maybe it's time to show you who i am

i would like to say that i'm going through a rough patch, just a hiccup in the road, but it's more than that. we all have demons. we are living half-lives. we are trying to pull together fragments of self to pretend we are whole. we are ephemeral and we fade in and out of this world that expects our solidity. we are poking at our thighs and skipping dinner or throwing up or cutting ourselves up to distract. so we do not have to think about what it really is that fractured us in the first place. so we do not have to leap feet first into the abyss.

wishing i could cry. because not all damage is done blatantly. the primitive brain reacts the same way. because in me they saw only the daughter they wanted me to be and not the one that was. because they were so present and said they loved me but i was no more than a ghost. because i never belonged to myself and now i am trying to destroy the body that was never mine to destroy in the first place. because, for once, i want this to be about me. and because i have spent the last 8 years building this fairytale that everything was perfect and now i have fallen to my knees, howling.

and i am left a shell, a spectre, myriad shards of brilliant glass. how to fit them back together when you do not remember what it is to be whole? when there is no such thing as fairness because it has been taken from you before you had a chance?

how to love those whom have destroyed you without hurting them with the truth, without having to mar yourself to show them what they've done?

how to make these fragments whole when i am missing pieces. you can tell me ten thousand times but always, it will be my fault. i am the one worth damaging.

i am only just beginning to battle but somewhere among those myriad shards are one or two that are big enough, that shine enough light to make something with. maybe i will never be whole but maybe i can be something. maybe that is enough. not for them, but for me. maybe that is enough.