i'm getting bad again.
i'm kind of vain. i look at my reflection often.
i feel terrible every time.
it kind of reminds me of when my baby teeth would get loose.
i'd push my tooth side to side with my tongue.
there'd be a twinge of pain, but it felt good.
locking myself in my bathroom and pulling my shirt up to see my waist is like that.
it hurts me every time---
constantly reminding me of how i'll never look the way i should,
but i can't stop.

my room was filled with darkness, except for the flashlight i was holding.
pacing and pacing and pacing
crying and crying and crying
my note to you was written in blue ink that looked like scribbles.
you told me i could talk to you but you became angry whenever i did.
i decided i would give up.
i couldn't bear starving myself anymore.
i couldn't look at myself anymore.
i couldn't stand watching you rapidly distance yourself from me.
my hips were bleeding and the blood was dripping down my thighs and sticking to my sweatpants.
i looked through every drawer and every cabinet in my bedroom.
i stayed silent because my family was sleeping peacefully and thought i was, too.
i couldn't find the pills.
i looked through the same drawers and cabinets hoping that i would see those tiny white circles in that tiny plastic bag.
i couldn't find the pills.
i decided i would go to bed.
i lit the note for you on fire and threw it out of my bedroom window and into my lawn.
all that pacing and all that crying tired me out
and i curled up in bed with blood all over my legs
and gently cried myself to sleep.

I am under the microscope
I put myself here
I didn't know
How far it would go
Years in, and I am slowly dissected
Habits up for scrutiny
Emotions analyzed
Demeanor reviewed
Constantly screened
For any hint of disorder
Perhaps I am lucky
That help is at my finger tips
But it feels like a curse
When sickness is your soul
And it lives on through treatment
Through love
Through the microscope

My eyes are not sunlit windows to my own self, rather dimmed and tinted blockades to never give you a full picture. They are not a colourful array of flowers, they are dull and wilting weeds.

My lungs cannot breathe in and smell the roses because they are laced with tar, and not enough oxygen from shallow breathing. They are restricted from fulfilling out their purpose so I can feel 'okay.'

My ears will not listen to the buzzing of bees and the gentle wind- they will, however, listen to the screams between them and confuse help with hate.

My tongue does not taste of honeysuckle and mint, but rather ash and dried blood from tasting my existence. It formulates words laced with too much sleep and too little self care.

My fingertips do not touch as if I am handling the daintiest of flower petals, instead they trace a gravestone between my ribs with a purpose. They tear at my own skin and hair, or at least try to.

Do not devalue my battleground of a body by comparing it to a garden

My mistakes go retro, I’ve made them before
sometimes I think being forced to talk through lightbulbs would maybe stop it all
all the awkward hello-I-exist moments all the overreactions all the irritated snaps when I can’t snap out of it all the times I didn’t mean to cry out *******,
no, with that limitation I’d only say what I needed to

It’s not like I’m living upside down but it sure does feel like it
hidden away in my head so much that the outside world feels eerie
daylight is bright white and reality is my Demogorgon
I’m too tired to fight it, and standing in supermarkets, bleary-eyed
feels unreal, like a fake body in a quarry
I just wish love was enough to overcome worry

My dungeons are four cream walls closing in on me, infecting me with black slime that weighs me down too much to move
My dragons are adrenaline and exhaustion, they take turns attacking me,
these demons keep trapping me, and I keep getting told it’s too soon
It’s too soon for this, I’m just a kid
lost in the forest, upside down and off-grid
I’m off-kilter, with a faulty brain-filter and my squirming blue fingers
are gripping bike handles and trying to rebuild her

The ******* the wire, the girl with inner fire whose eyes shined like the lights I wish I had to communicate with
that girl would have slain the Demogorgon with idealism and defiance,
now I wish it away in the pretense that it’s a myth
She could whisk objects away into a magical space, a deep forest of brave faces,
seeing beauty in all things through summer dazed rays of romance
skipping along rivers, hair fair and careless, daring to dream of daisies gleaming, just on the lookout for the next rhyme,
unaware that this was the strongest she’d ever be, the least cowardly, unaware that she’d one day be me.

Locked up in the four walls with no fairy lights or lyrics,
Joyce Byers without a reason,
crazy with no spirit.
Months on end immersed in dungeons, fighting dragons,
only to escape and be faced with this deadly Demogorgon:
life without eleven lenses of hope. A life cynical and devoid of magic,
less nightmarish than the upside down but just as bleak,
this is the monster that makes me weak

it’s not the upside down, but my own reality.

I’m still waiting for my sling-shot, sleeping until my powers are restored,
there’s nothing worse than seeing the world and being bored,
in eleven days I’ll try again,
I have at least eleven days of hope left,
I’ll get out of this swimming pool, hop over the barbed wire,
eleven days to find that girl again and turn my gasoline fire inwards,
to escape the wasteland once and for all,
for the world to be big enough that I don’t hear the Demogorgon through the walls,

Eleven days to fix my sanctuary in the forest,
so I can light up both my outward-looking eyes like the aurora borealis.

I'm trying to get over myself.
I really am.
I don't like being the center,
And my problems make that so.
I don't want everyone always commenting
That I am making no progress,
That I'm not trying,
Because I am.
I am really trying.
You just can't see it, because all of this is an
Inward Battle,
That doesn't just suddenly stop.
No matter how much you want me to,
I can't stop hating myself in a day,
Or a week,
Or a month,
Or even a year.
Because I have been looking at myself
This way,
For a long time now.
It doesn't just stop.
That's not how it works.