Snarly and ferocious, this dreadful child has been gifted to me.
At age 3, I was cursed with a responsibility to protect and mentor this devilish girl.
Fourteen years of pure evil and malignancy drives my mind to a state in which no man should ever have to feel.

My heart shrieks with vengeance as she so deliberately tries to inflict pain on it.
My conscience refrains me from doing the harm she does to me,
Reminding me that I am the bigger person.

Little girl, you devious and vicious soul,
I've dreaded the very day I first glanced upon your face.
As your ruthlessness and your carelessness towards other people causes heartache,
When words fly out of your mouth.

You sadistic young twit,
I must correct you for your behavior.
But I hold no authority to do so,
Yet I have been branded your guardian ever since the devil himself has spawned you.

I listen and feel for your struggles, I do.
So I must question why you don't respect mine?
Is life all about you, little girl?
Or is it you just find joy in driving me to insanity?

No longer will I entertain these loathsome conflicts,
As you are my unchosen inferior.
I will fight the urge to play your game,
And find the humor in your desire to leave me discouraged.

Little girl, you silly child.
One day you will be mournful,
When the time comes where I will not be present,
And you will nevermore have me to fulfill your barbarous needs.

Life is an ever changing subject that I’m not sure I’m ready to continue.
I have spent my days in places that I am not. I have spent my time ignoring the distance between me and the rest of the world.
I can try to write my demons away but god only knows that I can’t just run from my thoughts.
Transparency does not mean there’s no vacancy in my head.
I can’t think of a time in my life where I wasn’t thinking something along the lines of negativity, discouragement, or getting after myself.
I am transparent but my mind has so much vacancy for each one of my demons, I dream while I am awake. I imagine a world in which I am happy but in a world where I am happy I am also still mentally ill.
A man I look up to once said you can’t imagine a color you haven’t seen, I’m starting to see that that’s more than the truth.
I’ve started to wonder when my life will become what I want, or if it ever will.
I’m starting to wonder where life will take me or if I’ll even be around long enough for it to take me away from this ocean filled with my own self-hate, my house built out of my thoughts.
I’m starting to wonder who my life will bring me to. Or maybe, I won’t be around long enough, maybe I won’t be here.
That isn’t to say I will **** myself. We don’t know that yet.
But life is an ever changing subject that I’m ready to continue.

Do you ever feel overcome?

A work of art made of a million layered stencils
Where nothing makes sense until the last dot dries

Nothing, no one,
                               abstract, confusion,
                                                      ­             dot dot dot,
                                                                ­                        and then,

there it is.
                       THE MASTERPIECE.


A violent bruise of emotion that is so
                                                              ­      S T R O N G

You see colours.
                            Light peels across your eyes

Fazed. Dazed.

Feeling everything at once
                                             you take nothing in

Numb to everything
                except -
                        your heartbeat

beat
We are so perfectly broken -
                                        that it
                                                  
           ­                                        almost

                                                        looks like we are complete.

And we are.
I am.

In so many way.
                       So. Many. Ways.

But,
It's just,
            I mainlyyy

                           Kindaaa
                                         Don't feel
                                                         okay.

And I spend most of my time,

                                  Left wondering,

Is it just me?

I let my breath go
Please don’t let me be a statistic
I cry into my mothers arms, the first time I told her of my abuse.
I refuse.
I will not let someone else feel what I have felt.
They shouldn’t have to understand what it’s like.
I hold my breath
I hate it
I hate that I can’t be touched
I can’t even hug someone without feeling like I might throw-up.
I hate that I can’t sleep alone in the dark.
“You’re still afraid of the dark?” “Aren’t you a little old for that?” “Nothing is going to hurt you”
That won’t stop the nightmares
The memories that won’t ever go to rest.
It won’t stop him
He makes appearances throughout the night.
He’s hiding in my closet, outside my door.
I know he’s not there but still I can’t sleep.
I can hardly even breathe.
This fire that burns far to close to me,
It is burning in my basement, in the bathroom, in his bedroom.
There isn’t a lot that I remember
I won’t say I wish I could
Missing pieces, blank pages, things that don’t make sense
And now I’m left in tatters, cracked, alone and afraid.
Scars that you can’t see, hurt I try to hide.
My blood is screaming and no one seems to notice.
This can’t be all there is,
I’m missing something,
Or do I have something I shouldn’t?
A brothers love, is that what I was?
Mom do you remember what I told you
Did you understand the words I said?
Or did you ignore it because your first born is perfect,
He gets a second chance
And a third and a fourth
And all I get is “How do you know?”
You say you believe me but I know that you don’t
Because if you’d’ve believed me than you’d’ve had to admit that your family wasn’t perfect.
Is it perfect now?
Dad do you remember our talk in the garage?
Do you remember saying that this happens all the time,
And that it shouldn’t.
But you only meant it shouldn’t happen here,
In your perfect house where all of your kids are perfect,
Almost.
Perfect, what you’ve convinced me I have to be,
Because when I’m not perfect dad gets mad
And when dad is mad, him and mom fight.
Screaming and slamming doors,
Forgetting their little girl who cries if anyone yells.
Forgetting their little girl who questions why people look at her the way they do,
Forgetting their little girl who is afraid of being touched
Because even though she can’t remember everything she knows,
She knows it happened.
Four years old it started,
Five years old, did it stop?
Eleven years old, she started remembering,
Twelve years old, wishing she couldn’t,
Thirteen years old, telling them,
Fourteen years old, being told she was wrong,
Fifteen years old, still having to convince everyone that even though she didn’t remember everything that it still happened,
Fifteen, having him move back into the house,
Fifteen, locking the bedroom door, locking the bathroom door and still being afraid to take her clothes off, still not wanting to take a shower because all of the memories and all of the truths and all of the things she’d been running from won’t go away.
All of my memories and everything I tried to forget won’t go away,
It won’t go away until the day i’m in the ground,
It won’t go away until I don’t wake up at two in the morning crying because I was remembering again,
Until the day I’m not afraid,
Until the day someone believes me.
I was supposed to be normal
My family was supposed to be normal
But it’s not, I’m not.
And I still can’t breathe.

You. I want to paint you. I want your beauty on the tip of my brush, smeared across a canvas so I can see down to your thinnest layer, not just the clump that you were on the bristles. You're a mess. You are oils and colors mixed together on a bumpy sheet, taking forever to dry. People get tired of watching you and they leave. You blame yourself for not drying fast enough, for not having interesting colors, for the bubbles and patches in your paint. I'll stay here and watch you. You are taking forever to dry, but my heart skips a beat every time you catch the light. I lose my breath every time a bit of you falls from the canvas and onto the floor. I tear up when gravity mixes your colors, creating purples and browns and greens. You may mix and change and smear before you dry, and I want to see how beautiful you are when you do.

The world outside today seemed to be too much for me
the walls keep closing in, i can’t find the room to breathe
i’m left there alone
hollow eyes and aching bones
i’ve laid dormant from dawn
to dusk but now i see the sun
night is gone, another day done
as i lay locked on the bedroom floor
my shoulder blades press into my thin rug
protruding vertebrae finding wood below
the rain smell hanging from poisoned oaks
gray skies hover
endless cloud cover
all pinning me down
these days all I can do is suffer

but the birds outside my window
in a chorus they say
you don’t have to fear today
But the birds outside my window
they sing me awake
it’s okay, it’s okay it’s okay

the sun, the trees the summer breeze
they nudge me saying please
it’s been three days since you’ve eaten, Louise
you’re nothing but fuzzy brain weak knees
get up, just get some coffee
but I remain paralyzed
glass eyes towards skys learning
pattern of ceiling fan turning
whirring and churning
all the heavy humidity away
but my skin will not evaporate
no matter how much i will it to dissipate
i hate to have my body stay
while my mind starts to disintegrate


but the birds outside my window
in a chorus they say
you don’t have to fear today
But the birds outside my window
they sing me awake
it’s okay, it’s okay it’s okay

light leaks in from the swayingcurtain
the storm is passed, weatherman’s certain
and though the sun cuts the grey asunder
in my mind there still lies thunder
my cobwebbed lungs refuse to work
as the heavy thoughts continue to lurk
but breaking through murky background
i hear sparrows start a symphony sound
and with their rounds and rounds of chords  
their song did rise more and more
and my eyes came into focus  
loosing that notion of hopeless
i started to feel almost human
only songbirds’ tunes to pull me in
closer and closer to some reality
through blinding light i start to see
the pinewood  outside begins to dry
my rusty heart decides to try
I reach my head out the window
with eyes shut, panes clutched
i drink the sun’s glow
with all i have,  my ribs force a heave
and i find that,  finally I can breathe

but the birds outside my window
in a chorus they say
you don’t have to fear today
But the birds outside my window
they sing me awake
it’s okay, it’s okay it’s okay

Every moment, minute or day,
we spend our waking life breathing in life
enjoying memories and cherished people around
making love and making laughs

the sweet sweet breeze, and the peach colored skies
All of it so sweet it makes our teeth hurt thinking of it
like so many photographs and records we shared
All of it in a single breath and a blink of an eye

Isn't it fun and happy?
Isn't it so perfect and so simple?
Isn't it what we wanted to all have?
Isn't it what we long for and did have?

Until we turn dark, and all the colors turn grey
until we see what we were and see what we are now
Until we crumble in each and every word we hear
until we succumb to the arms of Depression itself

Until we grab that **** bag and stuck our puny heads in
Until we reach for that medicine cabinet for the pills we need
Until we take some drugs and ease our pains
Until we reach the moment darkest in our darkest days

Breathe child, my momma would say
breathe it all out and breathe it all in again
I keep breathing and breathing and breathing
until it becomes a routine that my muscles have mastered

Breathe out the bad thoughts
Breathe it back in
Breathe out the bad thoughts
Breathe it back in

Day by day, it cycles, an endless horror show
Night by night my hands tingle like shaking jello
I can't seem to remember what my momma told me
Help! somebody please, help me breathe

The relentless hands of anxiety and depression
The unforgiving laughs of insomnia and ADD
the same sh*t that I go through, night after night
Caging me in like a tiger  in a circus show

Until we see the calm and grasp it like a baby holding a rattle
Ever so tight, yet ever so clumsy
The light shines and we see clearly
What we have become and start breathing in rhythm

My lungs fill with air every time I breathe
Yes, but as I fill my chest with life...
When I exhale, am I breathing out my life?
So tell me, Am I both living and dying with every breath?

Am I already dead but my body denies it?
Am I a walking corpse living in an empty shell?
Am I a machine destined to be one so lonely, so shattered
That I cannot anymore---I cannot anymore, breathe.

My thighs have
Known scars  
They have known how to close in fast like a threatened house when thieves are sitting in my bushes waiting for the door to open so they can fire a gun at my esteem  
And take away all the love I have spent endless years collecting for myself; they have known to close and shrink when they are too much
when it seems like no one wants to come in  
But my thighs have also known courage  
My thighs  
Stretch outward
My imagination
Jiggles when I run after my train of thoughts
I  
Have always been the elephant in the dressing room
My thoughts popping out from the sides of the curtains there
Is nowhere to go.  
I look at myself in mirrors that cannot fit my whole body they reflect only what is  
Seen by the naked eye  
On the outside I am fully dressed up for shame
Inside of me is a Greek figure
I  
do not want to tell my story like this.  
I hear: big is beautiful but so is small but so is "normal" I ask them what is
Normal give me two minds that speak of a same definition when  
Have we never been programmed to give the same answers like regurgitating lessons in biology only speaking compliments that sound like cold hard facts  
You are beautiful you look nice you make me look so bad your figure is so curvy and attractive your legs aren't too fat come on why would you buy this if it does not suit you why don't you go to the gym anymore why don't you talk about your weight loss story  
Why don't you figure out a way to love each other outside of way too much flesh way too much bone way too much of  
This.  
I know,  
I know what I am what I am not what I wish to be what I know I should not wish to be but the idea of changing myself runs in my mind more than I run or I grip at my sides at my scars, more than I skip meals I skip a beat at the thought of you seeing me in my underwear I skip through dieting techniques in magazines
And instead  
I flip to the gardening section {IN THIS ISSUE; YOUR OWN VEGETABLE MINI GARDEN}  
I flip my hair to wash my face in the morning
I flip the middle aged man off catcalling me when
I am walking in the streets I flip coins to choose which book I am reading next  
I flip to the next page in my life; yesterday you are no longer needed
I will rest in my bed tonight
Instead I move to the easel and paint myself;
I paint myself as I am; not negative space.
I fill the easel and by the end I have run out of paint but this is what happens when you try to paint a reality things empty out when you try to correct it every time you look in the mirror your heart does not seem to understand that it has run out of blood by the time it has tried to tell your story in the most sugar coated way it can;  
Heart,  
I do not blame you.  
Sometimes I am lost as well  
But in this unwanted balancing act of love and hate my body feels dizzy my consciousness is begging me: "Pamela, stop" I stopped, I listened.  
As I was running on the treadmill as I ran away from the party because there was food as I run past a sign and don't notice it; it was telling me to stop as well.  
Because in our marathon through life in our rush to get to the other side of our mentality that says: "Welcome! You have achieved body positivity and can now be mentally stable"  
We have forgotten there is always a bridge we must cross, one we always try to shortcut our way around and where we end up falling face-first into the water most;  I believe
In the linear motion of time; I wished I knew how to turn back time though and stop myself from being born into a world where I am labelled the second I am pushed out of my mother's body,  But I believe
In the linear motion of time but also in the linear motion of learning how to love this heavy body of mine.  
In the way that I carry its burden on my back I see that there is always something in the equation of body love I have overlooked, something that makes the mathematics of confidence add up
I see that before the negative numbers go in ascending order they stop at   
Zero.  
Before we can go from body hate to body love I had to make one stop at Zero.  
The words blowing through its empty circle there is a neutral place for you before you carry on, a "no man's land" in the battle against the voices in your head, a safe zone from this battle ground.  
  
Zero comes to me when I am shaking from the rain and tells me: "you've come a long way, baby", tells me I do not need to be this or that, that I can just be, in the utmost simplicity.  Tells me I am what I am and that is fine to be.  

Zero: maybe I do not want to be neutral. Maybe I do not want to be zero on the scale in my space, neutral in my life. But I walked and I saw that zero was light and burdenless.  I walk.
I stop.
I may not be home, but the way there isn’t so bad.