this is not a pretty post but nor will i apologise

i am still here. i am still fighting my demons. i am now appropriately afraid of knives.

i am stunned and disillusioned. still. staggering about on a mix of tears and Xanax. don't know how much to tell you here, don't know how much to tell. childhood and inappropriate things. invisibility and shame. i speak only in abstract nouns because i cannot face the concrete yet, the tangible. someday, verbs. and then maybe i will be healed.

i pass out at night on the hardwood floors clutching a pen, a beloved book. wake up with dried blood on my sheets and the best bits of poems writ on my thighs between the scars. wake and see rumi, c.d. wright, t.s. eliot and c.s. lewis, mati unt, james wright, tolkien and galway kennell. my old friends. more parents than mine ever were.

i have good moments in the midst of this, best friends i can spill out to who are appropriately angry for me and give it back contained. they distract me. they are wonderful. it helps. i have smiles, giggles, wine and kisses.

then they go home and i am left to the cruelty of my brain, the bloody lament of my heart.

i am not eating. it is too easy. first it was cereal and oranges and somehow the cereal became too much. oranges. i am ninety-seven pounds. i still want to rip off my thighs, mar and maim. i am still too much. the compulsion to destroy myself stuns me and i cannot say i am not afraid. i just need to be empty. i just need to disappear.

but please note. i am stronger than this and i just have to learn to feel before i can be whole. there will be many tears yet but they are more bearable each time. each time i push off the need to numb out a little bit longer. 

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i will get through in the end if not a bit thinner, a bit more scarred. this is not my fault. i have to fight through what was done to me before i even had a choice.

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bravery is what i am capable of, and so i will be brave. the rest will come.

found on my knee this morning in fading black ink:

"It must escape its carapace quickly. We must all escape our carapace. Come shining."

-c.d. wright (deepstep come shining)