survivor?
my dear you are gravely mistaken.
i think the word you are looking for is failure.

every breath, every heartbeat,
every touch that brings me back to that cold winter night,
feeling helpless in a body that is not my own
is a sick reminder of how i am still alive.

while most people my age were exploring their
favorite coffee shops i was exploring all the ways
i could possibly end my life just so i could forget the pain.

i still think about being 16 and sitting in physics class
furiously calculating the height i would have to jump from
in order to reach terminal velocity before hitting the ground
and then going home and looking over the balcony
of my 13th floor apartment and praying i would find
just one second of courage and jump.

all of this despair happened over the course of that one cold winter night.
it was the night i was taught i had no voice or choice.
and when i woke up the next morning nothing made sense anymore
because i could see the sun rise out of my window
but my heart and mind were still stuck in the dark
and i have never seen the light since.

i have spent years perfecting the art of denial.
i was a master for so long, i wouldn’t let a fraction
of truth leave my soul.


i would go through hell just to find every way
possible to pin the problem on someone, or
something else besides you.
and so often that someone was me.


through my pain, i found the strength to protect you
before i could ever find the courage to protect myself
perhaps that’s because you have taught my heart
to fear so greatly and i have just now begun
to learn that fear is the instigator of my denial.


i fear hurting you for fear that you’ll retaliate and
hurt me more than you already have and my mind
can’t fathom anything that could bring more pain
than what you have already done.


for a while now I have felt the truth building up and
pushing against the walls that i have so carefully built
around my fragile heart and i have been trying
to use the little strength i do have left to fight my way
back to denial once again.


i am learning that the walls i have built are
not strong enough to hold all of this pain that denial
has brought along with it.


you taught me that fear was the most powerful
force of them all and i believed you for so long.
yet i am learning much too quickly that the
truth will eventually overpower fear and find it’s way
to the light no matter how hard i try to keep it buried
within me.


the walls i have built are collapsing so fast and i am
just trying to find a way to not collapse with them.

my thoughts are spinning so fast in my head
that i think i might fall off the side of the earth.
i imagine that i would land somewhere in between
the moon and the stars and i think that is when
i would finally feel free from the storm within me.


i look at the trees and how they seem to
dance through the raging winds that pass through
with such resilience and grace and i find myself
wondering why i can’t do the same.


then i remember how time has so often taught me
that i am no dancer and the storm will find me
wherever i hide and i am tired of being found.


these winds are so unforgiving that i end up in the
middle of a desolate road sometime past midnight
looking up at the moon and the stars and the place
in between where i am meant to be and my
only hope is that when the next car comes
that i will no longer feel the turbulent storm within me
but instead feel the years of pain and fear leaving
my body as i dissolve into the night sky
and find a new home among the stars.


i pray that car comes soon.

overcome by darkness
i look out into the distance
and try to see something more
than the fog and confusion taking over
my head and the self hatred that burns
in my chest.
there is nothing but empty space
that i am so afraid will soon be filled with
the same confusion and self hatred that
already grows within me.
and i cannot take anymore.
what i have is already far too much for me
to hold.


time after time i reach up towards the dark sky
in hopes that some devine being will reach back
and pull me out of this nothingness.
i cannot do it on my own.
i am not strong enough
i have learned this over and over again
and i am tired of falling back into the darkness.
most days i’d rather let it consume me.
it would be much easier than continuing
this sick game of crawling out of the darkness
just enough to get a glimpse of the light
only to fall back again.


i must not have been made to live in the light.

i keep asking myself how i can love storms with such passion,
yet always feel so overcome with sadness every time the rain falls.


how can this beautiful process which brings life
be the same that causes me such loneliness?


am i not too, a part of this earth?


my feet stand on the same ground where rivers flow,
flowers bloom and where the strong mountains meet clouds.


how can i be so close to something this beautiful
yet feel so distant from the concept of beauty itself.


i am not beautiful.


i have been overwhelmed with a pain too
great for my fragile heart to hold and i have
forgotten how it feels to live in the light.


i was not made to fight.

my heart is a raft lost in an ocean of sadness.
my anger is the storm closing in and
my thoughts are too heavy for this little raft to carry
for much longer.
i’ve spent years trying to pull myself to shore
only to be overcome by violent waves that push
me back out into the vast sea yet again.
soon this ocean of sadness will consume me
and i won’t fight it anymore.
i have been fighting for too long and i am tired.
i want to go home.
there’s got to be a home waiting for me on the other side.

i was not created to be broken and
you were not created to destroy.
yet somewhere along the way
you were taught that it was okay to
take a heart and overwhelm it.

your words were carefully calculated
to make me question the reason
my heart kept crumbling despite each
exhausting attempt to piece it back
together again.

am i stitching the pieces back together
wrong?

i was slowly dying at your hands
while you thrived on watching me unravel.

but it was never your fault because
you were never the one pressing the cold
blade against my skin, right?

five years later, though i am no longer dying,
my chest caving in on itself might as well be
called just that.

and you’d think i would have forgotten
the sound of your voice by now
but it echoes in my mind
just the same as before.
just as painful as before.

i am swimming in an ocean of
sadness but it feel more like
drowning these days.

so now I’m here forming lines on
paper with a pen instead of with a
cold blade on my skin.
and even though i know neither can
erase the pain that has found a home
within my heart, i will keep searching
for some sort of peace.
and i promise i will take it in whatever
form it decides to visit me in.

and no, i was not created to be broken.
so i look up towards the never ending night sky
and curse the stars i cannot see for letting
our paths cross, because i am still collapsing.

i see no end.

whoever created me cannot be the same
being who let you break me.