Since my adolescence and my consciousness began to grow,
Within a shadow began to develop with me side by side.
On the days I smile ear to ear, my shadow is lurking near.

I feel its haunting aura deep in my bones like an itch I can't scratch.
When it takes me and absorbs me, my presence is not there, and my impulses take over.
Suddenly my phone is in my hands, cutting off all my friends.
Suddenly a cold piece of metal is in my hands, cutting whats left of me.
I hear it whispering to me in the dead of the night, stripping me of my worth.

And then in the morning it leaves without a goodbye, leaving me to deal with  reality.
But am I really alone when any moment my shadow can return, after all, the shadow is just a part of me.

The cycle never ends, the highs and lows.
Mom says its puberty, I am just a kid. Now I'm 17 and yet I always loop back to where it all started, where the shadow introduced itself without a hello.
Will my shadow leave me once puberty ends, or will I cut everyone off by then.

You take my breath away, but not the feeling of astonishment and awe
You take my breath away in the feeling of where breathing is suddenly not an option

Somehow you've become the very thing that grounds me yet uproots me at the same time
You are the north star guiding me through the white capped sea yet you are the waves that are bringing me under

My unpredictability and impulsivity has pushed you away like the rest, but unlike them I keep trying to crawl back to you
The sporadic mood swings and late night texts of I'm sorry and we're done for the 50th time shouldn't be something you have to be used to
The please forgive me's yet I don't deserve your forgiveness

The thing we both latch on to, or maybe its just me, is the link we used to share stronger than a lock
We used to love each other, platonically, romantically, that's for you to decide
I mourn the loss of that love, knowing we can never go back to it as much as I try to reverse the damage I have done

I switch faster than a blink of an eye
One second I am grounded to the world I'm in
Blink and I'm suddenly in another dimension, the world feels as if its crumbling beneath my feet.

Adults have wisdom, they've been around longer than us.
They call what I have teenage hormones, they know best, they were my age once.
But then again, this is their first life too, so they don't really know anything.

The back and forth between sane and manic
The pushing and pulling away and the long midnight texts of I'm sorry
I start to wonder if there's an underlying cause
Or maybe its just teenage hormones.

3 alarms to waken you from your sleep coma each morning
Get ready for the day with extra time to ****, then head to that job against your will

8 hours of employment each day, reminding yourself that paycheck to push you through

5 days a week to be that friendly camper with a big smile on their face, one because you have no choice, and two your thinking about home time


3 hours of sleep and 3 alarm clocks

At least you're getting that paycheck.

I miss the late night calls until we hear the morning birds sing
I miss the late night walks to your house when there's no one else awake
I miss the comfortable silence between us or laughing with you until it hurts

Now I look at my phone and months go by since the last call we shared
Now I walk and pass by your house, both of us awake, but living separate lives
Now the silence between us is tense, only small talk of "how have you been"

I miss you even when I'm with you, because when I'm with you I feel like I don't know you

Held together by the rope that brought us together
On my end it's a loop that wraps around my neck
On your end it's a loose thread that's ready to snap

Let the rope go and the loop around me will tighten, you are my lifeline, without you I am gone
But if you let the rope go you are unburdened from the weight of me that holds you down, without me you are free

Close your eyes and stop breathing
Hold your breath until you burst causing the racing world to stop.
Listen, listen close, put your ear to the ground
Do you hear that? The sounds of the world have silenced.

All you hear is the steady thumping of you heart
All you feel is your arteries pumping blood throughout your body.
Open your eyes and come back, plant yourself into the world you live in
Don't fly away into the unknown abyss that tries to take you from reality.

You need to ground yourself like a freshly sprouted plant that's trying to survive its first downpour.
Ground yourself like a boulder in the rapid currents, ground yourself like a bird in a storm.
If you don't succeed, you will keep falling.
falling and falling until you cant climb back up.

Close your eyes, breathe.
Breathe in the smells of your old house and the dust that filters the air.
This is your life, open your eyes to the reality you are in.

I want to love you like how I'm meant to love you
The truth is I know that love will never be true

I want to love you but it will never be real
The love we both want is not how I feel

The love I have is different from yours
Mine is restricting making me want to explode out of my pores

Maybe if I wasn't born this way then I could love you how I want to
Maybe if I was born the right way I could love you how I'm meant to

Sprinting through the blades of grass through the midnight wind
The night hears my footsteps but I hear the music in my ears
Running and spinning it’s nauseating making the world spin.
Diving into the piercing cold lake sending a shock throughout my nervous system, jump starting my heart.
Holding my breath so the liquid doesn’t fill my lungs, the lack of oxygen will collapse my lungs, instead of the water that will fill them later.
I beg and beg to stop running, I plead as I wish to hear my footsteps and not the music sprinting in my head
I hold my breath and the music stops
I breath and the music plays
Both will **** me, one quicker than the other
One will drive me into a spiral of insanity
One will drive me into cardiac arrest
In the end the music will stop
Maybe more to life after you take your last breath
Only time will tell

Sunk into the ocean of the abyss, the rope pulls me out
The whip slaps me back down as the angels circle around
Falling back into the ocean, trying to drink my way out until it fills me up

I am an alien to my own species,
Not the green bug eyed creature, I blend in.
One foot out of line suddenly all the eyes of the world are on you, the squinting looks that pierce your soul.
One foot too far and now you're no longer human, you're a show animal to be judged.
One foot too far and you trip, tumbling down the never ending white staircase leading to the pits of hell and beyond,
Now you're trying to climb up to the white gateway, but one foot out you slip and fall again

The light flickers in the night sky
Chains tighten around my heart, tugging as it tries to escape the black hole that consumes me
Fire burns in my eyes as they’re being set ablaze by the sight they can’t yet see
Heat rises to my cheeks like an active volcano erupting from being idol for too long
I am a dying star waiting to burst into shards of colour that can pierce your soul
I am a nebula bound to catch your eye, you are light years away, I am out of your reach inside the glass doors that hold me captive
Hiding away in the small room where one keeps their clothes, the colours of the stars leak through the cracks underneath the doors trying to reach you

Pounding, the parade of drums that pound in my chest.
Shrinking, both my lungs and my body that deflate.
Pouring, sweat pouring out of each pour in my skin, dripping down into a puddle of tears.
My ears feel as if they're waiting to pop, my mind departs from my body as it ascends to the atmosphere above.
Lost, I feel lost as my reflection stares back at me.
The name I was given feels foreign on my tongue as I repeat it over and over hoping it will come back.
As my name crawls away like a scared child I lose recognition of who I was.

Who am I
What am I

As I continue to stare into my soulless eyes, my name is there in the back of my head.
This name is not the one that crawled away from me, but it's a name I'm crawling too.
My hunched over figure perks up like a flower after a downpour
I hold my hand and grasp onto the name that found me.

I know who I am
I know what I am

Soft sand under my feet soon turns to aching rocks as you keep walking forward
A trail of footprints left behind from every moment you keep walking
The rocks in my feet are harder to ignore when they’re staring right at me
I can’t stop walking or the world will stop spinning
But the rocks grow and my feet bleed
I bleed, and bleed until I bleed no more
Seeping into the rocks which then turn into sand
I’m now a part of the earth that kills me, apart of the nature that should nurture me

No longer will I hide in the dark cracks of the world we live in
The shadows that lurk beneath my skull will be ****** out like the marrow in our bones.
No longer will I cry as the screams of life ring in my ears,
Now the ring is the sound of the bells in the night.
It’s as if the world was flipped, turned inside out like my guts.
Guts are something you need, you need to have guts to keep living.
Life comes with knives that are constantly thrown at you,
Shield yourself from the shadows and you can be the light to lead your own path
Do not live to die, live to live