I wish I could write about hating you

About hoping everytime you bite her lip, she bleeds, and that her blood floods your mouth with the bitter taste of your betrayal.

I could write pretty words about my ache, your discrepancies, and the soft and subtle breaking of a heart. About scrubbing myself red and raw until i am naked and new and and there is not an inch of skin left on my body that you have touched. About shoving my hands down my throat, about purging you from my body, breaking my own ribs to rip you from the bloody remains of my heart until every ounce of you is gone and you are a stranger and i no longer know your favourite colour is pink or the sounds you make when my lips touch the crook right below your left hip.

But there is nothing pretty about a breaking heart; nothing poetic about my naivety; no beauty in your your shame; and after everything that you have done, I only hope she was worth it, and that you will be able to forgive yourself when you realize she wasn’t.

- I can’t bring myself to hate you

AN ODE TO 2018

the year i woke up. years of dissociation, 2018 finally said enough is enough. wake up. feel something, please. the year i awoke from a two year slumber. realized i had shut myself down to my most simple version as a sick way to focus on merely existing. the year autopilot stopped working and i swore the plane was going to crash because i couldn’t possibly remember how to pilot it anymore. the year of anxiety attacks. of crying. of screaming bloody murder. 2018, the year i looked my demons in the face and said i will not hide from you anymore. Hello. 2018 taught me self-loathing. the year anger swallowed me whole. it boiled for months like lava. sat at the bottom of my stomach. took up residence in the back of my throat. burned the top of my mouth. set my tongue on fire and pried at my teeth. it consumed everything until i was nothing but a molten shell. the year people called me angry. angry girl. explosive. girl with a temper. dangerous. walk-on-egg-shells-around-her-girl. the year i forgot how to be kind. 2018 broke me. shattered my bones, skinned me alive, left me naked and told me to get up. keep fucking going. The Year I Almost Didn’t Keep Going. 2018 tore the rot from my throat, displayed it on the table and said. look. this is who you are. look at what you have been letting live inside you. the year of bloodshed. of ripping toxicity from my core. fingers covered in my own blood. cutting it out limb by rotting limb. i want you. i love you. But I do not need You. the year i realized people will strip you of everything you have. your time and energy and love and flesh and limbs until you are nothing but a bleeding heart and wheezing lungs and yet still they will blame you for not having anything more to give. the year i stopped making excuses for myself. for others. the year i faced the truth, forced my eyes open and said. please see. the year i stopped saying its okay. the year of forgiving. of letting go. the year things died and i let them. of realizing new things cannot grow if you only water the old and that healing is an ugly process. the year i fell in love. 2018 taught me that happiness does not exist without ache and i was naive for believing love could ever come without pain. 2018 accomplished so much, and i finally allowed myself to be proud. congratulations. you did it. you did so much. the year i cried harder then i have ever cried, screamed louder than i have ever screamed, felt more than i have ever allowed myself to feel and loved harder than i ever thought i was capable of loving. 2018, the year of endings and beginning. 2018, the year I finally, finally woke up.

loving him has taught me that i was naive for ever believing that love could come without pain

-excerpt from a poem i dont think i’ll ever quite finish

things i learnt while high on shrooms:

i: the brain is capable of incredible things in order to protect itself. there are dark-hallways inside your head, rooms full of forgotten trauma that your brain has long since paved over with years of suppressed memory. be weary of those hallways. be prepared to face the monsters you did not know you had.

ii. it was not your fault. you did not say yes because you were giving consent. you said yes because after saying no for so long, you thought that by saying yes you could somehow convince yourself into thinking that you wanted it.

iii. you didn’t want it. don’t discredit that pain. find the strength to call rape what it is.

iv. he should have listened the first time you said no

v. he should have listened the first time you said no

vi. He should have listened the first time you said no

vii. It was not your fault. you were not asking for it.

viii. no matter how much your friends tell you it was not your fault. no matter how much your friends tell you that your trauma is valid. no matter how much you want to believe them. none of it will matter until you believe it.

ix: forgive yourself for not being strong enough to say no.

to the one i hope i allow myself to love (an old poem i found about the boy who broke my heart...) :

i. you are the kindest person i know. i both admire and envy your ability to be gentle. the world has treated you so unfairly. i love how deeply you care. teach me how not to be cruel, because you make me want to be soft again.

ii: i have no love poems to write you, i don’t know how to put love into words. but i can tell you that you remind me of falling rain, and a late night glass of wine, and a single lit candle. my favourite place to rest is the crook between your jaw and your neck, and if a person could possibly encompass a flavour, you would be honey.

iii: i’m sorry no one has loved you the way you deserve to be loved. i can’t promise that i will make up for it, but i can promise that i will try.

vi: forgive me, on the days that i am distant. know that you make me want to let down my walls. i just wish it were that easy.

“We are all suffering from our own traumas, or the traumas of our mothers’ before us”

- the tragic history of women

it's been a year since i left myself behind.

a year since i watched the sun rise and set on the other side of the world. bright fingers spread across the sky and in those times, my life was painted in the softest shade of orange. when exactly did i disappear? did i slip between the fading sun, disapear behind the rolling hills?

the first memory i have of being lost, I sit in an old wooden chair, my head buzzed with french wine and the feeling of her breath on my neck.silk blankets across our bare legs. her hands on my thigh. i can’t tell where the softness of her skin ends, and where the blanket begins.

3am. and her fingers in my hair. and her lips on my collabone. she asks me about my life back home and i have to pause because i barely remember where home is anymore.

she asks me about myself and i realize i have no idea. the girl that i was was a girl left behind, standing on the edge of a continent that was no longer mine, an ocean away, impossible to define. she stands with her hands in her pocket, her eyes cast down, a physical manifestation of the weight i left behind.

it’s funny how much easier it is to lose a thing than to find it again. then again i can't honestly say that I've spent much time searching. why look for something you dont miss? i hoped she had fallen into the sea. that the ocean had swallowed her whole.

but i’m home now. i see her every once and awhile. glimpse her through passing subway cars, or briefly in a passing crowd, staring through the window on my bad days. i’m worried one day she’ll settle back into my life like an old friend. take her place once more upon my shoulders, whisper that she is home, wrap her hands around my throat and remind me how hard it is to breathe.

they are trees

the birch girls who give themselves entirely to winter. time and time again. she loses everything and we watch as her leaves fall

for months she stands bare yet every spring, she awakens announces her survival with pretty pink flowers every year, more beautiful than the last

there are the pine girls every inch of her skin dressed in an armour of pins and needles soft if you touch her right

when she loses her leaves, a new one grows in it’s place do not be a fool you can not break her

girls will grow despite the men who rip them from very ground in which they are rooted

i am the charred tree burned for so long i now call fire by his first name consider him a good friend call him a lover as he kisses away my skin everything i have turned to ash at his lips i’ve been caught in a forest fire so long i think i’ve forgotten how to grow

to (some of) the girls who built me up with clay from sippy cups and playground days: 1. flower girl in the yellow shorts: you are the softest shade of self and i want to paint masterpieces from your unapologetic way of living. let’s drive away next year to the city that chose us. of all the girls i have scoured for my reflection, i see the most of myself in you. whisper to me the ways you scare and disappoint yourself, i bet our shame and secrets are the same. ii. fierce girl of foreign tongue: you came to us jagged from the times they broke you and scarred from the times you tried to break yourself. inject me with your courage the way you infect me with your laughter; loud opinions look good on you and i want to try them on too. most of all i love how you taught yourself to be gentle. i know it was hard to yank off the armour you welded yourself into but i hope the feeling of our love against your bare skin is worth it. iii. girl i have loved longest: among the jewels of the world you shine brighter than all. i think kindness must be stitched deep into your soul. here is a small slice of advice (crumbs in comparison to the bakery of wisdom you offered me over cups of earl grey tea): it is not your job to save any person except yourself. you have a gift for bandaging wounds, but first pick the glass out of your own cuts. remember there are leeches out there who will cry until they suck you dry. old friend, you are not a sponge, you were made for more than soaking up the woes of others. say no when you have to, scream if it that’s what it takes to be heard. iv. butterfly girl fluent in words and numbers, english and equations: i’m sorry that i did not get to know you better, did not hold you closer. we’ve known each other for over two thirds of our lives but for the most part we stayed on the fringes of friendship. you were always quiet. i know silence too, i understand it well. but here is a pact that should be spoken: as we forge a path into this strange new world, let us discover what it is not to hide behind the tongues of friends. let us not close our hearts and mouths out of fear. v. enigmatic girl with the changing hair and restless heart: during my mole months i did not see daylight until i received you message. (are you okay? i miss you) i never told you but you were the only reason i left the house that week. thank-you, girl whose love folds along the equator. i always envied your ability to belong anywhere. but one humid night you admit to me that you feel lost, adrift. torn between two people who want to hurt each other almost as much as they want to love you. please know that no matter how far and long you run you will always have a home in me. vi. tiny girl with the mile-a-minute voice: how the letters and days twist together when you are close. i love you for the way my laughter spills out, ugly and loud, when you talk. i love how deeply you care, how some memories etch themselves into the back of your skull. i did not know such passion could be contained in the entire cosmos - never mind in your elfin vessel. vii. brilliant girl with the world at your feet: please throw me the scraps from your life. you are the most beautiful creature i have ever beheld but that is the least of your accomplishments. is there anything you can’t do? teach me to speak like you, stitch like you, write like you, think like you, challenge myself like you, work like you, love like you. you could soar so high on the wings you built yourself, you could see things we could never dream up. my only request is that you don’t lose sight of me, waving from the tallest hill i can climb. viii. fire-hot girl with the ice-cold eyes: you were the final one to join our circle and you made it whole. your jokes have a bite, your compliments have a kick. you could make the sun orbit you, you could make the stars rearrange themselves for the chance to shine on you. saturated girl, i know how hard it is to allow for vulnerability, to tell someone you care. sincere love is throwing yourself off a cliff and trusting the waves to cradle you, but believe me, nothing else compares.

to my eight sisters, thank-you for our seven days, thank-you for our six years // L.H. (via teenangstverse)