you told me there was this way of exploring our own memories that was "over-distanced" - the idea that we can learn to stand so far away from our lives that it cannot hurt us. the problems shrink when they are so far away. we can keep our souls tethered at the end of a long leash, holding them above where the sharp things can reach.

i said - oh, i always just say "that thing is too hot to touch right now." my life like learning to stand as far from the fire as possible. my life like watching the pot boil over. my life, a little scattered. the air up here is so thin; it is almost froth. it's a little sad trade off - down there is joy, i know. but that is also where sorrow stalks.

don't i want to be happy? don't i want to be whole?

on the phone, i heard your breath catch a moment. for a horrible, terrible instant, i thought you were going to notice the truth of it: that i haven't been on this earth in a while. if this is all happening to me, i've felt exactly none of it.

oh, my beautiful life is changing again. oh, my one beautiful life. the way it turns in the wind; wild and frantic - so funny, at this angle, at this distance: it kind of looks like a fevered & caught animal, doesn't it?

Alive

When I was a little girl I believed my worth depended on what people thought of me and my family’s reputation so I was writing poetry by ten, trying to escape the reality that is, nobody really likes you at a private school full of perfection and your family will always be strange at a Christian school.

When I turned thirteen, I thought my worth depended on the fact that I wasn’t enough to keep my older brother from suicide. so by thirteen, I was writing poetry to open a darker part of my mind because the truth is, when your friend’s mom won’t let her come over anymore because your parents must be “bad”, you start to wonder if you are.

At fifteen, I was in highschool and I looked at my older sister and I thought my worth depended on if Reed Kaper wanted to date me or if Blake was still upset over us or that I was dating Trevor McDivitt, the hottest freshman boy. So at fifteen, I was spilling poetry to escape the tunnel I’d dug because honestly, when I found myself in a corner alone, after a boy had left me empty and hurting the worth I thought I had was gone.

Seventeen hit me like a train after two years of hurting I found that my worth relied on something much larger, that when I spoke, it had weight, and when I cried, I felt cared about, so at seventeen, I am writing poetry to exclaim the fact that for the first time, I feel Alive

Eighteen has me in its grips,

never ready enough to be an adult,

After three years of high school

I thought I would be prepared

But I feel more lost than previously,

but I am shedding misplaced worth

so at eighteen, i am bleeding poetry

with arms outstretched to

push some away and hold others close,

confused and dazed but

joyful

Nineteen feels like freedom. As though my worth is no longer relevant and yet my thighs and arms are freshly striped. so at nineteen, I am holding together the pieces I lost of myself through finding my worth in worthless places

I still haven’t yet found home

Twenty feels like silence Like Why are you still cutting you are Twenty as if I should pull myself together in the year it took me to disassemble who I’d created, four months clean and yet I am still avoiding razor blades Home is just an excuse to run into the arms of the first stranger we come to I am not wise But poetry has never felt more like Home to me So at twenty, I am knitting myself together with Pieces of torn up love letters it is slow but I am Healing

Twenty-two was entirely

learning, crying, deciding to say “yes”

to the pieces of me I’d kept

neatly tucked away in secret,

those who have depended on me to

BE something for them, are sorely disappointed

but I have never felt more free,

my years have slunk through my fingers;

I have wasted my youth on pretending to be something—

someone

I am not, and never have been

but I now scream from the rooftops “Here I am!” and I finally feel

like I’ve done something right

to look in the mirror and realize

home is right here, in my body,

to be willing to see myself at all, right where I am,

and to know where I am headed,

this feeling is priceless: of weightlessness and heavy all at once

mental illness sighs at my naivety,

but it breathes nonetheless