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Bekah Halle Dec 2023
We have many selves;
there’s the real self and the others behind the masque.
The real self gets pushed aside,
When our alter ego doesn’t want to hide.

Out comes the good girl, Rambo, and the billionaire,
Into the darkness hides shame and despair.
There’s also superwoman, the tech-wizz, and social entrepreneurs,
A shy kid dogged by not enough hides his cares,
Cos if they wore their hearts on their sleeves
They’d get beaten up and find no reprieve.

Is this the way we want to live?
Hiding out, these pressures not wanting to give.
They’re our protective armour in ourselves,
Wanting fame and fortune is not where our true future dwells.

We keep on this armour
because it’s become part of us,
We need to release these selves and
know we’re good enough.

It’s not an instant switch, like the internet promises,
But a slow journey of taking off the personas,
And being ok, with who we are,
reconciling what we say.

Let the little voice deep within,
Look to him, who knew no sin.
Cry out, let him in, and be redeemed.
Re-birthed, and on a journey of being restored.
nmo Sep 2021
all the answers to
my questions can
be found in my
old old poems
(or by
applying common-
sense tbh…)

how f#cked up
do we really are
that we can’t
see the obvious,
plain, and simple
truth
when it’s just
in front of us?!!?
sorry,
I meant inside* of us.
Ces Jul 2020
Arched back
aching knees
pinpricks in my right leg
a thousand questions
running in my head
as I navigate this vast
spaciousness
of the Internet

A world where ideas
meet

and where people lose
themselves.
JDL Mar 2020
We all have two “selves”: the false self is the one that believes we belong to this world, the real self is the one that knows we do not.
Nicole Sep 2018
The savior
The perfect partner
The dominant
The free spirit
The fiancé
The parental substitute
The anarchist
The sweetheart
The nice guy
All of these aspects of myself
Yet none of them are fully me
These are the roles I've fallen into
In order to match my various partners
And though all of these may be
Different components of me
None of them feels quite whole
I do not feel whole

All of these personalities
Exist on a spectrum of time and space
None interacting with any others
Each signifies a distinct point in life
Each has its own home
It's own experiences
Attitudes and viewpoints
Behaviors and habits

Yet what do I do when
Two of my contextualized selves
Decide to overlap?
When my ex who knew the fiancé
Moves back to town where I live
As does my person
Who's heard stories of the others
But who only knows the nice guy

How do I begin to heal when
I do not understand what is real
And what existed solely for others?
How do I continue to grow
When the fiancé is fighting restraints
And the nice guy is exhausted
The sweetheart does not exist
And the anarchist screams for revolution?

They seem to be fighting each other
Just to have a chance to breathe
A chance to take the wheel
A chance to control "me"
Yet who even am I?
Are all of these selves fabricated
Or are they hyperbolized aspects of me
Connectable like puzzle pieces
Into one beautiful picture?

The problem is
The picture I see is not beautiful
I'm trying to be nice to myself
But all I see and feel is darkness
I am an abomination
An evil person who cannot be trusted
A dark soul inhabiting an empty body
A person who is not a person
A human with a lack of self
It's almost like I'm not even alive
But even death would be a relief
So I can finally end the confusion
And stop hurting people along the way
Leila The Kiwi Nov 2017
We all have different selves,
some of which we're yet to meet.

l.v.s
celey Jul 2015
our skies appear to be so gloomy
like they're always going to turn into a storm
a storm that will swipe the hopeless thoughts away
i used to look at life differently
i used to not look at life at all
but now i see clearly
the splattered like paint that are our eyes and clouds
the merged shapes and lines that are our houses and anatomies
i know now that all this will pass by like a blur
like it always does
my father tries to spend as much time with my little brothers
when i refuse to, he says
when they've grown up, i'll miss their little selves
oh, i can't guarantee i will
but i do think that he does this
because i've grown up
and he's left to miss my little self
because the people i don't recognize at reunions always tell me how big i am now
and he smiles the same smile every time at them that they seem to understand
and then he shoots me a very different one i've yet to understand
Sam Dec 2014
I was a little girl yesterday morning,
With a flash of red hair and a gap-toothed grin
Laughing and playing on the swing at my favorite park.
I was a confused pre-teen that afternoon,
Scraping her knees on jagged insults
Holding in tears for secret bathroom visits
Where she would push her fingers
Into her throat and
Pray on her knees that her lunch would
Reappear like a magic trick.
I was a scared teenager by evening,
Kissing girls and running away from
The demons in my head with voices
That sounded like my mother’s.
By midnight I was on the floor shaking,
Back to twenty, back to who I am now
Wishing those past me’s would understand that I needed
Something more.
Yet this morning I sat up in my bed and greeted the sun with a
Flash of red hair and a close-gapped grin
And I am here now,
Here remembering, being present and
Knowing who I was
Ten years ago twelve years ago fifteen years ago five minutes ago
Is exactly who I needed to be,
Doing exactly what I needed to do.
Scraping my knees and elbows
And pushing my finger down my throat
And feeling ugly all the time,
That’s not what I needed but it’s
Who I was Who I couldn’t stop being because I
Didn’t know how. In my mind,
I am not
That little girl, that preteen, that teenager I am me.
I am
Bumping and bruising and
Breaking, sometimes, along the way but this
Is where I stand.
And those past selves stand
Hand-in-hand somewhere along
The equator of my brain
Like paper dolls unfolded
Through my history.
Thoughts
the other Umi Oct 2014
Standing on the curb
Watching your other self
Pass you by, waving as they pass
Do you get up and go find yourself
Or do you wait for yourself
To come back to yourself?

A question I asked myself countless times
Times when I felt like I wasn't being real
To my true self
Life is sometimes cruel
With its trials and tribulations
To the point where one has to leave
Ones truest convictions
To pursue a life of less substance

Thinking about the fellow
Who looked like a replica of me earlier
I examined myself and how my life
Has taken turns to the unknown
Crisscrossing into an unknown maze
Knotting and unknitting
Right in front of my eyes
I sometimes sit and wonder
What I had done with the thread of life
Cause I'm at the point of choking myself
With every move I make

The next minute I found myself lost
In the beautiful words by a wonderful poet
That I hold dear
And she said:
"It is the very liquid soul
That oozes from this pores
To light the sidewalks with our magic
Beyond the distant shores
It is the joy from which the laughter
Of the dying is drawn"

Sitting in my apartment
Later still, that same evening
I got rudely awaken by an abrupt call
From the police department
When I was asked to identify my own body.
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