Thoughts While my Partner Plays Videogames

I wish I was having as much fun

I wish he had more time for me

His heart is still hers, isn’t it?

He still texts her everyday

Her fingerprints are still covering his heart

She will thank me when he returns to her arms

Because he found what he needed in someone else

But he finally came back, as if she were his lighthouse when he was lost at sea

Or is this all a delusion?

These days I cannot tell the difference between dream and awake

For it is a dream being by his side

But it feels as though he will leave me vacant

In my dreams he leaves for her

But I am too afraid to tell him that I am afraid

And here he is playing games as I fall apart

If loving him is the last thing I do, let me go

From My Bipolar to My Mother’s Cancer

They are both trying to kill us

Eroded from the inside

There is no exact science to either of us

Though death haunts me like an easy escape if it gets just bad enough

Your hope outshines my disease

They both came just as swiftly but my diagnosis crept up years later

The darkness finally found its light

As if there were flowers growing there that I wasn’t looking for

All I had to do was turn the light on

The only difference between us is they take you more seriously when something is wrong

But each diagnosis is a hell with just our names painted on the door

No one else can feel it except for ourselves

Yes, there are support groups

But dying tastes different to each person

And I am living a death sentence

Ghosted

1. Our first date was at a coffee shop’s jazz night followed by drinks

You called me an expensive drunk as we laughed ourselves past 1am

2. You would take me out just to spend an hour with me

Telling me any time spent with me was a good time

3. You made me feel special for the first time in months

4. Days would go by without even a text

Weeks gone by without seeing you

5. One day you were gone with the wind

Blaming myself for not being enough for you

Wondering where I went wrong

Maybe it was when I fell for your smile

Or loving you despite the walls I knew would always be there

Fragmented Lovers

One month I am getting too drunk with a man 5 years my senior

Trying to forget the pain that came before

The next a man who thought he would spend his life with me

Drowning me in his brokenness

Taking until there was nothing left for me to give

Another I reached the clouds with

I do not remember his name

Only the way the weed drowned my loneliness

One night with a man I never intended to see again

Two months with a man I tried to make love me

I tore myself to pieces for him

Making myself bite sized and palatable for him

None compared to the love I had for you

All that love turned to grief when you left

I thought I would spend my life with you and it was gone in a snap of the fingers

Now I am drowning waiting for a love like that again

To the Friend Living With My Abuser

You knew both before and after

He will never change but nor will you

I no longer recognize the woman I once confided in

He crushed me into dust

No longer the same reflection looking back in the mirror

Reducing me to ash with the firestorm of his own trauma

Do not pity me

But you say to let you know if you are friends with one’s abuser

What do I do when one is inseparable from him

Abusers are nice to those they aren’t abusing

And he seems “nice enough” to never have weaponized his words

Treading lightly in case his tongue was no longer enough to tear town the abandoned building I became

You do not know fear when looking into his eyes

I tried giving myself in phases as the moon does

He took it all leaving me in my own darkness

He took and took and took until there was nothing left for me to give

I was suppose to heal him while healing from him

Here I am still unlearning a love that burned going down

Still looking for my reflection

Hoping you will hear the screams to run as fast as you can

Knowing neither of you will change for one tiny voice pleading

Sobering Up

Cheap vodka no longer burns my throat

Boxed wine no longer tastes so bad compared to the good stuff

Wiping away the lies I tell myself sober

I do not have a problem but a solution to the nights remembering

Forgetting the way you made the cold in my bones grow into spring

I could not tell you who else kissed my neck after you left the flowers to wilt with autumn

Who tried loving me well enough to replace you

Tequila on a budget wiped my memory clean

I told myself I did not have a problem until six months later realizing the warmth I felt was the whiskey

Not you returning to my bed, softly snoring with the morning light illuminating my love for you

Sobering up from your love and the whiskey is something I am learning to be fine with

I am still trying to forget how your laughter filled me

Blooming

We fell with the autumn leaves that September

Your love made me bloom into who I thought I was with that spring

Your eyes brighter than a summer’s day

A deeper blue than any I had ever seen

You left in the depths of winter the following year

Leaving your side of the bed cold

My body remembering the way the legs of a sprinter intertwined with mine as we slept

Months later I still found myself leaving room for you, just in case you decided to come back

Forgetting I was whole before you

But watching you leave without uttering a goodbye shattered me

I am now forgetting your laughter, the way your eyes lit up when I entered a room

I no longer recognize the man I thought I would marry

You are no longer the man I once would have died for

I find comfort in that these days your heart would no longer recognize me either

I am growing back into myself, with the spring and a strength I forgot I had

Blooming into what I once thought impossible

You were not the world as I thought it was, I am

I will cherish our adventure until the end of time

But now I am making better memories without you

Thank you for holding my heart for a while

As I gently held yours

Dear Little Sister,

Your memories of the last decade saw my laughter further morph into a wheeze

Understand I am sick

The anxiety only responds to setting my insides on fire

Just as I had taught it

And aren’t I the best teacher?

Drinking myself into convincing myself I do not exist

Further becoming the darkness I promised I would not become

Baby I failed

We know how this cycle ends all too well

My hands no longer belong to me but to the plague convincing me to leave this life behind

I convinced myself I dissapeared for far too long to return to who I was

I do not know how to return to you

Which may be my best lesson to you yet

Aren’t I the best teacher?

Eons of Pain

If pain were to be measured in lifetimes

I have seen the revolutions you read in history books

I know people eons old

Corroding themselves into the very dust they were born from

As they watched the stars form and collapse into themselves, avidly taking notes

Wise beyond this world

But this world won’t leave them alone

Stuck as ghosts, shells of their former selves

Maybes and what-ifs disturbing their sleep

Not enough scars or wrinkles showing the stories of their lives

No one wants to sit and listen to the advice of this weathered people

Plucked from worlds away to whisper stories of home into the wind

We all get labeled the same – crazy, lunatics, people who shouldn’t be on the outside

Yet we all have incredible stories to tell

So please, listen to those who have watched their world crumble and rose again

Before we are but whispers in the wind, returning home

 

Guilt of One Left Behind

There exists a place where she lives and I don’t

Where she survived and I succumbed

Let the illness float me downstream to a better existence

Where I did not have to blame myself for surviving this long

For what if she could have given more than I can?

I have a laundry list of people who should have survived but did not

Her name still burns in the past tense

My cousin, you watched me grow up

We both suffered one in the same

Addicts in our own rights, ill in an organ society still thinks shouldn’t get sick

I tried to join you a year and a half later

I bear a weight too heavy for me to carry, for I carry your memory and what you could have become

I am still trying to find peace

But I was sent spiraling in mourning, wishing it was anyone but you

I know the drugs feel too good and that the emotions are a hell that is a solitary experience with just your name on the door

Surviving is something I struggle with these days

On the darkest ones I always looked to you

But now they are darker

Maybe I will feel you on my shoulder soon telling me to keep on going for you