Please look away

We announce our birth with a scream of cries, the only time that harsh sound brings joy to the mother. Our voice is the only power, most of us don’t have to earn. Our only tool for survival, with the only knowledge coming in hunger pains, dirty diapers, and plain discomfort. We knew to cry until we got what we needed. A simple thought; we know what is essential and we work to obtain it. 

So why is it that as we grow older and experience more, gain more knowledge, gain more power– that we begin to forget this one fact. This one piece of information that even a newborn baby is given to have a chance at surviving. The real question is: are we forgetting? Or are we choosing to? The world around us is a constant surge of crashing waters, never stable. The things we find that small comfort in can do harm, will do harm. But what’s left when life revolves around the unpleasant, with nothing that relieves the pain or worry. When the brain has nothing inside it but rotting, shriveled thoughts that envelop any slip of light. Is it worth it to live perfectly, healthily, if us as a whole will never be able to get to this level together?

I look back at my past, constantly questioning “why did I put myself through so much.” Why is it that my issues seem to stem from my hands, my mind, my lies? Those haunted days when I weighed the decision between known and unknown, safe and dangerous. 

The night I savored the heft of the kitchen knife in my hand, the cold jolt of the metal. 

The night I ordered the scale, lowered the intake below two hundred. 

The night I realized that if I put it in, I can take it out. 

The year I lost all control in my desperate attempt to get it. 

When I decided to make that first cut. To permanently stain my own flesh. My own body. To go against all human instinct, and bring harm to myself. It seemed like the only option, something I had to do. I didn’t know why, I still don’t. I only knew that this was something people do in pain, something to help escape the depths of it. I saw the tips and valleys of a mountainscape up my sister’s arm, the three purple lines that the girl in the back of the class would roll up her sleeve to clean. Images that accompanied the feel of the little felt maroon bag that had begun to expand as it was stuffed with tissue after tissue, cut after cut. 

I found peace in the action. The direct power I could see in my own fingers. To know that in some form I have control, and an impact on something, anything. That I’m not an empty being. 

The belief that seems to follow me through each flashback. My actions engraved into a behavior that favors everyone else before me. Trying to bring happiness to a house with two teenage girls, secretly filling my 7-year old frame with blame. The scrapbooks that used to carry four undoubtedly happy faces, now carry five of less enthusiasm. The only faces I knew, those strangers of the past were gone before I had a chance to meet them. They were anecdotes of success to deliver in reunions, to prove some substance of a life, enough to stop trying so hard. 

The little girl I was, who felt guilty if she forgot to pray for happiness for her mother, or got in trouble for sitting next to someone that talked out of turn and got blamed.  Learning to stay quiet until cued, to follow the directions and social guidelines of others, to fit in and create no waves that feel like a cold slap across the face. I made a promise to my father that “I won’t be mean like them when I’m a teen,” a belief I felt so strongly, a personal strength that got my hopes up. It was replied to in laughs and disbelief, a challenge for me to beat. The motivation to  stuff down any emotion that could disturb. The motivation to raise my voice in my second attempt at greeting my piano teacher even when I feared it would crack and delve into sobs, a common demand of her when my first entrance wasn’t up to par. The shame heated my cheeks as I stood alone behind the white door, practicing in my mind before performing three perfect knocks and facing the disappointed faces on the other side. The motivation to stay quiet, to stay the innocent little girl that couldn’t help laughing at all his jokes, that faced the black of her eyelids, facing her fear of the dark, when he took what he wanted and never said a word. 

It shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m now engineered to scream silently. My throat stings whenever tears threaten, words that have never escaped building up and beginning to overflow. Words that spill across my skin, words that I need to get out. 

My arms glisten, knuckles redden.

I feel the bone, it feels like home. 

I’ve grown up sustaining control, I can’t give it up now. Cant put trust into the chants that the scale will only sway, that it will be okay. To give up the life I’ve diverted to, the routine and ritual that I resort to by default. My automatic setting. The hunger cues I’ve trained to stay at bay, I can’t go back to a life I’ve personally purged out of my skin. The behaviors I’ve banned from my life. The skin I’ve taken in return. Give up the meals that I know will fit just right, to eat a surprise. It’s hard to accept being in the unknown when the said unknown is on the only level small enough to be known. In a world of never ending confusion, my little bubble needs to keep me safe. Don’t take this away too. The hairs are already down the drain, my skins already stained, their faces of shame already engraved. 

I don’t deserve to change. 

I don’t deserve to stay. 

I carry bags of pain–but I’m not one to litter.

Let me fade away and attempt to save the day while others turn their face away. 

Please look away.

I know how to numb the pain

I couldn’t be more different than the child I see in my memories. The girl in pigtails running into the sunny early morning, now taping blackout curtains in anticipation of the harsh awakening. The memories that play out in scenes above, a spectator in my own life. I wish I could take it all back. The weak moments, the forgiven mental attacks. 

One little bite a day still runs out eventually.

One joke about my chubby cheeks.

One tip at the fourth grade snack table on how to lose weight.

One night when you took too much of me. 

They chip away like string after too many attempts at beading it, the dry taste still in my mouth. One more memory to pretend is just a dream, just something that will one day be forgotten, something I can forget. 

Disconnect. Quiet it. Forget it.

Float above in a bubble of safety, a warm blanket to separate me from the real one that’s being slowly lifted off of my legs. 

A place to hide when the fingers I stayed awake waiting for, finally placed their fingers in their practiced route. 

One-step, two-step, move a bit. Restart. 

Until he got enough. Resisting the pressure on my eyelids, to let him take what he wanted before entering his own perfect sleep. I was always taught to put others first. Didn’t want to find coal in my stocking. 

Let them sleep.

While I retreat. 

Thoughts never spoken.

my soul’s already broken. 

What’s one more moment forgotten. 

Learn to be light as a feather

To even the pressure

Flat on my back

Don’t let the eyes track. 

never look back.

Praised for the thing I hated. Hours of practicing demanded. The dread when I saw my father, knowing what he expected. Bits of russian learned before ever taking even a math class. Engraved in each speck of spit as my teacher would have to reach into her backup dictionary, all the english insults used up. A bit contradicting when everyone else was stating that I could never quit, a god given talent; too bad she stole that with each word, yell, and criticism that she used to make me better. 

Humans are creatures of habit, one of the reasons I used to invalidate my own memory. Something that’s normal, it’s not a big deal. It’s not a surprise that I stick to my own. 

Needing a routine, a system tried and true. No room for error. 

Sure it can get mundane, but at least there’s less pain. 

Same alarms used.

Same calories burned.

Same pull from the long-sleeve drawer.

Scared of a delay that ruins my day.

they preach how its dangerous to stay this way–i dont know how to fucking change. 

Just let me bleed.

I don’t want to eat.

I just want to fade.

I’m trying to put others first.

I know how to numb the pain.

So just lay all yours on display and I’ll chip away. 

nothing really matters, as long as I’m helping others.

Maybe I took that wrong, too young to fully understand. But I can’t forget how to live, it’s the only way I’ve learned how.  It’s the only way I’ve stayed. So what if I’m stained. With thinning hair, and purple stripes. At least she’s still there, and I have the bits of happiness, my personal pixie dust that lets me float above. Sometimes I like horror movies, I guess. 

I wasn’t there during kindergarten recess when they made me scared of everyone’s favorite part of the day,

The red tube where they used me.

I wasn’t there when he overruled my logic every night and slept right next to me,

My best friend’s house, stained.

I wasn’t there at my weekly dreaded piano lessons, her tips were never used.

My switch turned off, when the music stopped, and her mouth opened. 

I wasn’t there, so why would I be here? 

I never learned to stick. 

I learned to survive.

Not to thrive.

Power in a Powerless World

A place of everything

Grow up to be “anything”

But it all means nothing

It’ll never be enough.

A cycle of ache

An infinite streak

A higher level each week

Not built for the weak

a colony of identity

The swarm of humanity

It’s all in the mind

The weight of our thoughts

Stress, worries, even just stray

Fragments, causing disarray

I need to put it to bay.

The urge to patrol any Moldable space- consequential damaging trace. 

Making the first cut

Binding the mint shut.

Counting the class snack,

Carrying the one

On the half of a hot dog bun

Too young for an app to track

Memories fade

But not from a blade

It’ll never be enough,

Power in a powerless world.

A Headstone for Scars

They say two negatives makes a positive

So why is it questioned when it’s true

It’s prodded and called flawed

An attempt at fame when it’s 

Really just trying to run from the pain 

The intention behind the incision

The focus on the glisten

Mind Overflow- let the blood go

Power in the control

Think outside the box

Just below your socks

Then it’s down your arms

Up your thighs

Behind your eyes.

It shouldn’t be a surprise

To feel a sting

When you still hear their words ring

The need to see rather than be

The power in me is clearer 

The retrieve when I grieve 

Please don’t leave as I heave 

I want to breathe how they breathe–

With ease. 

Cold marble engraved with initials

Death date decades gone

A film of plaque covering its skin

A tooth decaying with age

Cavities taking up space

memories of only a blank face

A headstone stuck in place.

Side eyes,  sticky thighs

Both visual and physicalScars inside need a headstone too.

Destruction in a Perfect World

Is it easier to take, when it’s me at stake

World tumbling, I’m the one left suffering

A risk-taker alone, chaos my one success

It all seems self inflicted-something must be twisted

When will I know how to let it all go?

The all consuming focus on nothing.

The healing scab peeling back like, 

The sticker that leaves no tacky trace like,

The nail polish that flakes right off like,

The silence that follows silence.

lack of conflict or lack of contact?

Saying more in silence than compliance

Comfort in the pain that never fails to stain

Craving nostalgia requires melting away 

Running the opposite way just to feel a sway

Self protection or just a scared reflection?

The satisfying sound of nothing.

The morning after the last day of school like,

The first sip of an icee before it’s sweating like,

The relief after the knuckles crack like,

The need to fall back, lose track. 

Dialing up the white noise, quiets the same inside 

How does the sound of something silence nothing?

Yet an empty buzz shatters a cohesive anything?

Living in the before avoiding any of the after

Dancing with the prince and never pricking my finger,

Is it worth it to be a pumpkin, never moving over 10 miles an hour

Only to avoid it when the clock strikes a little longer?

The contorting comfort of nothing.

The last tick on the to do list like,

The last blink before a nap like,

The water finally getting hot like,

The rewinding mind to keep intact.

Resisting conflict, missing contact.

The cycle has to end – 

my my, here comes step number 5;

Running the extra mile, towards denial.

Not learning, infinitely stuck churning.