however, what is coming is bound to be better than what never showed up.

5. he probably did not die. his phone probably still works.

6. do not text him when you are sober. do not text him when you are drunk and ask why. closure is something that we make up in our minds to remind us that we are still desirable, to remind us that we are still good.

7. so this is your reminder. you are still desirable and you are still good. he stood you up, so what? don't kid yourself into thinking that this is something that can ruin you.

8. forget his kiss and stop trying to memorize the times and moments where he was probably just lying. erase his texts, erase his number. if he ever does show up- at least you know he was looking for you.