Rylie Hawley

Rylie Hawley May 2017

It’s February, 2015.
I’m sitting in my bedroom,
Looking at my arms and thighs.
Looking at the red lines I come to realize I feel no pain,
But yet I’m crying.
Crying at the fact that four months ago
I promised it would be the last time.
Crying at the fact that the demons were back and this time
I wasn’t strong enough to fight them off.
Crying at the fact the blood flowing from me is
Staining my purple polka-dot sheets.

Fast forward, it’s October, 2015.
I’m lying in a hospital bed,
Being questioned by a Psych doctor.
He asks,
“Is this the first time you’ve ever tried to end your life?”
“Have you ever wanted to harm those around you?”
“Is there anyone else in your family that also suffers from mental illness?”
But I can’t form a response,
I’m too focused on the blood streaming from my wrists
Staining the white hospital bed sheets.

Fast forward four hours.
A hospital aid is pushing me in a wheelchair.
My body is shaking due to the cold and anxiety rushing through me.
Thirty minutes later I’m sitting in a dark room,
My roommate going on about how she’s been here for the
Past three months.
I wake up sweating and shaking.
I could feel his weight on me still,
Feel his hot and heavy breath,
His words running through my mind
“No one will ever find out”.
I feel my throat start to choke on the words and I whisper
Under my breath, for him to get off of me.
I feel the tears start to stream down my cheeks-
I hadn’t had the nightmare since the past December.
I walk into the bathroom,
Lock the door behind me and reach to turn the faucet on,
Wash the mascara from under my puffy red eyes.
I get back into bed and find the sheets are rough on
My skin,
I turn to the wall and start to pick off the green peeling paint.

Six hours later I’m sitting on a bench
pushing egg whites around on my plate.
Trying to make it look like I am enjoying the breakfast the
Nurse ordered for me.
I see the other patients eating except for one-
His gaze follows me as I sit at the table.
I later find out his name is Jared-
Little did I know he’d be my rock for the next two weeks while we
were in the psych ward.

Fast forward, it’s November,
My first day back at school.
I’m greeted with half hearted hellos,
And strange looks that ask the question
Of where I have been?
As time goes on, the days blend together,
Joining in an endless blur of depression and tears.
I was put into an Intensive Outpatient Program
Where I spent the next seven months learning how to
Rebuild myself and my family.

Here I am today
Contemplating the question on who I am
Based off of my life, and what I have been through.
And I’m here today to tell you that I am
The girl who lives with chronic depression,
As well as the girl who has learned how to smile back at herself
When she looks in the mirror.
I am the girl with anxiety so bad that my shaking hands
Make it hard to take a drink of water.
And I am also the girl who tells those who are struggling around her,
That shaking hands doesn’t mean that you’re weak,
But instead that you are still alive and fighting.
I am the girl with ADHD,
And I also am the girl who sees a future for herself again.
I am the girl with a personality disorder, and I am also the girl
Who has walked through hell and back.

I am the girl who is mending
The damaged parts of herself back together.
I am the girl who stands up for those and what
She believes in.
I am the girl who has been missing from herself the
Past six years due to a mental disorder.
I am a writer.
I am a violinist.
I am a fighter.
But most importantly when I am asked who I am as a person
Based off of my experiences,
I can proudly say:
I am Rylie Rose

r.h. (September 15, 2016)

Rylie Hawley May 2017

Bent not Broken

it still hurts to hear,
that I'm not "that girl"
you had been looking for;
I'm not the girl with the body,
that never disappoints;
and a smile pasted on her face.
I'm not that girl,
because I cry at
4:00 in the afternoon,
because no one
seems to be listening.
and maybe it's because
you don't like that I'm
the type of person to
laugh too loudly at jokes
that weren't even that funny.
it still hurts to know that I won't
be that girl.
I'm not that girl
because I don't have the sharpest mind,
and my eyes don't glimmer
like the girls' in the movies...

but if you let me, oh god if you really let me, I would love you with my whole heart.
I would love you
until
it would absolutely
tear me apart.
I would fight for you.
everyday I'd fight.
and I maybe then I'd start to believe I was good enough for you;
that the love I'd fill you up with
would be satisfactory.
but at this point it seems like,
not.
because I'm not that girl
you had been searching for.
the hardest part it, is the fact,
that when I look at you
all I see is love.
and when you look at me,
all you see is a girl that is helplessly
in love with you.
and when you'd kiss me,
I feel the world stop moving-
like we were statues in an art museum.
and when you kiss me,
all you felt was my lips
against yours.

and it is still hard. it's still hard even when I say
"it is what it is".
it still hurts even when
I drown out my thoughts and feelings.
it will always hurt.
and I look in the mirror,
and wonder where I may have went wrong
where I wasn't that perfect dream
girl.
and still I believe,
that I would love you until the
end of time.

r.h.
-you're still my muse

Rylie Hawley May 2017

Eli

i could look at you  for the rest of my  life and  never understand  how beautiful someone  can possibly be,  i could listen to you talk until you breathe your last  breath and never come  to a conclusion  on how someone’s voice could be so calming  i could hold you  in my arms until the  stars in the sky burn out  and even then  i would never let you go
so if you let me,  i want to love you  until the end of time;  let me sing you to sleep hold you when you cry be your rock love you when you don’t love  yourself  let me be your forever,  because you are  already mine.
r.h.
(it was a saturday)

Rylie Hawley May 2017

a feeling

I hope one day you will learn to feel love, and not the type of love that they have in the movies, the type of love that is simple and happy, that can make your cheeks go warm I hope you find the love that doesn’t mean crying and aching at 3:16am because you’re worried she won’t love you again in the morning, love isn’t the thought that she won’t hold your heart in her hands like a fragile vase  I want you to find the love that brings patience and selflessness I hope you find the love that won’t make you go crazy because if you were sane you wouldn’t know how to deal with the pain that love can bring, but one day I hope you find love that will make you feel happy again because you deserve to find love with someone who won’t make you lose your mind.
r.h.(December 23, 2015)

Rylie Hawley May 2017

6:07 on a Friday Night

Maybe that’s what happens, People just drift away. Maybe there is no love for one another. Maybe there is just I’m not sure.. people get too attached- I get too attached to people. I care too much. I think that these people love me; and maybe I thought love was my vision going blurry while he had his hands around my neck that one night in my basement. Maybe I thought that love was the different colored bruises and all along my chest when I took her up to my lake house that one summer. Maybe I thought that love was when your parent makes jokes of your past depression and self harm. Maybe that’s normal with other families. Maybe I thought love was the boy telling me he only wanted to get into my pants, because his brother was annoying him the night before. Maybe I thought love was when you told someone how their happiness is more important than yours; shouldn’t it be though? Shouldn’t you be more than willing to throw yourself on the line just to protect the person you love? I guess I don’t know much about love. Because all of my past is filled with someone hitting you, or being held down in your house, or feeling tears stream down your cheek while he moans in your ear but you feel nothing but the weight of him on top of you.
I know how to love, I can love fully and purely.. maybe it was just the tears in my eyes that blurred the image of true love.

r.h. (May 19, 2017)

Rylie Hawley May 2017

The Poem; A Letter to You

I remember that it hurt
Looking at him hurt-
His grin
His smile twisting up and curling
At the corners
As his hands traced my body;
Me begging
Pleading,
Pleading
For him to stop
To stop touching me
To have some kindness left in him
To possibly stop himself from
Committing the crime he already had-
I remember feeling all of his
Weight pressed onto me
Suffocating me
That was only the first time
I remember that it hurt
Looking at her hurt-
Her face in the moonlight on the top bed
in our little cabin of eleven
I remember it hurt the night
She said she was in love with me-
Then punching me in the stomach and
Walking away,
Lillian
The girl I was irrevocably in love with,
Walking away because she said that
΅She has a new girl in Indiana΅
That was the last time I ever saw Lillian.
I remember that it hurt,
Looking at them hurt
The red lines
Lacing up my arms
Looking like a red ribbon on a christmas
Present
Look at my arms
Look at my face my
Tear stained face
Even though I felt
Nothing
Arms
Face
Arms
Lacing up my arms
Face
Ribbons on my arms
Face
Arms
Cuts
And then it stopped hurting
It stopped hurting when I met him
The boy who makes my head spin
The boy who makes me think
I’m important to someone
Again
The boy who puts me first after
Everyone else puts me in
Their past-
It stopped hurting when he
Said it’s going to be okay
Now
It stopped hurting when he
Told me that those people
Could only hurt me if
I let them hurt me
It stopped hurting when he said
That soon I will be
A part of his family
Because he knows that
I feel like an alien in my own
It stopped hurting
when he came into my life
After everyone else had gone out;
After the boy who took away my innocence
Stopped noticing my existence-
After Lillian, the girl who
Ripped my heart out went back to
Chicago and was with
“Her new girl”-
After the last razor blade
Had been disposed of
And the pills had gone
Back into their bottles
After the last person to
Say that they were my friend
Or that they didn’t hate me-
and yet started rumors and
Harassed me in the hallways…
After I had been clean and had been out of the hospital and IOP
For more months than
I can remember
After the hell I had been through-
He made it better
And easier
And he makes life more
enjoyable -

So thank you to all of those who have made my life a living hell,
Thank you for breaking me down into dust
So I could be brought back up
Thank you for making me dark and twisty,
Thank you for putting a cloud of darkness around me,
So I could finally find my beam of sunshine that
He
Reflects into my life,
Thank you for making me the person I am today,
Thank you for showing me I’m not everything you told me.
Thank you for proving to me that I am a much stronger
And better person
Than you will ever be.

r.h. (April 5, 2017)

— The End —