There seems to be a culling of the stress pounding on my poor stable head. I would almost question why if in the corner there wasn't her, with her dark blue eyes, calling herself my old friend. I don't know if its a blessing or a curse that I almost forgot what depression looked like.

I have to adjust now. I adjusted to the anxiety and stress and possible mania. Now I must adjust to the lower end of life. She all done up, in the corner right there, drawing me in and I'm somehow hers once again. Always had a problem stopping her red-lipped words from dragging me to her.

But you know what's kind of nice? I never have to stay anymore. She never can chain me down and numb me down with narcotics until I can't run away. Yes, she traps me and I go back and its never pleasant. But after awhile I can throw my coffee in her face, tell her to get herself a different person to tear apart, and bid her adieu.

My limbs hurt. My neck hurts. I don't think I slept quite right chained in her arms. But I'm not there. I'm slower, I'm battered, I'm wounded. I need to recover. But I'm not numb, not dying. I am me. I am whole.

I can picture how beautiful I thought she was so long ago, her hair done up, her eyeliner perfect, her eyes an enticing blue. I was more attracted to her body than my own, and I gave her everything, anything. Then she took and took until I was ragged and too broken and tired to even die. I never knew human exhaustion could get so extensive; It only takes a twitch to pull a trigger and I just sat in the freezing snow, unable to even open my eyes long enough to find the gun, or lift my hand high enough to reach my ******* head. I was just too dead to die.

But now I look at her. She is so much glitter and polish. She is so much of what I caked onto myself, and peeled off until I was thin and weak and stressed, but something that could grow. I was organic, I was alive, I was human again. She is a paint-caked hollow woman whose only goal is to vindictively destroy my world because it doesn't sparkle with false reflections like hers.

I may be thin, and I may be weak. I can only carry so much with the little muscle I retained through all the sticks and stones I stuck to my body to try to make myself stronger with a nonsensical shell. But I am moving. I am lifting larger weights each day, my work, my academics, my friends, my family, my love. They may erode me a bit every once and a while; I am starting from near nothing and building a whole new person out of it. I am rebuilding the lost soul that got scattered among the cinder blocks. I am finally making myself be that person I wanted to be; not my parents' way, or my friends' way, or society's way. My way. Its hard and exhausting and sometimes so painful I can barely breathe.

But she's just some mistress, lurking around a corner to try to ****** me; a leech, trying to bite out little bits of my soul to wear me down again. And with each attack I push her further away. I can't completely ignore her, but she can't control me. We no longer share the same glitter and polish. Instead I and regrowing all the skin torn by her teeth, and its growing back too thick for her to cut to the bone. Eventually I'll grow a new skin that blocks her out, instead of me, instead of people I love.

Without my glitter and polish, she's nothing. Without my glitter and polish, I can breath, I can grow, I can see.

I can finally find my way back to me.

You're not the only ******* person
who can be peeved by minor indiscretion;
sometimes the flailing you do
disrupts others in ways.

Perhaps you feel vindictively justified,
but perhaps you just crucified
that image of you
that they held in their head
because what you do
can speak louder
than what you say,
and what you say
can be a sign
of why you do
what you do,
and how
and when,
too.