Surviving tonight(poem #164)

Public service announcement for those of you who were sound asleep,

Wrapped comfortable in your lovers arms or holding firmly to your antidotes to depression,

Last night at 4am the Purge of sanity began,

The ideations poured in like childhood nightmares,

But unlike the ones on Elm’s street,

I can not run away from these,

The distance from my bed to the door became a labyrinth,

My brain became the fun house at carnivals that remind you that the only thing worse than spiders is staring at your own reflection,

Each corner lines with mirrors to expose painted on smiles so frightening the Joker would have been proud.

Now confined to the gallows of my own consciousness I beg my brain to just please except that I am being hung by my own hands,

To just drift off into unconsciousness so I can finally sleep,

Sleep avaids my ever pleating heart,

The boxing match turned into a cage fight,

In one corner my heart,

The other every lover I have ever had,

Each punch laced with broken promises, lies, and heartbreak,

There is no referee on my self-loathing,

By the end of tonight I will be lucky if I come out alive…

Starving my Depression (Poem #160)

Hello, I will be your doctor today.

Please tell me what I can help you with.

Well, sir….I have chronic, cycled depression,

Acute Anxiety,

Haphazard Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,

and a fluctuating eating disorder…

Since the age of 8 I have felt like I am not good enough,

Have attempted to kill myself 3 times, but succeeded in my mind over a thousand,

My intrusive thoughts appear more like imaginary friends than skeletons,

Insomnia no longer is a word, but a conscious state of being completely awake while living a nightmare,

But overall I am generally functional…

Well the best I can give you is these pills…

Here take one of these in the morning, and one of these at night to go to sleep.

…

Does anyone else find it ironic that one of the greatest side affects of antidepressants is weight gain…

Followed by drowsiness,

Potential breakouts,

Suicidal thoughts,

and a lose of Libido….

As if I didn’t walk in here self-conscious enough,

My anxiety spikes just thinking that the things I am clinging to to make me better may actually bring to life all of my nightmares at once.

Remember to always take your pills in the morning,

Ignore the sickness in your stomach,

Pretend you aren’t overstimulated simply by light,

Accept the fact that your state of bliss was concentrated down to a pill,

Swallow the pill with your sadness.

…

I gained 10 pounds in a month on my antidepressants,

Which was surprising because I didn’t think that zombies could gain weight,

Especially the ones who are starving to feel better,

While still shoving tranquilizers down their throats.

I starved my depression so much so that the light at the end of the tunnel just turned out to be the blinding sense of being “happy” that they promised,

My chill pills didn’t make me feel safer,

Rather I felt as if I was floating on the open waters of the ocean,

My monsters clawing below me,

When really I was in my bathtub…

…

I found that instead of feeling more alive, I felt more like death,

Each pill become another bullet-hole to my creativity,

The fabric placed over my eyes so I didn’t see that I was only “drowning” in a cup of water I continued to fill…

…

So Mr. Doctor, I come here today to tell you

Please keep your pills to yourself,

Instead,

Please give my a prescription for my life back.

 

 

At the age of…(Poem #159)

At the age of 5;

I walked up to my father,

Took the bull by the horns,

and ran with the idea that I could do anything I dreamed of…

At the age of 5 I found out the reality that no matter how much I dreamed I would never be able to be just like the boys,

Because hockey is a guy’s sport,

and boys don’t cry like I do when I fall down…

At the age of 8;

I was finally able to decide for myself how I looked…sort of,

I marched into school knowing that I was going to let my natural beauty shine through…

At the age of 8 I found out that I was the Mona-Lisa,

That I would be prettier if I smiles,

That my hair wasn’t quite right and should have been straighter,

That my place in this world was to look pretty enough for other amusement,

Make-up started filling the paint brushes and the fake smile coated my face

At the age of 10;

I remember feeling grown up,

Like this was step toward me meaning something,

And that I couldn’t wait to get older…

At the age of 10 I found out that my body wasn’t a temple but rather graffiti on the wall,

The if I started showing too soon or too much I was faking,

That the alley ways weren’t the only things supposedly stuffed with tissues,

And that rather than be supportive, girls would rather call you an attention whore and fake than acknowledge their own insecurities…

At the age of 13;

I ran wild and free away from my depression and sadness,

held tight to the back of his shoulders and the wind rushing by felt like each gust was taking my worries away just a little more…

 

At the age of 13 I found out that just because you “love” someone doesn’t mean you understand what no means,

That screaming and crying can be silenced by the most beautiful of smiles,

and that luckily for me, tears are a turn off and a harsh snap back to reality…

At the age of 16;

I fell in love again,

I saw sunshine lighting my world through dark black eyes,

Felt tender kisses ease the pain of scars…

At the age of 16 I found out what it feels like to have everything you gave be valued to nothing,

That my heart and body were simply just a roller coaster at an amusement park,

That while he wasn’t with me he would prefer to take a ride on others,

That no matter what I gave up, at the end of the day it didn’t matter because someone else was offering the same things I could give and more…

At the age of 18;

I started chasing my dreams,

Went on to a bigger city filled with the hope that these college walls would inspire an epiphany…

At the age of 18 I found out that part of my dream would be giving up someone I loved because I could take the pain and he couldn’t,

I filled my life with every distraction I could as I walked away,

Needles and knives became friends,

and sex transformed into the world where I could feel like I was worth something for those five minutes,

that my body wasn’t just filling a space that could be replaced with only memories…

At the age of 19;

I embraced memories of a older days,

Filled the worlds with smiles of love and support,

and cherished old friendships,

At the age of 19 I found out that my actions always justified the pain that others inflicted on me,

That alcohol meant more to a judge than the fact that I can’t even remember that I said no,

That the fact that a restraining order would be too harsh because it would make it harder for him to get a job,

Never-mind the fact that I still struggle to get out of bed to go to mine,

Never-mind that I didn’t want to be here in the same room as him,

Never-mind that I that I was flustered because I should have known the words to say,

Should have known that friends could rape you,

Should have known what I was walking into,

Should have known that I was tempting him, that my judgement would be clouded by tequila,

Should have known that he would lie,

Lie about how much he cared about me,

Lie about the fact that he missed me,

Lie about the fact that he and I were so close,

Lie right to the judges face about what he did to me that night,

I learned that a judge would rather listen to a liar because even though my life was ruined again society couldn’t ruin his too…

At the age of 21;

I lay in bed next to the first man I feel safe with again,

He kisses my forehead as we fall asleep…

At the age of 21 I found out that my nightmares could become his,

That I may feel safe when I am awake, but my nightmares crawl out as soon as my eyes are closed,

Want to see heartbreak,

Try explaining the fear of the boogie man to a man who doesn’t understand that he isn’t him,

Sob that you want to be normal again,

That you want to feel sane again,

That this isn’t what you wanted to be like but your ribs are starting to feel like the cage they were named after,

One were visitors are welcome but hardly ever return because the psych ward isn’t pretty even when you try to pain the walls with flowers…

When people ask me how old I am they are shocked to hear that I have only been on this world for 21 years,

My heart it 26, my mind is 30, and my conscious has no number that can fathom how old it truly feels.

In this life I have learned to use ink to write gravestones of each little part of me that died,

I try to tell people that my body became a graveyard at the age of 5,

That all of these headstones are mine,

But like a cat I have 9 lives,

And sure I may be on my last one of them, I still know how to stand on my own feet,

I’ve laid to rest a lot of demons lately,

These tombstones don’t symbolize losing they show that I have won,

Though their ghosts may haunt me and each day I can remember what it feel like to die I still know how to breath,

At the age of 22;

I will still be alive…

 

 

A letter to my lonely lover(Poem #157)

A letter to my lonely lover,

Warning,

this is not a love letter you will grin at as you read it like a poem each night…

No this is a letter of precaution,

Because I can only lay my head on the collarbone of your broken heart,

Attempt to hear the melody behind mismatched breathing.

I can not hear the way your breaths playing against your ribs like wind-chimes echoing the emptiness that is inside you,

No I can not hear that.

I can not feel the clattering of bones beneath me shaking at their own loneliness.

Nor understand that the reason you twitch right before you fall asleep is because your body  needs to remind you that you are more than a skeleton waiting to rot.

Laying here I don’t see any of that…

I understand what it feels like to have every ounce of your soul ache for intimacy,

But can not seem to grasp it or find it in this world.

Because we locked our hearts away in our rib cage,

and then threw away the key….

It’s not like we don’t know where the key is,

We do,

We memorized the seconds between bounces and exactly where it landed.

But out of sight equals out of mind,

And I can finally pretend that my heart isn’t resting on the bottom of my stomach,

crying out to be fixed like a broken birds wing.

No!

I will not feel that,

and neither will you…

So we try to find comfort in moments that will only land milliseconds in our brains,

And sleep in god knows how many other people’s beds because we have forgotten why it felt right to sleep alone…

But it’s not that we don’t feel it,

We do,

But we pretend that we don’t feel it,

We want to feel like we are a whole person laying beside yet another one night stand,

and that is it!

But when we wake up in the morning,

your face won’t give me comfort,

and I will look in the mirror to see exactly who I was yesterday staring back at me,

I want to punch the glass so that I bleed,

because bleeding makes sense,

that is what happens when you are hurt,

you bleed and you scar…

But not when it’s your heart.

Instead my eyes they bleed tears…and tears dry,

And it’s hard to explain why your hurting when what your body is bleeding in misery is only visible to you…

So I will crawl back in bed with you,

I will kiss you on the lips,

Say I had a good time,

Rest my head again on your chest pretending that the heartbeat I hear is simply that…

Just a heart beat…

Because if I read too much into it then I know I will do something stupid,

like kiss you again, but this time it will be different because it will mean something,

because for that millisecond my heart will drop a feather outside my ribcage reminding me that I can still feel.

But I don’t want that.

I would rather live in the graveyard of my hollow chest,

then give you the power to send my heart back to hell!

That’s the scary thing about laying next to a broken lover…

They make you realize how broken YOU truly are…

Porcelain Skin (Poem #150)

Daddy doesn’t like the piercings,

Says I am telling young men that I will do things,

That I am making an image I don’t understand of myself,

He doesn’t like the tattoos,

Says I will regret the ink,

That I am ruining my beauty…

Daddy you don’t understand,

The innocent beauty you are holding on to was taken from me at thirteen,

The metal doesn’t take away my ability to consent,

and by you stating that I am making an image of myself you made and excuse for the man you claimed you would kill when I told you what he did to me,

Daddy you hate the idea of someone’s hands touching me,

but you never asked what I wanted.

Daddy you don’t see that I use the ink and needles to replace the blade of a knife,

that I would rather make something beautiful out of the pain.

And daddy I thought you would be proud of me

because it is easier to explain a tattooed and pierced daughter

than one with scares and blood running down her arms.

Daddy why can’t you see past the ink and the metal,

Daddy let go of the little girl you think I am,

because I haven’t been a little girl for a long time,

Daddy why can’t you see that this is something much bigger than you will ever understand,

Daddy why can’t you accept ink stains on porcelain skin over blood stains on a broken heart?

 

In attempt to express (Poem #142)

As I am standing with tears streaming down my face

You scream at me and ask what I wrong

And when I can’t find the words you scream louder

But here is the truth

90% of the time I feel lonely and scare

The other 10% I feel ok and strong

But everyone sees it the other way

Because I learned to stand on shaking legs

To glare at the world through tears

But that isn’t me

It never was

And as you scream louder the real me is dying to find the words

But when you don’t even understand how you are hanging on to life

How am I supposed to tell you what it feel like

To describe a perminantly broken heart

To feel innocence ripping from you

When darkness is your friend

And I sleep for half the day

Because when I sleep I don’t feel

And that is all I really want right now

To not feel…

Okay (Poem #138)

I will keep pretending,

Until the day it is no longer an act,

And I know I truly am okay. 

You aren’t alone (Poem #135)

If you are awake right now,

At 4 am,

Sobbing into your pillow,

Clenching on to the last shred of hope you have…

Just know you are not alone,

I am right here,

Sobbing with you,

We will make it through this…

I hope….

Nothing (Poem #128)

You shall never know pain

Until you feel nothing at all…

Four in one; cry for help….(Poem #102)

One tear fell,                                                                                          Quickly

by the rushing revine,                                                                     as it all rushes by

as the tall blond girl,                                                        never knowing what will happen next

let a scream petrude from her lips,                                        praying the answer will come

the last mercy call,                                                                    to anyone willing to listen,

and cry for help.                                                                       hopefully not onto deaf ears.

His hands shock,                                                                         Rapidly

as they twisted,                                                             grabbing at bits and piece

and knoted the rope,                                                       trying to keep it together

if it was too lose,                                                              everything would fall apart

he would suffer,                                                                         worse than before

too tight….                                                                             and it would be too late.

he is already dead….