I've wanted to **** myself since I was 12. I don't know when it started or how, but there are many whys. New reasons have come every year, and old reasons have an interesting staying power that you wouldn't really expect. Sure, I forgive. My traumas are not the result of active hate towards me. They are ramifications, small waves from a rock dropped in a pool that gently washed over me and through me, caking salt in the fundamental components of my heart and soul. They are me and they are not me. I've made so much progress, and I have so much to be proud of but I'm not. I try to convince myself I am in conversations with my friends, mother, therapist. You're so eloquent, they say. So introspective. Am I? I'm just lying. I'm only happy when I'm ******, drunk or both. Sometimes I seem okay sober, and sometimes I'm more okay than others. Even when I'm more okay I still want to die. I could be driving down the road listening to my favorite songs and I will still think of five separate things I can do to **** myself. But it seems selfish. My mother has brought me into this life, not exactly intentionally but she raised me the best she could and has a lot of pride in the woman she thinks she's caused. My friends rely on me for support, or even advice on how to help other friends because "they know I've been though this already" as if it's not still happening. I don't want to **** myself. Not really. I want to disappear like ******* Hermione, you know? Just forgotten, no one gets hurt. I'm loved. But it's not enough.

My heart is so full of love but none of it is for me.

I want to create love for myself inside my own heart.

I want to understand I am fundamentally flawed without hating myself for those flaws.

I want to give myself the same benefits I do others.

I want to hold myself to the same standards as I do my friends.

I want to feel good. Whole. But for now i feel empty.

4attempts to say what you already know.
And its not for me to feel it
It seems to bind beasts.mode
Taking the easy road,
cowards rushed crowded
In search of storebought
Deevolution
Manufactured compassion.

I have lately become concerned with the overflowing bottle inside of my bag

Not the one half filled with liquor

But the storebought 8 ounces of water

Distilled from the mountains of somewhere I haven’t been

It’s not so much that the fabric is wet

In fact, the whole thing is very much dry

It’s just that I’m terrified of the water

- which i feel so certain is leaking out -

Staining my last 5 dollars

That pretentious book I’m reading

And my favorite picture of you.