Oh Child

1. The first time your heart broke you were eight years old and you didn't know what was happening. Oh child, do you still believe your own hand wielded that sledgehammer?

2. When I see you, I have two thoughts: you are the strongest; you are the weakest. You are beaten down but parts of you remain unbroken and you hold your bloody head up with shameful pride.

3. If you're going to break, shatter the walls around your heart. Love is not the enemy for all that it keeps you here.

4. Maybe no one ever told you, but you're allowed to feel, even if all you feel is darkness and pain. No one told you you don't need fixing, perhaps; maybe all you need is those shattered walls, broken from the love hurled like explosives from those around you.

5. Oh child, let yourself feel.

My Apologies

- I'm sorry you had to take five seconds out of your day to read a Facebook post telling you I'm sad

- I'm sorry that made you sad for five whole seconds

- I'm sorry your fingers stutter on the keyboard because you don't know what to say when all you have to say is "I love you" but all you say is nothing

- I'm sorry I imagine belts and nooses, not kittens, when you say "hang in there"

- I'm sorry my accumulated years of pain became too much for you after a few months or less

- I'm sorry for not seeking help, for some reason I thought that's why I was talking to you

- I'm sorry I made you cry with that poem I wrote; I shed tears of a more sanguine hue while writing it, but sure let's talk about you

- I'm sorry your attempts to cheer me up make you feel like a failure

- I'm sorry for resisting your efforts to make me feel like a failure so you could feel better

- I'm sorry for working really hard to be my own genuine self, I am obviously doing it just to hurt you

- I'm sorry my presence makes you feel uncomfortable while I'm worrying I'll be shot this time as I attempt to pee

- I'm sorry I don't fit in your boxes, because after all all your other children grew up to become who you wanted them to be

- I'm sorry it hurts you when I want to die, your pain is obviously far more important than my own

- I'm sorry I unfollowed you on Facebook, I didn't realize you wanted me to pick fights on your posts full of vitriol and lies about people like me

- I'm sorry I keep talking to you; I've tried to stop but this thing called love or something keeps getting in the way

- I'm sorry I'm learning to be happy without Jesus

- I'm sorry you were wrong

To My Brain, You Asshole...Love, My Fingers

I wish I could do without you sometimes.
Without your dumb thoughts dropping pitter-patter from my tips in ink...and sometimes blood.
I wish I could turn you off and caress the keyboard only to slay fictional monsters and demons.

But only sometimes.

Because I know the words that bring tears and healing to others also come from you.
I know the darkness staining every inch of me some days is thanks to you.
I only move where you bid me and though so often what flows from me is pain I am grateful you give me the method to express that pain, whether that means picking up a pen or a marker or a scalpel.

Alternate Names for an Ex (Me)

1. Still on fire with no longer returned love

2. No longer rooted in past faith

3. Struggling to regain past brilliance

4. Boy with his breath still stolen by pain

5. More stable, and yet that razor's bite

6. Made in the likeness of the universe

7. Rejecter of summer's warmth

8. Still haunted by the spectre of other's beliefs

9. Needing only a spark to call back the darkness

10. A firework in the midst of exploding

I Should Have Stopped in Tennessee

Living is not hard.
It hurts
And it's exhausting
And I hate it
But it's not hard

On the other hand
Is that living?
Because I think
Maybe that's just
Breathing

I can breathe forever
I can eat
And sleep
And go through
All the motions
And my body will
Survive

But living?
Living involves things like
Peace
And purpose
And love
And hope
And at least one reason
To keep breathing

Dying is hard
Or maybe I haven't been
Trying hard enough

I drove through at least
Two different states
Last weekend
Where I could have
Walked right in
And purchased a firearm
I even had money, for once

But I didn't
Why didn't I
I regret not doing that

I have many bladed objects
And I'm sure I could stab
Myself to death
But I feel like a gun would be
A little easier
Take a little less effort
Be a little more sure

None of this nonsense
Where I might fail
Where I might just end up
Paralyzed, because I landed wrong
I was lucky to avoid that
Once already
I doubt I'd be so lucky again

If I had a gun
I could just put it to my head
And pull the trigger
And be done

That's all I want
I want to be done
I'm so tired
I can't do this
Why do I have to do this?

Breathing is not hard
I can breathe forever
But I'm so tired
Of not being alive

I'm Sorry I Assassinated Your Daughter

I'm sorry I assassinated your daughter
I'm sorry she had to die
I'm sorry her story had to end
Sometimes I wish I could give you your daughter back

I call it assassination because that's what it's called
When someone important is murdered
And I know she was important to you

I still remember the night she died
She had been dying for months
But I remember the final blow as if it was yesterday
She laid on the bed to sleep
But I was the only one who got up

I don't want to take your daughter's place, not exactly
I don't fit in that spot, I'm not daddy's little girl
She was never the clone mommy wanted
I can never fill the hole she left
But then, she never filled it that well either

I know that you still love her, oh so much
I know your faith calls for resurrection
But I assure you she's not coming back
All that's left is me, and I know I'm not enough
If I was enough, you would call me son
If I was enough, you would accept who I am
I didn't have a choice in how I was made, you know

I know I'll spend my life not measuring up to your dead daughter
And my life has a different trajectory
Than anything she would have known
But I keep living in hope that your love will transfer
And I keep being disappointed, yet still I hope

I know it's hard for you, that this strange man
Is wearing your dead daughter's face
But I'm doing my best to change it into my face
And I wonder, as I do, how long you'll call me by her name

I'm sorry I assassinated your daughter
I had to end her story
So that mine could begin

I'm sorry I assassinated your daughter
She had to die
So that I could live

Stutter

Words have always been my weapon

Oh yes

My power, my refuge...my prison

At times

Because I feel, oh so much I feel

And I am blessed, or cursed,

With the words to make you feel too

But sometimes words fail even me.

And I don't

I don't

I don't

I don't know what to say

Because I don't I don't I don't

I don't know what I'm feeling

But maybe if I try

If I put pen topaperandform 

L e t t e r s

Perhaps the words will follow

Because I need words

To tell me who I really am

To define emotions

To make them understandable

To make them bearable

The problem is that what I need

Doesn't yield to what is

And feelings don't yield to words

Nor words to feelings

And I die And I live and breathe and die again And break and shatter and fragment and who am I who am I Who am I what am I...

What are these

What are these tears

Sliding, dripping, squelching

Their salt-kissed way down my face

And off the tip of my nose

To land carelessly

On this green comforter that has known

Far too many tears for someone who

Doesn't. Cry.

And far too much blood

And oh I need blood

If I cannot have words

If they will not spill from my lips

Or drip from my pen

I must needs cut them out of my

Very skin

And yet and yet and yet

I must not.

Too much hinges on my supposed

Stability.

And yet I need...

I glance back at three pages

Just filled with words

But I have said nothing

I am not defined

I still feel

I am still full of

Incomprehensible 

Unbearable

Salt-kissed

tears

And I and I and I.

And I love

Oh how I love

And I will not stop

Have not stopped

Cannot stop

And it hurts

Oh it hurts

Because love is a fire

And I have spent more time

Being burned

Than being warmed

And I cannot cannot cannot

Feel this way

Where are my words

And why why why why why why

Have they deserted me?

Demons Run

Demons run
When a good man goes to war

Well then

Start running
I am going to war
I will fight

I will fight you,
Depression.
Even when you leave me
No weapons I can lift
I will fight tooth and nail
And claw and fucking
Blade, if that
Is what it takes

I will fight you,
Suicide.
I will live
And breathe
Yes, and learn
To do even more
You are the easiest
And the hardest
To fight
Because just being
Is a middle finger to you
But just being
Is so, so hard

But I will
I will fight
I will go to war

And
I
Will
Win

So start running

Choices

I can't get my best friend's point out of my head. I'm not very good at killing myself, as evidenced by the fact that I'm still alive. And at this point in my life, it's starting to cost me things that I really want. Working with my therapist. Transitioning. Being a friend to my best friend. Getting to know my new friend. Hanging out with my old friend. So. I think at this point...I should stop.

"That's easy to say," I thought to myself. "Not so easy to do." But the truth is it isn't easy to say, either. I love having options. Like, my therapist asked me why I smuggled razor blades into the hospital last time, when I took myself there. And the answer was that I refuse to be without choice. But. It was my choice to go to the hospital. Why did I think I needed more choices? If I commit to therapy with him, it will be my choice. If I make a promise to my best friend, it will be my choice. If I make a promise to MYSELF, it will be my choice. What I really seem to want is the ability to have things both ways...safety that's not really safe, commitments that won't hold me, promises that I can wiggle out of. That's a child's way of looking at the world (or a lawyer's, I guess). I am an adult, and don't you think it's about time I put away childish things?

But it won't be easy. At this point, the option, the idea of suicide has been in my head for...almost ten years. It hasn't always been a valid option; there have been lots of times since then that I wouldn't have tried to kill myself for any reason at all. But I could have. It was there. It was my option, my decision, my choice. Always. Getting myself to where it isn't always hanging in the back of my mind will be difficult, to say the least. I mentioned this way of always having a way out of every promise is childish, and it is. But I haven't learned yet how to be an adult about it. I don't know HOW to be an adult without it. What does that look like? How does it feel?

I used words like "bind" and "cage" and "imprison" when I wrote that poem the other day about those promises. And I don't like feeling caged or imprisoned. Who does? But, really, we all bind ourselves in little ways every day. And I would much rather be bound by my own word than an external power.

I told my therapist that I can do this. I can make this commitment, and I can keep it. It's never been a question of ability, though I may have told myself a time or two it was. It's a question of desire, of whether I want to do it or not, even when it's hard, even when I would rather give up, even when I doubt whether anything will ever change, ever get better, ever seem like something more than pointless. I used to be bound by my word, and I didn't think it a hardship then. No. I was proud of it. I used to say that I had never lied to someone who was trying to help me, and it used to be true. It's not true anymore. I can't make it retroactively true. But I can make sure I'm honest from here on out, that if I make a promise, I will keep it.

So really only one question remains: will I commit, or won't I? Will I commit to therapy, to change, to getting better even if I don't feel like I'm getting better...or never do? To learning to live in this world, in my body, in my head, instead of constantly trying to leave?

Will I commit to staying alive to do the things I want to do anyway? Put that way, it seems pretty obvious.

Happy Anniversary

I thought it was over
I thought that I had recovered
I thought I was better
I anticipated no more scarred lines

It was a lie
It wasn't me
I mistook love for strength
And when love ended
So too did strength

And today, of all days
Today
I remember

Because it could have been so good
Except it wasn't
I was loved, cherished, valued
Except I wasn't
I had a place, a home, family
Except I didn't

I barely need two hands to count
All the people I've loved deeply
Who loved me in return
The ones I let inside
The ones who knew the real me
As much as anyone can
When I don't know myself

B said I was manipulative
K said I was selfish
J said I was darkness incarnate
And took N with her
M said variations on the theme
And T followed her away

They all said the same things
Over and over
Repeating like some
Cacophonous harmony

Only one remains
And I don't doubt her feelings
Or her intentions
But those who know me best
Have taught me who I am
And I'm sure she'll see the truth
Sooner or later

I'm not living my life for love
That's a hope I refuse
If I ever live for anything
It must be my own self, complete

And yet
And yet
And yet
And yet who doesn't want love?
Who doesn't grieve when it is lost?

But it's not the loss of love
That brings me close to tears tonight
It's the fact, the simple fact
That those who know me best
Have all said the same thing

I am not a good person
I will never be
I am toxic to those around me
I will only ever drag those I love with me to the dirt

I'm not some sad teenager
Saying I'll never love again
I know that nobody's perfect
And those two hands' worth of loved ones
Had and have their own flaws

I'm just saying they were mostly decent people
That saw whoever I really am
And all agreed, without knowing each other
How horrible who they saw is

This would have been my anniversary
It's good that it is not
But I won't forget the lessons
I was taught

Promises

You cannot lock me

Safe into a cage

Of my own words

My word is strong

Yes, and I will keep it

But I am human

And other things

Are stronger

My word is not law

It is not inviolate

It, like me, can break

It, like me, will break

It, like me, is broken

I have screamed

And yelled, and raged

That other people

Cannot keep me here 

And yet the last few days

I linger here for them

I don't want to cause pain

But what about mine?

I gave my word

That I would live

But I can take it back

I will take it back

I will not be bound

Not even by me

I must be free

Warning: Graphic Images Inside

So...self-injury has been part of my life now for 7 years. Which is kind of a long time. And it's come to the point where I'm starting to get...creative. Essentially I'm blurring the line between art and self-harm and that's...probably a bad thing?

Like seriously guys, you should feel honored by all this posting I'm doing

These are all water damaged now. Guess which one I'm not sad about that happening to.

I was still married when I drew this

I'm just spoiling you guys now

Old Artwork

Collaborative Art

I drew, and others colored

Live

An Occupational Therapist's answer to For the Fifth Time

For the eternal burning flame
For relief on days untold
For passion, love and life
For delight of being bold

For taking subtle risks
For mountains, lakes and streams
For loved ones that I meet
For joy not what it seems

For the unknown dreams to come
For the calm within the storm
For relaxing into safety
For the sun that always warms

For all these I now accept
For all these I do exist
For all my changing choices
For my choice to no resist