my whole life
i spent searching for you
for a love that would save my life
for someone to save me
from myself
from my pain
from my sorrorw
now I realize the love has been there for me all along
the love within myself
I realized I was always waiting for someone else
to give me permission to allow me
to live the life that
I want to live
the only permission that I need is my own
and what I realized was
that my greatest fear came true
but not in a bad way
I was always so afraid of being all alone
without friends or family
and I am
and eventhough it is hard sometimes
it is not as scary as I thought
its actually a blessing
to learn who I am
to learn how to heal myself
how to start accepting myself
loving myself and listening to myself
and my wants and my needs first
before anyone else's
to learn to proritize myself
many people when they are dying say
I wish I would've listened to myself more
and lived the life of my own choosing
I think this should be the goal before anything else
for in this body
we only live once
so the more I listen
the more I see
that life can be so beautiful
in its simplicity
in the present moments
of  a slower life.

I tried to love you with everything I had.
My love stirred up the darkness,
Shined a light and
Woke up your demons..
They didn't want love from me..
And one day I realized
Its because they wanted love
From you.

My inner child shrieks and cries violently
As if we’re in a car that’s going off the cliff.
I sob as all the words I can tell her are,
“If this ends,
All the pain ends today as well.”

What's the fear that feeds the ink?

Who holds the censor pen?

Blacking out lines before they're uttered?

It's my dad, calling my mom "dramatic".

It's my mom, hurt in her eyes, saying "how could you". When I didn't mean to, or I didn't know, or I didn't properly gauge her reaction in advance.

It's online misunderstandings, always assuming the worst intentions: that I'm bad, or bigoted

That I'm dumb, uneducated or boring, redundant or mean.

It's previous partners and broken hearts

When what I couldn't give was mistaken with cold-heartedness, or stinginess or uncaring.


The good news

The truly good news

Is that I am non of those things

And I'm watching, as I speak

I'm watching that pen run out of ink

With long ash blonde hair
freckles dotting my face and shoulders
rosy lips and cheeks from the sun
I am a young girl again
Laying on the Atlantic ocean shore
my back pressing into the soft sand
Letting the waves roll over me
laughing hysterically
as the salt water tickles my tummy
and I plug my nose

It was at this age I smiled cheek to cheek
without worrying about the layout of my teeth
I didn’t consider myself lonely
I had quite a lot of fun with my imagination
Not yet the age where I was preoccupied
with image or my emotions
Just living like the waves crashing over me

i’d really love to thank her
for being so, so strong.
for not taking our life
when everything was wrong.
i don’t know how she did it,
the flashbacks paralyze me still.
must have been nothing
less than strength of will.
even sometimes now
i’d really like to back out
but i hear that small girl screaming,
“we can’t just give up now!”