I don't want to write about how you're destroying me in ways I still didn't know I could break, but you are. I still won't say the words, the words make it real. If I say the words, I'll have to do something about it. I won't. I won't ever leave you.

I love you, and because I do...I want you to find someone who loves you as much as I do—more, if possible. Because you can't love me, because you don't want my love, don't want me. But I love you more than anything, enough to let you go if you ask, enough to stay knowing I'll never be your person, enough to be your friend when it's killing me, enough to wish you a love that's legendary with someone you love back.

My friends say I'm building a bridge back to hell by getting back in touch with you, but that's okay.

If hell is where you're waiting for me, hell is where I'll go.

*Chasing something that died a long time ago.

It's scary. Getting too familiar with another person. Knowing just the right way to kiss them and when you've become so familiar with someone's ****** structure that your noses no longer bump and you just fit together. When you know their favorite places to be touched and favorite ways and how to elicit the best sounds. Slipping into their favorite position and simply knowing they like it the best without ever having to say it. It's ******* terrifying, mapping out the geography of their body with your hands and knowing the feel of their skin and every mark on it. Memorizing their body instinctively and naturally going to the things you know they like. Being able to tell, with your eyes closed, the feel of something as simple as the back of a hand or the expanse of a back and knowing it is them, that is their skin. Being used to their smell on you. Tracing over their face with your fingertips and being able to feel it beneath your fingers even when you're apart. Makes it feel like they're a part of you, knowing your body knows their body and some primitive or maybe too advanced part of your brain knows every inch of them, can remember the feel of them in the slightest moment. It's got me scared as ****. You've got me scared as ****.

Inevitably returning so the sickness inside of me doesn't spill out into his ears and sneak into his brain. Poison from the wounds festering in my sad soul needs to be released, and I won't have it staining the person who has become heaven in a physical body.

Pardon my silence. I've been gifting my words to one soul, and one soul alone. I'm incapable of the same magic for any other, and won't curse you all with failed attempts.

Still making the same mistakes.

I don't care about much of anything, but I could care about you, if you wanted me to...

And now we're both bleeding, both monsters. This is what you've made me into, and you finally seem content with it. Maybe now you'll stay.

Thinking of the first time you slapped me and how I was stunned, too stunned to react

And how it escalated from there, into scratching and biting and cutting and burning

And how the light in your eyes made me numb to the pain

And how the taste of my blood in your mouth suddenly became heaven

And how you ran your fingers through my hair and told me you knew you could do anything and I'd still be right there

And how you were ******* right, you're still ******* right because the second you call me love, I accept all of the poison just to have you back.

I'm thinking I'd take all the bad back, just to have the good with it. But I know that's not the right line of thinking. But I want to. You've returned to my life for two days, and I'd already prefer waking up stuck to my sheets with the blood leaking from the wounds you made to waking up with just a text from you. ****, ****. You're poison but you know I won't go anywhere.

You only want the pain my love brings, not the actual love. You want me to hurt you, to scar you, to damage you in every possible way. You smile when I tell you I love you because it means I won't ever leave, not because you genuinely want to be loved somewhere deep inside. You know that I'll rip you apart because you like it, you know that you can tear me up too and I'll take it and I'll love it because it's you. Because we're both sick, sadomasochistic people in every sense of the word, and we'll destroy each other and savor every moment, even though it destroys something inside of me that wants to stroke your hair and kiss your forehead and make you feel loved. The part of me that sings when I'm taking care of the mess I made of you, the part that blossoms when I tell you you're beautiful and you blush.
And then there's the monster you grew inside of me. The one that would rather ******* eat you than let you go. The one that screams and howls when you mention your last mistress, the one that wants to devour your heart and keep your soul in my ribcage. The one that aches because you only want me to own you when it hurts.

All of me aches, because you only want me when it'll hurt.

Have you forgotten me?

It's okay.

I think I would, too.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if turned my alarm off and just slept until my parents woke me up, panicked because I slept late and will be late for school. I wonder what would happen if I told them I just wasn't going and refused to move. They can't physically make me go. They can't pick me up and carry me across ice to the car and drive me. They can't carry me into the building and set me down in a class. Let the police come. Arrest me for giving up and not following the rules of life anymore. Arrest me for quitting everything. Send me to jail. Beat me. I won't move a muscle. **** me. I just want the strength to quit entirely and just stop doing everything I don't want to do anymore, to stop feeling so the consequences don't matter. I just want to give up and stop.

Was because my fingers have become lead, and my tongue is glued to the top of my mouth.

I think my disgust for the human race started in the 5th grade. My best friend and I were not popular girls, but girls bullied by everyone. Eventually it took a toll on my fragile friend, combined with her parents divorce and already being rather sensitive, and she tried to take her own life. Her mother found her hanging and got her down in time to be taken to a hospital and saved. She came back to school months later, a lot quieter and sadder than before. She began to cut. And eventually, someway or another, the other kids noticed. Noticed the cuts, discovered she had tried to take her life. And they targeted her more and more for it, bullying and harassing her nonstop. Making her wish she hadn't survived even more, until eventually she tried to **** herself once again. But she was caught in the act this time, closely observed as she was, and taken out for many months once again. When she returned, she was a zombie. She stopped cleaning herself. Stopped trying to eat. She quit taking care of herself and that was another thing for the kids to pick on her about. I tried to keep her head above the water, but as the "suicidal freaks" best friend, I was being attacked too. Soon our fellow students were drowning us both in cruel words and brutal actions and snide rumors. I was sinking down with her, but my descent was silent. Self harm in secret places. Crying myself to sleep into my pillow so nobody could hear me. Writing suicide notes in my notebook to calm myself down and remind myself death could save me from all the torture at any time. I came to realize my classmates were not children, but monsters in human skin. They had tried to **** my friend, were still killing her. And now they were killing me. Ripping away my hope for the future and any love I held for the world, pulling away my idea that people were inherently good and replacing it with the concept that people were beasts who wanted to destroy me because they could. Because the one who made us so sad we killed ourselves would be the winner of the twisted game, because our deaths would be something to laugh at, just like her attempted suicide was. It's been six years now, and some part of me is still drowning in that ocean of sadness. I haven't heard from her since her last attempted suicide, a few years ago. Because she never got better either. She's still drowning too. And the monsters? I still walk among them every day. Their eyes slide past me like I'm not even there, like they don't even remember the child they ripped out of me. Like destroying a part of me was the simplest, most meaningless thing in the world.

"You're beautiful" isn't the compliment that it used to be, you know. Because what happens to beautiful girls in this world is anything but. Your beauty is used against you, used to target and mark and blame you. "I couldn't help it, you're so beautiful." When they touch you without your permission. Girls hate you because you're beautiful. Men turn their sickness on you. You're scarred by the greed of someone who wants to touch you and thinks they can because you're beautiful, scarred by the envy of people who can't look like you, who don't realize what beauty really does to people. They notice you because you're beautiful and they don't care about anything else. You're just a pretty doll that they think they can play with anytime they want, that they can blame their actions against you on you because you're beautiful. Because "I couldn't help myself" is said in a way too complimentary tone from someone you didn't want to touch you. Sometimes you just want to take it all away. Shave your head, burn your body. Waste yourself away into nothing, till there isn't a trace left of beauty to blame. Till you're invisible and not worth targeting anymore. But there will be other beautiful girls for some sick **** to target and destroy. Someday, you're all going to destroy the beautiful girls in the world. You're going to destroy all of them and complain about it. Because how dare they take their beauty away from you? Even though you're the ones who ruined it. Ruined it for everyone and made all the beautiful girls destroy themselves to get away from you. Make girls afraid to be ugly because you're all focused on the beautiful girls, when really, you're the ******* ugly ones. Punish them for not being beautiful. Punish them for being beautiful. Punish them for everything because you can. Say what you will, but beautiful is twisting. I've ceased to make sense. I'm not sleeping right. I'll make this make sense later, maybe. Or maybe I won't, because even as I write this, I'm afraid of not being thought of as beautiful. Because you're punished either way, and is it better to be targeted than ignored? I'm trying to remember when I was the ugly duckling kid and nobody talked to me, versus now when I'm targeted for destruction. I don't remember what was worse. I don't remember, so it scares me either way.

I think I'm going to be a recluse. Write novels in a shack with cats until I get arrested or evicted for not paying taxes or something. Then get arrested for vagrancy and go to jail and write more about how messed up the world is. If I get out, I'll go back to being a vagrant. I'll let my hair get long and matted and I'll let my nails grow long and black and I'll dig my own grave with them and I'll smell like dust and decay and death. I'll give up. I'll resign from humanity.

Sometimes I think about the last time I saw you alive and almost told you I loved you. But when I almost said it and you looked at me and said "what is it, babe?" I lost my nerve and squeezed your hand tighter and said "you have beautiful eyes." Instead, and I just stared at you and hoped to convey what I couldn't say. But real life is not a romance novel, "you have beautiful eyes" was not heard as the "I love you" that it was, and even if you had heard it, I guess it wasn't enough, because you killed yourself anyways.

1. Don't get angry when you dream about him smiling in slow motion. Do not awaken and sob, because you love his smile more than anything and it will not do for you to bawl when he was just trying to make you happy.

#2. Forgive him when he slips into your bed at night and holds your hand while you're trying to sleep. Don't resent him for leaving his smell all over your sheets, all over your room. You love the way he smells, and it gets cold in the grave. He just misses your warmth.

#3. Breath him in like smoke and let him rest in your lungs. Let him feel the way they expand and contract, because his never will again and he wants to feel it again.

#4. Everytime you close your eyes and see his, smile. Because he's looking at you, watching you. He had beautiful eyes and they were only for you and death, and now he has death but he only needs you.

#5. Do not commit suicide to follow him to the grave. He loves you and he would like to be with you, but he doesn't really want you to die like that, even if he says he does sometimes. He's just thinking out loud. People aren't good at seeing consequences once they have died.

#6. Do not regret not eating a piece of his flesh. It would have made you hate yourself. People would have called you sick. It's okay to have thought about it, they don't understand your grief, the need you have to own a piece of him. But he taps your special knock on the window nightly using the wind. You do not need to consume him to keep him.

#7. Do not resent him for dying. Even if he killed himself. Even if you loved him and he knew it and he did it anyways. Look at the sky and know he's in your rib cage, feeling your breathing and the listening to the beat of your heart. Do not resent him. He doesn't resent you for living.

1. Don't look at her like she's a victim, like she's weak. Don't look at her like she's incapable of living a normal life again.

#2. Go easy with her. Don't treat her like she's some destroyed thing, but handle physical contact with caution. Watch very carefully for signs that she's feeling anxious, or that her head has turned off and made her numb. Watch for reactions, for a look in her eyes. If she has blanked out, stop. How well do you know your girl? Does she want to be held and have her hair stroked and hand held while you both remind her that she is safe with you, that you would never violate her? Does she need you to sit back and make sure she can see you clearly? What she needs defines physical moments.

#3. Don't force her to talk about it. She will tell you what she is ready to tell you, when she is ready to tell you. It is hard to tell your partner that you've been made into a survivor. Do not ask for details before she is ready, and do not look at her like she has been tainted because hands made of greed and hatred touched her, scarred her. She is still herself.

#4. Listen. Listen well. Do not do anything without a yes. An absolute yes. She must say it and mean it and look like she means it. Do not coerce her. She has been coerced before. And taking no away makes yes meaningless. Coercing is begging, pleading, pestering, threatening, intimidating. Coercing is holding her captive and not letting her go until she gives you what you want. Do not coerce her, because you have then assaulted her.

#5. Being coerced into ****** activity can be as violating as being held down and *****. Because they made her go along with it to avoid greater pain, because they made her feel like she had no other choices. Because they pressured her until she broke, until she stopped resisting and just remained passive and silent as they did what they wished. Please, do not ever make her say no twice.

#6. Do not belittle her pain, do not compare it to another survivors. Do not call one survivors pain worse than the other, because you are hurting and silencing them with your own, ignorant opinion. You do not feel her pain, the pain all survivors feel. You are not making her feel better by reminding her it could have been "worse." You are minimalizing her own battle.

#7. Love her. Love her however she needs to be loved.

#8. Be patient. Healing takes time. Be her support beam, her hand to hold. Be there when she is having flashbacks. Be there when she is screaming and crying and scrubbing herself ****** in the shower. Be there with a soft blanket and open ears and an open heart. Be there to remind her she is not *****, she is not filthy or disgusting. Remind her she isn't less in your eyes.

#9. Sometimes, you will need to explain to her that she is perfect to you. Because she will stare at her body in the mirror and remember it was touched by filthy hands and feel unworthy of you. Remind her she is worthy, she is worth it. Remind her that those hands were not controlled by her, that she was not at fault. That she does not bear the sins of another person.

#10. Do not try to make her report it. Because she will have to face him that way, in front of a jury of people who has been given the job of judging them. She will be torn down by his lawyer, painted to sound like a **** and a liar, and the **** will be painted into something consensual and enjoyed by both parties, instead of just one. If she was coerced they will try to make her lack of no a valid yes, or worse. They will make her sound like she is asking for it. If her ****** succeeds, he will make her feel violated all over again in court. He may not go to prison. He may be found not guilty, because there wasn't enough evidence to prove he did it or because the jury decided a lack of a no was a yes or that she was at fault for not standing her ground under hours of pressure and intimidation and being held a captive against her will. The **** will cease to happen in the eyes of the law and she will be left raw and aching, a girl deemed crazy because a man committed a crime against her body, her mind, her soul. She is afraid to testify for a reason, but if she does, hold her up. Because the world will feel as though it is collapsing around her as she does it.

1. Make sure you are not dating him just because he is a sad boy. Make sure you are not dating him out of pity either. Date him because you like him, sadness and all.

#2. Do not expect yourself to be able to fix or save him. Be prepared to love him as he his. He may not ever become less of a sad boy. Make him smile when you can, keep him from being alone. But don't try to be his rescuer, or his savior. Help him keep it together when you can, and let him break on you when you can't. Do not try to change him.

#3. If he has physical scars, kiss them. Run your fingers across them. Tell him you love him and his scars. Not for them, not despite them. You love his scars because they are a part of him, and you love him as a whole.

#4. Do not feel guilty if you can't stay with him anymore. If it becomes too much, if you just fall out of love. If you just can't see yourself with him. Do not blame yourself, do not hate yourself. Just let him go as kindly and cleanly as possible.

#5. Do not hate him if he leaves you. Remember sometimes things end. Do not try to convince yourself that he needs you, do not hate the next girl he dates. Do not go to her and try to tell her how sad he is, how he will destroy her with his pain. Because we both know that isn't true, not really. And it isn't for you to decide.

#6. A warning. Relationships with sad boys rarely last, even if you think they will. He isn't your patient. You aren't his angel. This isn't a story book where you'll put him back together and he'll love you forever. If, by some miracle, you do manage to change him. If he becomes happy and "sad boy" becomes a thing of the past. Do not be surprised when he leaves you, because chances are, if he's truly changed, he will.

"You're not as submissive as I expected you to be. Typically, girls do whatever I tell them to once I put my hands around their necks."

I rub my skin raw because of the way your desire scarred its way across my unwilling flesh. You were selfish, you are selfish. You are greed in a human body, and I am paying for it. Triggered by another man the same as you, who put his hands around my neck and seemed confused by the concept of a woman not wanting him. Who quickly decided he didn't care either way, and that I could get him off "willingly" by my own method or be forced in ways I would not survive. There is no such thing as yes when no is taken from you, when you have a choice between two evils and you choose the one you think you can live through. When silence answers questions and "I don't want to do this" is ignored because his **** means more than the choices of the person he's trying to force himself on. That is no man, that is a monster dressed as a high school student pretending consent can be forced. Because you made me decide between you ****** me unprotected or getting you off with something else, and I chose the one I thought I could live with, that wouldn't result in an unwanted life growing inside an unwilling body, a body that wasn't willing at conception and who would probably make the choice to end its budding inside of her before having her rapists child. Because you triggered memories of coercion with your threats, because you made it happen again and afterwards had the ******* nerve to get me some ******* grape juice and hand it to me ******* ******* pouting because I "looked like I hated every minute of that" and you "didn't even get to **** so it wasn't even worth it." Because coercing me into ****** activities under threat of unprotected **** apparently wasn't worth it because you didn't get to **** me, because me telling you no and saying I didn't want to until you got so fed up you wrapped your hands around my neck and squeezed annoyed you. Because you put your **** over my free will, over me as a human being. And I get to suffer because of it. You made me a survivor twice over and you smile at me in the hallways like you're somehow still my friend.

Today, I showered with the water on as hot as it gets and scrubbed my skin with half a bottle of soap until the water turned ice cold, until my skin stung and ached. Then I scrubbed my scalp with shampoo until my fingers came away ******. I filled my sink with cold water and dunked my face in, before emptying it and brushing my teeth until my gums bled. I used listerine and held it in my mouth as it burned the open skin, until it became fizz and I spat it out and went back to the tub and sat there and scrubbed my skin with my damp washcloth until it was raw. I sat in that tub and shoved a towel in my face and screamed, screamed until I fell into coughing fits, spitting up blood and phlegm in my bathtub. I got out and screamed again until my voice quit. My throat feels cut, my skin feels burnt, my scalp bleeding into my wet hair. I'm sitting on my soaking wet bathroom floor, head pressed to the wall, fingers red and peeling from destroying razors, eyes swollen from hours of tears. I don't know what to do. The past I fight so hard against holds me down, my reflex to cringe upon human contact, despite my efforts to ignore it, to take myself back. I do not want to move again. I want to die on my bathroom floor, cold tile on destroyed flesh, hair dripping red-tinged water. I want to die here in these puddles of lost innocence, of the greed of the world that was taken out on a girl who isn't even out of highschool. I want to die here in this room where I tried to rip away the sins of others, left on my flesh. I want to die here. I want to die.

I want to fall in love and write about it on their back and thighs and collarbones and ribcage and hip bones. I want to make a list of every reason I love them and hide each reason on a different part of their body and I want to draw a heart on the back of their neck. I want to write a ten word poem on the small of their back about how beautiful their eyes are. I want to fall in love and I want to mean it, no regrets.

i want to write about her bones, his bones. anyone's bones, really. i especially love to write about rib cages and collarbones, because those are either very prominent or they are not. they are either delicate and protruding like a baby birds budding wings, or they are not. the delicate bones in fingers fascinate me just as much, but there are many different types of fingers and bone structures of fingers, so i do have a type. i prefer long, delicate fingers. artist fingers, pianist fingers. they look so fragile and they're always so cold, but they create such wonderful things. and while rib cages hold people and collarbones are for bruises, fingers are for creation and their bone structure is beautiful.

I still stick around you, even when you're a *******, because I remember when you weren't. I remember the time I went to hug you and I ended up falling into your lap and the surprise, the soft chuckles, the bad jokes. I remember the time I was drawing on your pizza box and you were opening up to me and I turned and looked at you and told you I thought you were great, I remember the way you smiled perfectly, how open your eyes were. I remember when we were having an embarrassingly personal conversation in a public place and we pinky promised and you held my pinky with yours, even after the promise bit ended. And I remember when you said you missed me and how it made my chest feel, wrenching because I miss you, too, I miss you...My chest hurts now knowing things will never be the same, that we'll probably never be close again. But I still stay near you, because I remember what was.

Marly. Just Melz. Kiyuki Ishida. Unwanted. Sye. Ally. Just a few of the people that have helped me, both in the beginning and recently. Who helped me when I had no place to turn to and no hope. Who gave me numbers to call for help and support lines when I needed them. People I am forever grateful to.

So for the record, I ******* love you. I love the way you smile and the way you laugh. And how there's life to you, something so softly, yet unmistakably alive. You bring out the best in me and you're the whole sky, like I said before. I'd be happy just sleeping next to you for one night, but forever is the dream. I love the look in your eyes when you're talking about something you like. I want....I want to stay with you forever. I'm just afraid forever is too much to ask. I'm afraid you'll change your mind or disappear. I'm afraid you'll walk away. I'm afraid you'll leave me alone. I'm afraid because I love you in a way that eats me alive, but you probably don't feel the same.

To the men who have hurt me, both physically and emotionally. To the men who have sexually harassed me. To the men who have tried to coerce and guilt trip me. To the men who tried to take advantage of me when I was 15, the lowest point in my life. When I was weak. Destroyed from depression, from bullying, from the transition of middle school to high school, from anxiety, from blind parents and others ignorance. To those of you who knew I was in a ****** up state of mind, who pretended to support me when I was crying, only to run your hand up my thigh and whisper "I can make you forget about it." To the boys who abused me, insulted me, struck me, brought a suicidal teenage girl to the point of destruction. To the guy who didn't quite **** me, but who came close. Who grabbed all over me while I shoved and smacked and told him to stop. Who tried to get inside me without my permission and who tried to guilt trip me, calling me a tease and telling me to lay down and pretend nothing was happening if it really bothered me so much. Who tried to teach me to retreat inside of myself at human contact so I wouldn't resist. To every guy who approached a mentally destroyed teenage girl who was drowning in herself to try to get ****** favors, to try to get me to trade my body for drugs, to try to bring me down even further so I wouldn't say no. Because I did say no. I always said no and fought and nearly vomited every time a guy started groping, started making lewd commentary in what started out to be small talk, every guy that grabbed at me without my permission and leered and tried to grind on me without any context other than you had a ******* and I looked weak enough to force yourself on. I hope someday someone rips you all apart. I hope someone tortures you, tries to blackmail you, coerce you, makes you feel like garbage when you're at your weakest. Because as much as all of you tried, even this fragile, broken teenager rejected you. Fought her hardest to get away from attempted assaults and made it, clawing and screaming away from you. Cried silently as angry, mocking messages came in but didn't dignify them with responses. Ignored angry phone calls from multiple numbers and continued to live, even when you all tried to break me into a *** slave. **** every last one of you up the *** with a flaming *****. I hope you all go through hell. I was going through hell and you all tried to destroy me, to incinerate my spirit in the name of getting someone to touch your *****. I hope you go through worse. I hope somebody castrates you. If there is an almighty deity, I hope they curse you for eternity. I hope you all know that the girl you tried to destroy for your own sadistic pleasure is stronger than ever before.

Mom says it's teenage hormones. Dad says I'm over-dramatic about it.

But I'm getting worse, not better. I'm anxious constantly, suffering from attacks ranging from small to so severe I grow ill. Thinking I could end my life should any of my fears become real was my only comfort, but even that has abandoned me. For I am a coward who cannot take her own life for fear of the unknown. A craven, afraid of deaths pain but still longing for his freeing slumber.

Apparently this is something all teenagers go through. Wanting to stay in bed all day playing dead and pretending the world can't hurt me when it can break through my windows and torture me to death whenever it pleases. Apparently every teenager sits around, wanting to die but too afraid to end it. We all cry from our pure terror of things we are too afraid to speak of, too afraid to make real with words, too afraid to even think of for too long.

I've been practicing this breathing exercise. I do it in sets of 3, sometimes sets of 5. It's funny, because usually when I do things in sets, it must be 4 or 14 or 24. Move my fingers from pinky to thumb 14 times on both hands in synch. Things like that. I don't like 3, and 5 is iffy. But the breathing exercises that distract me from wanting to rip my own flesh off must be done in 3s or 5s, apparently.

My mind is not my best friend, but sometimes, it pretends to be. It tries to convince me that mother is right. That I'll outgrow suicidal thoughts spanning as long as I can remember and severe anxiety and depression so intense it eats me alive and makes me want to gnaw my skin off, but it makes me want to float to the bottom of the ocean or fly off a cliff and be free in much quieter ways.

Falling from a cliff wouldn't be quiet. It would be messy and the wind would be in my hair and I'd make a splat as I hit the ground. But I imagine drifting down like a feather, my soul leaving my body before the destruction and my body dissolving like dust, scattered to the wind.

I am thinking of flying and vainly wishing my parents are right, that I will outgrow mental illness and that I'm over-dramatizing it somehow, because my feelings and thoughts are overdramatic and counselors and therapists are liars, since according to father they're wrong when they say they're afraid I'm becoming a danger to myself, because mom and dad say they're wrong, mom and dad say I'm not dangerous to myself I'm just stupid and senseless and an attention ***** who is too scared to die, while other, much more vibrant and amazing people are dying and deserve the air in my lungs and aren't getting it.  

This is turning into a mess, like the one I'd make if I threw myself off a cliff. So I'll stop here and wonder if my heart can stop from the empty hopelessness choking it, as well.

And I am so sorry,
Because no matter how much I love you,
I will probably always feel distant.

I could love you more than anything in the world, but at the end of the day, I'll still feel a million miles away.

And it doesn't mean I love you any less,
When I drift away.

I just don't know what else to do,
I'm weak and I can't help it.

I'm sorry.

You leave the smell of *** and cigarettes behind on my skin and it's hurting me, it's stinging my nose and choking me everytime I breathe and my head hurts, my heart hurts because your eyes are so beautiful but you're ******, you kept whispering that you loved me but it hurt and my parents hate you and all my friends hate you but I don't hate you, I want to keep you.

I've craved death as long as I can remember, but God forbid I let anyone else go. And now I'm staying for someone else. Because my heartbeat doesn't mean as much as yours.

My parents tell me to stop bringing misfits home.

Stray cats, lost dogs, lonely people.

Anything sad in the neighborhood, sad in my sight, I bring home with me.

The poor teenagers up the hill, the stoners dazed by the lake, the girls with broken souls and the boys with broken minds. Survivors of all kinds of abuse find refuge with me.

I carried an orange cat home one day, I found him walking around a construction site. He was fed and given something to drink, and we found his owner.

A puppy only a few weeks old, eyes still closed, deathly ill. We bottle fed it and took it to the vet, but it was too late. She said she had a damaged spine and wouldn't make it. I stroked her head as she stopped breathing.

I brought a schizophrenic boy home and helped him through an attack in our living room, while my parents sat horrified in the kitchen.

No less than three girls have cried on my shoulder in the safety of my bedroom, traumatized by rapes they didn't know how to talk about.

These strays, these wounded souls....These are my people. I love them all.

So when they say "stop bringing such damaged things home" it breaks my heart.

And I do it anyways.

I have this obsession with scratching myself until I bleed. In particular, I scratch my scalp ******. I think it's because the skin is soft and I can dig it out with ease, leaving my fingers red and my hair matted with the crimson liquid. I don't know. I used to scratch my face ****** and raw as a child. Then I got older and did the backs of my hands. Then my arms. Then my ankles. And now my scalp.

My blood and bones and soul want freedom.

It doesn't matter what I do.

To the world around me, I am always going to be "his Taylor."

My ex-turned-best-friend. I've been referred to as "his turf." "His Taylor." And just "oh, she's his."

No matter how hard we try to show the world we're just friends.

I'm always "his."

I am addicted to rain, to the sunset, to the sound of water over rocks.

To the crackling of the fire, to the breeze on my cheeks. To the feeling of someone else's fingers running through my hair.

I am addicted to the way he smiled, to the way she kissed, to the feeling of my fingers laced with someone else's.

I am addicted to the quiet pain in my heart, to obsessing over my fears, to apologizing for things beyond my control.

I am addicted to this boy who has eyes like the sky, to this boy who makes my heart jump into my throat and my cheeks burn and my legs go numb and who makes it hard to breath. I am addicted to this boy who doesn't really know who I am, who just knows who I want him to know, who has a smile like perfection and probably doesn't even know it.

I am addicted to writing. About my heart, about my dreams, about my sins and agonies. About how other people view me and how I view other people and how I view myself.

I am addicted to cuddling, to thick blankets and fluffy pillows, to lazy mornings.

I am addicted to wishing I could share all the things I love most with that boy, the one who I wish I could look at all day.

I am addicted to turning things into him without ever intending to.

You're hiding all your sins in me. All your urges and twisted thoughts and deviance. You're trying to unleash it all on me, stain me with the filthiest parts of your mind, and blow off the steam and anger you try to keep so far inside yourself. You're taking all the scary, *****, unnatural parts of yourself and forcing them all on me, so you can keep yourself clean for her. So you can be her guardian angel, her knight in shining armor. Without blackened wings, or being covered in blood and oil. Stay the **** away from me. I don't need this. I don't, I really don't. You're trying to push all your darkness off on me, all the taints of lust and violence and anger and sadism that you don't want her to see. You can't do this forever. So keep adding to your own suffering. Have your shining little princess and your throne of ****. It'll all come down someday.

I'm still thinking of you. Of wide blue eyes and the long brown hair that falls in those eyes. Of beautiful lips and strong, shy hands and a soft voice. Of the way you love to sing and the way you smiled at me. I'm thinking of your collarbones and how I love the way you dress and how I could literally sleep next to you, hand and hand, body to body forever. How I don't typically like boys, you are the fifth ever, but I want you anyways. I've wanted girls, lusted and desired, but never lusted after a guy until I caught myself staring at your lips like they were made of sugar. I want to kiss you. I want to touch you. Please help me.

I want to lay down in snow banks and smoke cigarettes and feel the toxin-filled air freeze in my lungs and just die, nicotine and ice inside the void that is my body. I want my empty hands to be open and my eyes facing the sky, the last sunset I will ever witness forever trapped inside them. I want the cold wind to lift my soul from my prison-body and carry me into the clouds. I want to be at peace at last.

You want to kiss some guy, and I can't bring myself to care. This just tells me that I don't love you, and I probably won't be able to. Sorry. I hope you had a good time.

I think I may take up smoking. And drinking. And possibly drugs. And everything else that will **** me, that will let me go. I will go outside during a blizzard and lay in the snow and wait. I will get so high I think I can fly and jump out a ******* window. I don't care. Just let me go. I can't feel my heart and I can't feel my legs and my fingers are red and I don't know what to think about, except eyes that are so blue they can't even be real.

Hey, galaxy boy. I've got a girlfriend now, and she's more beautiful than anyone else I've ever seen. She smiles and her eyes glow and she just lights me up. She looks great in my jacket, you know, the oversized dark blue one with lime green stripes that you hated. My friends don't approve. Neither does my family. Everyone says she's nothing but trouble. But now, she's my trouble. So I don't wanna hear a **** word about it from anyone. You always hated her, anyways. So it's none of your business if she writes the date we got together on notes with hearts and gives them to me, or if she draws me Pon and Zi. And if she spams my phone with cute quotes, well, I'm happy about it. And if she gives me a necklace and kisses me in front of everyone, well, at least everyone knows she's mine.

I dreamed of you last night. You sat in my house and said you missed me. You said you had missed me for the past several months, that I hadn't left your mind. You haven't left my mind. I will spend the next 24 hours wishing and hoping it was real. That in some way, I'm running through your mind. I miss you. Please call me.

But when you think about it as often as I do, wouldn't it become normal for you, too?

I'm 17.

I suffer from daily anxiety attacks. Sometimes up to six of them in one day. Thoughts of ending my life, of ending the constant torment, are what I have to think about to calm me down.

I have to convince myself that I'm going to **** myself almost nightly to save my life.

Tell me again how these are the best years of my life?

Sometimes, my depression and anxiety seem almost manageable.

Other times, they're suffocating. I wake up and immediately wish I hadn't. I don't want to talk, I don't want to move. I almost can't convince myself to do anything at all.

Sometimes, it gets so bad that I just hide under the covers for hours, convinced that if I play dead long enough, I'll finally be safe. Like if I move, or show any sign of life, everything I'm afraid of will crush me all at once.

I am 17 and so scared to live I almost can't stand to.

I want to hold your hand as badly as ever. But I'm sad and aching and my fingers won't forget how yours felt between them and my hand won't forget how tightly you held it and my brain won't forget your smile, it's kind of like you burned it on the inside of my eyelids. I can taste your voice in the back of my throat and your gaze is like butterflies on my skin. I wish you'd hug me again. I miss smelling you on my skin all day.