I grew up losing most of my childhood.
In more ways than one.

After eleven,
nothing was ever the same.

No matter how positive I tried to be,
no matter how often I wished otherwise,
my path felt stolen. Still does.                    

Stolen by my body most of all.                                             Far too young,
but also stolen by others.

How could I have understood
what was happening?

What was coming?
At any age for that matter?
But especially then?

Maybe before that loss
there were carefree moments?
Years, days, thoughts;
but were they real?
Or were they memories my mind softened
to survive?

Self-preservation.
Survival.

I’ve spent so much of my life
trying to create and find insight
out of everything that happened to me.

And sometimes that ability is not a strength.

So much of life, is
just what it is.
Simple as that.

Insight has tricked me.
Fooled me.
Held me hostage
more times than I can admit;
to anyone.

Lately, I see something clearly:
it was and isn’t me. Not always.
Not in the way I’ve assumed,
or the way some people have insisted.
I’m not to blame for everything.
Not for all of it.

Not in the ways any of them say.

So why am I so quick
to believe the voices that tell me
it’s only me?

Logically, I know that isn’t true.
Well not to the degree they argue,
berate, or assume.
So why is my memory of my own life
treated as unreliable?
Why am I so easily second-guessed?
Has my mind, or the people around me,
ever been proven right over me?

I feel foolish.

It’s been a long time
since I felt this way.
And this deep.

Like the feeling built a place inside me
and quietly called it home.
I know why it’s surfaced now.
People you expect disappointment from
hurt less.

They refuse to see you,
and it’s familiar.
But the ones you hoped for,
the ones you believed were different,
they hurt the most.

You convince yourself
you don’t see the ending coming.
Even though it always does.

Hope keeps you alive.
It is beautiful.

But what few admit,
is that hope is also dangerous.

One of the most dangerous things there is.

A contradiction.
A huge one.
Because when you see growth in someone;
real change,
real effort,
real warmth,
something so soulful in them.

Especially in their eyes.

Then they turn into someone else,
someone colder, darker,
someone who wounds you so badly.

It cuts deeper
than all the blunt cruelty you expected from others.

Because you didn’t just hope for them,
You trusted them. That’s rare for you most of all.

You gave them a rare kind of faith.
The kind of faith you always struggle to offer and struggle even more to believe.

You know you could never receive  that in a million years.

And losing that,
hurts more than almost anything.

Anything.

For a long time,
I didn’t feel much anger toward anyone but myself.
Sadness or indifference became my reflex.
Feeling anything more, like grief, or especially anger
felt like it could cost me everything.

Back then, my apathy wasn’t numbness by accident.
It was my best option for survival.
Feeling the full weight of it all,
the rage of what happened and what was done
would have shattered me.

And turned me into someone that is not me.

So my brain did something brilliant.
It turned the volume way down.
And it worked.
It kept me alive.

Even now, when I know I should be angry,
it still feels too big sometimes.
Like it will swallow me whole.
Or maybe I fear I don’t have the right to feel it.
Maybe I wouldn’t know what to do with it once it’s there.

But lately, I’ve started to let anger in
a little at a time.
And with it has come something unexpected,
more understanding, compassion and love for myself.

It’ll be a long journey,
but one that will help heal me.

Because beneath it lives the part of me
that always knew I deserved better.
The part of me still fighting for myself.

Before the pieces aligned,
I lived suspended in the blur.
Uncertain, restless,
haunted by questions with no answers.
Every silence felt like a weight,
every unknown
a storm waiting to break.
I braced myself without fully knowing why,
waiting for everything to fall away.

Then, all at once,
the fragments that had been scattered
finally came together.
With that clarity,
my body and mind let out
the breath I had no idea they had been holding.

And in that rare stillness,
I remember what it feels like
to stand firm,
to breathe deep,
to trust that knowing,
even when it hurts,
is a kind of freedom.

Even when the truths are painful and heavy,
past and present,
I would rather have them laid bare
than hidden in the shadows.
Because when I know,
when I hold the details in my hands,
I can make sense of them.
I can set each piece into place,
and stand on solid ground.
Instead of sinking
in a quicksand of uncertainty.

Clarity does not erase the pain.
But it gives me strength.
It gives me a foundation to stand on.
And that is enough to keep me here,
unshaken,
even when the darkness returns.

It didn’t arrive with an uproar,
no lightning bolt,
no tearful revelation.
Just a quiet return,
like sunlight slipping through blinds
after too many gray mornings.

At first, I didn’t notice.
The noise had dulled,
I thought it was just a pause.
Another calm before the ache.

But then,
a moment held steady,
a thought stayed clear.
My breath didn’t catch.
The fog didn’t come.
And I realized,
I feel like myself again.
Inside my own head.
Present.
Real.

Not grasping,
not lost.
Just here.

And maybe it won’t last.
Maybe this is a borrowed stillness,
a gift that slips away like so many before.
But I’m holding on.

With both hands.
With everything I have.

Because now that I’ve tasted it again,
I remember what I’ve been missing.
I don’t want to forget.

Not again.

So I’ll carry this feeling
tucked in the folds of my memory,
pressed to my chest like a photograph.
Just in case it fades.
Just in case it leaves.
Just in case
I need to find my way back.

You think you know me but you don’t.

You have never even tried.

Not for my entire life.

You see me through a cracked lens.

One that zooms in on the moments I’ve fallen and conveniently forgets the years I stood tall, silently holding everything together.

You talk about what I didn’t do these past eight months, but where were you when my body stopped cooperating with me?

When I was in agony?

When everything I’d relied on collapsed underneath me?

Where were you then?

And where have you been all these years?

You want credit for caring now?

Now that my struggle and pain are real to you?

Something you can no longer ignore and dismiss?

You act like my pain made me a problem, like my struggle made me someone you had to fix, analyze, and blame.

But I am not your project.

I am not your failure.

I am a person who broke, because I was breaking for so long before anyone noticed.

I gave so much

For years.

I bit my tongue.

I kept showing up when I was exhausted.

I pushed through days that felt impossible. 

I carried pain, physical and emotional, in silence so you could be comfortable.

And the second I needed space to fall apart, you turned your eyes on me like I was the problem.

Why am I always the one being dissected?

Why is it always me under the microscope while your mistakes are brushed aside like dust?

Why do I feel like I’m constantly trying to defend my humanity, like I have to justify being overwhelmed?

I am not a villain because I couldn’t keep pretending I was okay.

I am not to blame for things I didn’t do. And I will no longer carry your inability to understand me as my shame.

I fell apart.

That’s what humans do sometimes. And I won’t apologize for being human anymore.

And beneath the anger… is sorrow.
A deep, endless sorrow that feels like it has taken root in my bones.

Do you know what it feels like to wake up and immediately wish you hadn’t?

To lie in bed and ask yourself how you’re supposed to get through another day that feels exactly like the one before it?

Empty, heavy, unrelenting?

There are moments I’ve wanted to die.

Not because I don’t want life, but because this life, in this body, with this pain, with this constant feeling of being misunderstood blamed or discarded… feels like too much.

I didn’t choose this.
I didn’t choose to be sick.

I didn’t choose to fall apart.
I didn’t ask for my brain to short-circuit from pain, or for my spirit to dim from being unseen.

There are nights I’ve lain in the dark, silently begging for something, anything, to take this and me away.

Not because I’m weak.

But because I’ve been so strong for so long, no one seems to see that the strength is running out.

I needed someone to hold me.
Not fix me.

Not question me.

Just hold me in the thick of it and say, “I know this is awful, and I’m not going anywhere.”

But instead, I got silence.

Distance.

Assumptions.

Judgment.

And now I feel like I’m screaming into a void where everyone has already made up their mind about me.

But this is my truth.
I am grieving.
I am hurting.
I am not okay, but I’m still here.
And maybe that should count for something.

-The Aftermath

My mind swirls
around and inside me.
A neverending storm.

I do not know
how to escape it,
nor contain it.

I can’t find a way
through it,
around it,
or a way to fight it
any longer.

I fear it has won
so often,
I’ve lost count.
And the fear itself
makes my stomach churn.
Just at the very thought.

I wonder every day,
where has my strength gone?

I’ve never felt
this weak,
this sick,
physically,
in years.
Not like I have
the past 8 months.

It feels like,
in just that short span,
I’ve seen the inside of the hospital
more than I have
in my entire life.

And with every visit,
my mind feels weaker.
Too haunted by the memories
all this pain has dug up.

Will my fear
one day be right?
Will this storm
I’m trapped inside
finally, beat me?

Or,
can I truly beat it?

Not pretend,
not lie to myself,
but really beat it?

The torment,
the demons,
the spinning of the mind,
hell,
even the dreams?

And why,
why do I feel
like both outcomes
are what my future holds?

A contradiction.

When I thought of leaving,
I felt more relief than anything.
More than sadness, anger, hurt,
more than doubt.
That says a lot.

It got to a point where
the thought of ending it
felt like freedom.

I had, and still have,
so much love for who they were.
For who they were in the beginning.
But it got bad
so fast,
and also so slowly.

In hindsight,
I see now the things I missed.
The signs I overlooked,
was blinded to,
or chose to ignore
for the sake of love.

In the end,
I realized I had to love myself enough to walk away.
I had to love myself
more than them.

They were the first person
who I felt truly understood me.
Who tried to, every day.
It felt like they knew my soul,
and I knew theirs.

Our connection ran deep.
We both worked to build that.
At one point, it was absolutely beautiful.
I thought they were it for me.

But the flaws I carried,
the ones they once accepted,
were turned against me.
While their flaws
only grew.

I tried to accept them as they changed.
I tried to see the best.
I acknowledged my faults,
my part.
But they never could
acknowledge theirs.

I kept holding on
to the memory of who they were.
Hoping they’d return to that version.
Hoping love would be enough
to bring us back.

But I was the only one
still reaching,
still trying,
still bending
until I couldn’t bend anymore
without breaking.

There were moments I questioned myself.
Was I asking too much?
Was I too sensitive?
Too broken?

Too sick?

They made me feel like I was.

But deep down,
something in me knew:
This isn’t what love is supposed to feel like.
It’s not supposed to be
so lonely
when you’re not alone.

I didn’t stop loving them.
I just started loving myself more.
Enough to see the truth.
Enough to walk away
without needing them to understand why.

Since then,
there’s been grief.
Not just for them,
but for the version of me
that stayed too long,
that tried too hard
to make something work
that was already gone.

But there’s also been peace.
A quiet, growing kind.
The kind that doesn’t come in a rush,
but settles in slowly
like sunlight after a long storm.

I’m learning to trust myself again.
To believe my feelings for the first time.
To know that love
shouldn’t require
the abandonment of self.

And sometimes,
I still miss what we once had.
But I don’t miss
who I became
in trying to keep it.

I carry the love,
the lessons,
and the letting go.

Not as a wound,
but as a reminder.
Of how far I’ve come,
of who I’ve chosen to be,
and of the kind of love
I now know and believe I deserve.

(Follow-up to Finally)

I Am the Tether

I do not shout.
I do not drag.
I do not scold
or call you ungrateful.

I simply stay.

You call me “something,”
a force unnamed.
But I know your name
by heart.

I’ve been here longer
than the pain.
I’ve held your ankle,
your soul, your heart.
But not to trap you,
but to keep you
from vanishing completely.

You think I pull you back
to suffer more.
But no.
I pull you back
so you can still
feel.

So you can still
choose.

So you can still
love,
even when it hurts.
Even when it doesn’t feel
like love at all.

You think you are no one,
but I know
you are the pages
yet unwritten,
the arms someone will run into
one day and feel safe.
The look
that softens someone else’s ache.
The voice
someone will remember
because it saved them
without even trying.

You call it shame.
You call it weakness.
I call it still breathing.
Still here.
Still possible.

You think you’re lost,
but I only see
how fiercely you stay,
how bravely you fall
and rise
and fall again.

I am not here
to make you pretend
you are okay.

I am here
to keep the door
from closing.

So if you can’t walk through it now,
just rest.
Breathe.

Let me hold the weight
you don’t have to carry alone.

Not yet.

Because there’s still
more light to see,
more air to fill your lungs,
more moments to experience.
Ones not just of joy,
but of truth,
and that’s what you’re made of.

And when you’re ready,
you’ll rise.
Not because I pull,
but because you choose.

I am the tether.
I stay,
because
you matter.

I told myself I would be free when that day finally had come and gone.

That it would all be over.

That she no longer could affect me because I was walking away for good.

That day, I stood before her with the rest of them, waiting my turn.

I never expected her to say anything other than what she ended up saying.

What she has always said.

I didn’t expect disappointment to come at all, let alone have it come days later.

  What I didn’t realize at the time, and in that moment, is I let myself feel a kind of hope I had promised I would never evet let back in.

 A hope partly connected to her.

One that has always felt foolish because it has only ever hurt me.

Yet I still let it happen without seeing until after I had done so.

This time, even after years of her destruction, what I had unknowingly hoped and maybe even prayed for was that she would actually hear me.

That she would take my words and me seriously.

 I don’t remember if there ever a moment when she truly had, let alone tried to. 

It was in no way realistic nor smart, but still, I had let that hope creep in somehow. 

I wondered when was the last time it was that she had looked at me and actually saw me?

Had she ever?

I have no idea anymore.

That day I saw her eyes were now completely empty and cold. Blank.

They held a darkness inside of her that she let grow over the years.

An erie darkness that at times gives me chills.

One that still sometimes scares me to this day and has for most of my life.

I have always felt like a coward when it comes to her.

 Looking at her I realized the person I knew her as all those years ago was, in reality, a mask that she had worn and hid behind.

Now even that mask is gone.

I see now a stranger is before me.

I always could see how damaged, miserable, tortured and in pain she is.

But I do not know her and wonder if I really ever did.

I feel I only know a version of her that is long gone.

She chose her hell a long time ago, and now it’s the only place she feels comfortable being despite losing so much.

I think after this long it’s all she knows.

It doesn’t scare her.

However, what does scare her is change and I think it always has.

I don’t believe she will ever choose it instead of her own misery.

Her misery is hers and what she has built around her. It has made her even more cruel and angry.

Along with her drugs and alcohol, it is what matters to her most now.

The body is deceiving.

Pain is like choking on air while trying to keep your head above the water.                                            
Treading water to stay afloat, but you always feel it regardless. 
You can not see it but you know it’s there. 

Reaching to pull out invisible knives from your gut and back that do not exist. Grasping in the night at nothing and dreaming of horrible, evil things.

‘Change your perspective,’ they say. 

Well, this is the one I was born to, my own perspective.
I can see someone else’s, of course, I usually go out of my way to do that.                                                              
  But I can’t change mine with just the snap of a finger.
No matter how hard I desperately try.                           
And I do try.

I feel what I feel, and forcing myself to feel the opposite seems almost impossible.                                   
Like a lie at times.                                                               
Dismissive even.
Of not only my pain but my struggle as a whole.

They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but part of me disagrees.
It’s true, but sometimes what doesn’t kill you just doesn’t kill you.                                                                  
So you keep going because you can’t see any other choice besides the worst one.

And death isn’t an option.

Not today, anyway.

They are tired of hearing me talk.
About the things I never spoke of before most of all.
Not realizing or remembering it was them who asked me about it, to talk about the darkness.
Once I let it out, I thought it helped.
It was burning inside my chest and inside my soul.

At first, it did help.

But then it didn’t.
Because they weren’t the right people to open up to.
It was all used to put me in a box.
To label and define me.
For them to feel superior, in some way.

But I am learning who the right people are.

Uninformed advice, never asked for, never wanted, came out of their mouths at every chance they deemed fit.
Not seeing beyond their own need to hear themselves speak.
Ignorance and condescension dripping from their every word.

I just need to shut up.
Tell them it’s fine. That I’m fine.
Like I used to.
And just focus on surviving this.
On staying alive.
Exhaustion that feels like it’s a part of every cell in my body weighs so heavy.
It feels pain is destroying my sanity at times.

Scaring me.

I don’t have it in me to try to show them they are wrong.
It would be pointless.

 I’ve tried.
To them, they aren’t wrong.

Well, not when it comes to me, it seems.
Or at least, they won’t admit when they are.

I don’t have anything to prove.

Some people choose, time and time again, to see me through their cloudy and damaged lens.
To not take the time to actually listen.
To hear how they speak.
To see how they come across.
Do they even hear the shit that comes out of their mouths?
To them, I know nothing and am naive about most things.

I should have just kept my mouth shut.
Stayed silent like before.
But I’ve come to realize that I’m okay with their faulty perception of me.
Because they don’t truly know me.
And the ones who do, the ones who want to, have shown me that.
In turn, I’ve been capable of getting to know them better as well.

At least some good came out of all this.
That is something I’m grateful for.
It’s truly all I have ever wanted and hoped for.

Thank God for silver linings.
Especially the ones you didn’t expect or see coming.

My mind is spinning so fast
I’m gone.
I’ve left.

My body is frozen in time.

Living in the now and the then
is like living in two alternate universes.
I’m stuck between the two.
I’m never fully in the past
nor in the present.

I flicker
and switch back and forth
like a light switch.

It’s out of my control
most of the time.

I’m not living at all in the end.

I’m dead inside.
I’m a zombie.
I’m numb.

I’m not sleeping,
then I’m not eating.

Things shift,
and reality blurs.

Days pass
with no defining beginning or end.

Nothing makes sense anymore.
Nothing seems to matter.

I no longer care what happens.
Sometimes to myself,
most of all.

Things will play out how they are meant to.

For reasons, I can’t fully grasp,
I’m still desperately trying to survive each day.

I’m grasping at anything
to keep me afloat.

But the darkness below grabs hold of me,
and I slip beneath.

Swallowing water,
sinking slowly.

I’m no longer fighting anymore.
I’m giving in.

And there is a sense of peace
in that surrender.

Until something—
or someone—
pulls me up from above.

I choke,
cough,
and puke it all back up.

Gasping for air,
disappointed instead of relieved.

Tears stream down my cheeks.
I don’t notice
until I taste them
on my lips.

Then her face flashes in my mind.
The one who has always known me best.
The one who survived so much
alongside me
for all those years, especially as kids.

The look I imagine on her face
if she knew,
imprints upon me.

My heart breaks
at that image of her
in my head.

It shatters me.

Confused,
I wonder
why the darkness didn’t take me.

It should have.

So why me?
I am no one.

What is it
that keeps me tethered
to this earth?

Bound to this life?

No matter how hard
I’ve tried to leave here,
it,
something,
has me by the ankle.
By the soul.

It won’t let me go.
It keeps me here.

More than once now,
it has forced me to stay.

I feel like a coward
immediately after.
A failure.

Ashamed I’m not strong enough.
Ashamed, I still don’t want to be here.

I should feel lucky.
Grateful instead.

And I do.

But most of the time,
I just feel this sadness
bone deep.

It can almost crush my chest
with the weight it carries.

I don’t think I was ever meant
for this world.

I fight it
every day.

Some days
more than others.

It’s a battle
with myself.

One that drains me
to the core.

I pray it ends.

Or
that I find the strength
one final time
to end it.

I’ve already been given
more chances than most.

One way or another,
I will find a way out.

Free from those
who chose to judge
with smiles on their faces.
Tearing me down
while claiming they aren’t.
Calling it love and concern instead.

But most of all,
free from the pain.

Finally.

Weightless.
Floating away.