I'm reading over the notes
that my therapist jotted down
during one of our first sessions.

there is so much trauma
and so many diagnoses.

my therapist says that
I'm not alone, and that
so many people know
a similar type of pain.



she's right. I'm not alone,
because I'm not the only
person to have a therapist

and because I'm not the first
person to be diagnosed
with these conditions

and because right now,
at this very second,

there is someone who
is reading this poem and
relating to these words.



sometimes this thought
is upsetting to me.

it depresses me to think
that other children were
raised by parents who
were like my parents,

and that they've faced
the same type of pain.



other times, this thought
is oddly comforting.

it hurts to think about
the children who grew up
the same way that I did

but it also calms me
to know that there
are other people
who are just like me,



because that means
there are people who
have survived this.

that means that
this is survivable,

and that even if I
sometimes doubt it,

it is possible to thrive.

There is so much
want in me
sometimes it's scary.

It becomes---
a hole I cannot fill.

Giving birth to
a whole other person
that I can not please.

Bound up in anxiety
then left outside myself
to freeze.

A quarter used to be a bag of chips,
days eye level with countertops,
2000 is a big number
when 5 is all you know,
maybe there's a one on the end like those twin towers,
and the falling man on the TV,

Or maybe it was blow up furniture in the shed with the hose on,
and a neighbor with a hose too,
He was kind, a big kid I didn't know,
Shrek plays on the TV, Only superstars
break the mold,

Mold in the basement,
dirt floor and the smell of summer fills my lungs
but then I'm on the bed with her, and The people's elbow
makes me laugh,
but feeling something else too, something
shameful like what's on the TV, on the TV there are those dead babies,

Dead people from the towers, I hear someone say
at the store, and I have a bag of chips, but my pants are down,
She te telling me to just watch wrestling and relax, but I just
want to know why,

Why am I 25 now but the hose and the wrestling, and the people, all those people on the TV, the twin dead ones,
it makes 25 feel like more
than just a bag of chips