I have gone through these 30 years of life trying my hardest to seek out whatever destruction will push me down the farthest into absolute darkness.

And then there was you.

The mandatory coffee break that the law makers of love and heartache and stars floating around my eyes created so we can know what it feels like to float through galaxies and release the pressure of living.

The ache is familiar and terrifying,
All at once.

I like to take my time studying your face whenever you forget I'm around.
The way you push your hair back sometimes out of frustration
And the way your shoulders tense up when you can tell I'm watching you again.

I think the whole point of the way I pour myself into your body until there's nothing left,
Is just to escape for a bit.
If all of me is inside of someone else,
I don't have to feel the feelings or be overwhelmed by the weight of whatever obsession has burrowed its way inside my head that day.

I like to feel nothing.
And you like to feel everything.

We are made for eachother.

My bed is where I let myself drown a bit
It's where I let myself be soft
Folding my legs in like the corner of the sheets
And letting you get close
But never to my face.
You can get in even closer if you touch my skin the way I tell you to
And let me perform the way I've been taught to
So that after every show you can clap for me
Tuck my hair behind my ears
Kiss my eyelashes
And tell me you've never felt the inside of someone the way you feel mine.
It's existing and it could almost be called life.
The trail of colors and feelings you trace along my spine and my hips so that I can always look in the mirror and remember every single thing that ever created this body.

You love this body.
You love it so well that you think it loves you too.

My organs twist and turn until they settle into one big knot, blocking any chance I had at comfort.

15 days until the death of my ego and I can feel her clawing up my insides, desperately hoping I will choke her up, and back out my throat.

I want to catch my daydreams as they try and flee, and tie them around my wrists so I can carry them with me.

I will tie them with the pink thread from the dress you loved to watch me twirl in after church, in the basement.
It will be a relief to watch the wind hold those memories rather than holding them in that part of my brain we don't talk about.
It will look pretty, and light.
Maybe I will feel pretty, and light.

Either way these things I see running through my head are stuck with me as long as I keep the threat tied tight,
I will look past that pink string and into the thought of living a life where I am the bird on my arm and the child inside me.

We fly together and we are free.

Even as an adult with experience in therapy, and growing as a human, I still think back to all of the kids and teenagers you helped and feel an overwhelming urge to yell
"But what about your own children??"
And even then, I know it would do nothing.
The past never changes.
You lived an entire life through your career, saving kids from neglect.
How beautiful, for them.

My body is made up of the dark things but underneath my skin are the light things, and sometimes when everyone is quiet and distracted with themselves
I peek under there at the pastel colors and the softness of winged things flying around aimlessly.
It's a beautiful little secret that I keep buried in my dreams where I get to feel like a kid again but with all the knowledge I need to keep me safe.
There are fields and sun, and the perfect amount of a breeze.
I get to run, roll down hills, get my knees ***** and wash them off in a river.
I nap in the tall grass.
I can smell when the rain is coming
And I never run from it.

It's my favorite place.

My skin crawls into bed and wraps up in the thick of it,
Nesting.
I'm still so soft and tender,
I wonder what it would be like to feel tough.

My heart has become less creature and more "trying her best" in the last 6 months or so.
Less about sacrifice
And more about hope.

When I was younger I would hide in a similar nest and pile on the heaviest blankets so I could see what it felt like to be secure.
My legs curled up and the bottoms of my feet almost resting on the back of my thighs.
I'd grieve my moments.
The moments of being a kid and laughing and climbing trees. When most boys were stupid and gross, except my best friend because we would lay in the grass and look at clouds and laugh about how he could never see what I saw.

Now I hide in this nest, less to dream about the past and more to dream of a future where I feel safe on the outside of these blankets.

The shame you so enthusiastically poured into my body,
Now and then it
Drowns me.
My head will slip below the surface -
I keep my eyes open though.
And one day I won't see you staring down at me.

When Im in a crowd of people
Ive always felt like
I take up too much space.
That I am a woman,
So I should speak in hushed tones
And soft glances.
Never be bigger than those who
Surround you.
Be the laugh track put in so people around you feel that they are funny.
Be kissed,
Get ******,
Keep your body covered,
Agree to their brilliant ideas,
Offer up yourself as
Reward,
Apology,
Validation.

Now when I feel large,
I say "Hello"

Reliving trauma through my muscles and bones and mouth means my brain knows I am strong enough to handle it now.
I can hold her through this,
In my safe home with my safe people.

Sometimes I think back to every man who has ever touched me and I wonder why God decided to put me on this earth just to exist as an energy source for them.

I take the time to expose who actually am and I am met with eyes scanning my body and hands looking to insert themselves into any spot closest to making it's way inside my body.

They say it's what's inside that counts but if thats the truth the why is it the more inside they are, the less I want to even be here.

I was 10.
It's not my fault that when
My doctor compliments my hair
It send a tingle down my spine
And makes me feel on edge,
Alert and wondering if all men
Smell like him.

I was 13.
It's not my fault that my gym teacher
Likes to sit in the change room
With me while I try to skip class.
And he tells me I need to eat more to
Fill out my figure.
That I'll grow into a
"Beautiful young lady"

I'm 15.
It's not my fault the 23 yr old man
Looks at me and wonders what
I taste like.

I'm 17
It's not my fault that my friends dad
Tells her to invite me on every trip
And that one time I went too far
Into the lake and he had to come save me by holding on tight and grazing parts of me that made me feel small and quiet.
And wish I had drowned instead.

I know its wrong.
But it fulfills the
Need.

My batteries have run dry and every store I go into tells me they're sold out.
I dont know what else makes this brain and body continue on living.

I am mad when people think I am incapable, moody, hopeless, dramatic, destructive..

But I can't stop being those things.

I used to walk around
With a tornado of filth
Constantly in my head.
I was made up entirely of
***** words
Like "Addict",
"Victim",
"Mentally ill",
"Emotional",
"Sinner",
"Broken".
Now I walk around as the tornado,
Labelled as
Addict
Victim
Mentally ill
Emotional
Sinner
Broken.
And its ******* beautiful.

It hurts when she screams for attention
Because her reason is always
Something that I spend my time
Trying to run from.
Her sweet face.
How does she hold all that hurt behind it and not give it away.
What a smart girl.
A smart, clever
Loved
Beautiful girl.
Don't worry my baby.
You can rest with me for awhile

I am so hungry every single day
Every word I say takes a bit out of me and by the end of it all I'm left with an aching gut and a brain that can't think straight.
I can't eat because I'm sick
I'm sick because I can't eat enough
And the cycle repeats itself every 24 hours sometimes
I'm going insane.

My body is not currency
That you can barter for
In return for everyday things
Like being a partner
Or friend.
My body is a gift I choose to give
When I want to feel close to you,
And words aren't explaining how
I adore you.

We can learn this together.

The emptiness is softer & more inviting than any bright, chaos free
Life I could possibly build.
Its not fair how they got to choose
What kind of life I could live before I even knew how to speak the words I needed, to convince them otherwise.

I am only a tainted piece of glass.
I am used, and broken.
And I hate that I am like this.
There is no self cleaner I can use,
No repair shop I can go to.
I can scrub, and repaint,
But eventually it will show through.
And you will leave.
You
Will
Leave

I wonder if all the people I ever touched think of me
And I wonder if those thoughts ever actually resemble who I am.
Do I even know what that is?
Not really.
I've set hearts on fire
And breathed air into so many lungs
And I wonder if the way they live their life now is at all attached to even a small memory of what I felt like.

Why am I so obsessed with making sure I disappear into whatever I can find out there.

I don't even like you.

My bones are melting into my skin and disappearing as every inside thought exists less and less. Every hope and effort I put into becoming more for you is leaving me and I don't understand how this is something I'm expected to cope with. I can feel my joints start to tingle and they turn into sinewy strands barely keeping what's left of me together. I want to feel again.

She sets sail in her sailboat hoping that these winds will take her to a new ocean where someone will look at her and say "oh. We are the same"

The difference between last month and right now is honestly alarming.
But I have to admit, I'm impressed with how not alarmed you seem.
I guess I'll just keep writing mine out here for strangers to see so I can be calm about it too.

Somehow you have managed to grow into this body that is made up of all of these small things that fit together in the most distracting way. When you sit close to me I can feel the static from your skin and I always brace myself for the shock, but for some reason you just absorb it or something and I'm left with my shoulders tense and this weird, phantom pain in whatever spot you were closest to. Sometimes when I think about you I get this random heartbeat that comes from a spot inside me that really shouldn't have a heartbeat. It's like you scrambled me inside and out and head to toe, but it still totally works and somehow my organs keep me alive like they haven't moved from their original spot. Sometimes I just can't wrap my head around how you feel so light and it's so constant that my brain just goes into this overmedicated kind of fog and I have to blame it on some conspiracy theory like, this is the Truman Show and I've just been conditioned since birth to end up here, that it's just a script. Love can be so easily created and that means I never have to lose this.

I wonder if you ever feel this about me.

I think I could be this for you too, you know. I am really likeable I think and I'm not scared to jump off the cliff if that's what comes next.

I'll meet you at the bottom.

I could offer you both my arms and a leg and you would still ask me for my lungs.

I often wonder when you'll have enough pieces of me, so I can start to feel whole somewhere.

Its odd to think that this skin that covers my bones is the same skin that witnessed all of my love and hurt, stretching and shrinking, bleeding and healing, emptiness and growth.
The map that shows you where every hand has been, and all the corners Ill never allow to be touched again.

It's okay to let your mess pour out over the loosely drawn walls you've placed around yourself,
An attempt to be safe feels good for the heart.
And even though it feels as if
The entire world is looking at what exposed itself,
It's not even true.
The only people who can see it
Are the ones who love you
And can clean it up everytime this happens.
Mess isn't shameful.
Mess is human

I secretly love that who I am includes more than one personality.
My passion is undeniable
And my heart will feel
Every. Single. Thing.
I love that I am fragile
And also bold,
Ready to speak up before my brain can argue that it's what I should do.
It's messy and even when it's quiet
It's really hard to pull yourself away
Because you're thinking at any minute
A new thing will happen.
And the new thing might not be exciting or even pleasant.
But it will always make you feel something.
Sometimes I will set my glass heart on a shelf that is missing a ***** or two,
Or balance it on a ledge
Just to see if fate is paying attention
And give myself the thrill of not knowing if I am going to break today.
I think I like the excitement and the pain of putting myself back together,
Because everytime it comes out a little different.
When I die I can tell the people in my life that I have loved them as many different people and that it is more powerful than anyone else who will give them that emotion.
My love is magic, excessive, everywhere and expressed in different ways depending on what skin I was wearing then.
And that makes me feel strong,
And special.

Everything about this body is wrong.
It hurts underneath my teeth
And my skin is someone else's.
I feel trapped and no one hears me.
Why do I feel like I am speaking an entirely different language than you?
If you could just be still for a little while maybe I could remember which direction I drove here in and actually make my way out.

Sometimes I take the time to crawl up into the attic and help my brain clean up the clutter.
But going through the piles and piles
Of these sentences full of big feelings,
It's like I am reading someone else's diary and I end up feeling...
Connected.
It scares me a little.

There's something inside of you that screams my name so constantly it's all that's in my head lately.
A Call for connection, maybe.
A connection that sits in the front of our brains begging to be focused on 24 hours of the day, greedy attention seeking touch starved intensity that you feel so deeply inside of you it's as if your body turns into a soft current of electricity that brings our bones to life. The bones we never knew wanted to move that much. The bones that we thought were forever still and told us settling was comfort.
Comfort is the speed of which my heart leaps into your mouth saying devour me.
Comfort is your skin becoming my skin.
Comfort is nothing else but what we can never tell others, because explaining it would be so lacking in the actual feelings that it would be like the faintest breeze of wind. They would never see it. And it would change nothing for them.

I like when it gets dark and it's quieter in the hallways, you can hear your neighbors TV softly drowning out the creaks and the groans and the whispers of your body as you slowly relax.
I'm not sure if my mind moves faster or if I can just hear it better because everything around me is moving slower as the minutes go by.
Either way the speed of the thoughts isn't what makes me feel unsteady,
It's the fact that they start in one spot and up back at you.
I don't even fight it anymore.
They move across my brain like it's routine now.
It makes me forget how to breathe in a  normal pattern
And makes my stomach feel like it's filling up with cotton.
Somehow I always end up back at the beginning and I say good night.
Goodnight heart.
Goodnight memories.
Then I turn off the light and close my eyes to get enough rest so that I can do the routine again tomorrow.

I'm the easiest to read,
My eyes hide nothing.
You can look through each of my ramblings in the form of a poem
And you'll always come to the same conclusion.
I am nothing but well carved out puzzle pieces of the past, filled with bodies and shattered hearts, faked *******, memories of hands, pictures of how to let go and finding a strangers strand of hair wrapped around my fingers and tucked into my clothes.
So I never forget.

I think about it all the time.
What is it like to see me through someone else's mouth?
Do you ever smell something that brings an image of me to the front of your mind,
And it takes you days to shake it off?
Do I feel familiar, ever?
Sometimes it's nice to think about it like that and feel sure of your ability to connect with people.
Your intuition is strong.
You know when the feelings are there and when they aren't.
Also so,
So,
Good at following someone else's lead.
I'm the prettiest mirror
I always smell soft
And when you say "Lets"
I say "Yes".

I often take the time to write out something that feels like the old me
Who is sad and kind of cracked.
The one who made the wrong decisions because that's what she knew to do.
Because feeling sad is what I grew with most of my life.
Feeling a little hollow was supposed to be permanent and sometimes
When I look at how my life is so warm now, and every part of me that used to be empty is now filled with flowers and roots and so much green.
It's nice to breathe in a little of the cold I used to feel day after day.
Maybe I still do it to know that if
All of this falls apart like I often expect it to,
I could go back there and it would be as if nothing happened.

I was set on fire.
I don't really understand how
A memory is so powerful still.
How many more years does it need?
I daydream about being a person
Who can enjoy every touch
And not have to be prepared
For what reaction might
Escape my body.
I've read all I can about this
And still when it happens
Every thought and affirmation
Is blurry and reading it is impossible.
And even after writing this out
It still burns too ******* much
And all I can think is
Run
Run from yourself
And this body
And the memories it holds
And the poison it injects into your veins
Everytime you think you're well and
This time the sensation of being touched won't feel like you're killing yourself

I am prettiest when I am myself.
My skin shows me how much life
I've lived.
And everything has softened
Over the years.
I've done less running away
And more standing strong.
I've done more crying
And spent less days frozen.
My hands are more rough
But my heart is more free.
My bones are louder
But my mind is quieter.

I am prettiest when I am myself.

Sometimes I forget in the moment that at the end of the day when I've spent every spare minute trying to distract myself with another human, I will feel the most empty I've ever felt, even more than the day before.

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in groundhog day,
But not the one with the warm kiss at the end where the people leave connected and have learned how to love again.

It's always the one where I just end up smaller than I used to be, and I can never make enough noise so that the person next to me actually hears it.

I wake up every morning saying there is worth here somewhere in this body and it takes only hours for me to have fully rejected that ridiculous notion that somehow I could have ever been of value.