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

Damage Done

They say untreated mental illness causes damage to the brain

Which means 9 years has done a toll on me

Illness surfaced first at 12 when I stopped eating

Worsening in the second year of abuse at 13 – I am sure her fists every day left a mark but time blocked that year out

Maybe flight or fight kicked in and I am running from the memories of the beginnings

Addiction took hold that same year in the form of the blood down the drain

Learning that it numbed the chaos no one else could see

Mother thought I was taking after my cousin in the form of track marks at only 13

Yet my screams fell on deaf ears until the day I was about to go home and execute myself in the last cry for help

Trying to return to the earth my family came from

Despite never seeing the homeland forests we are named after

Lungs began to blacken weeks before the hospital stay

Hallucinations plaguing in the year after

Medication is a tricky thing

And 7 is not my lucky number for 7 years later I went through with an attempt

Psychosis kicking in before I could stop it

I do not remember that night, mind automatically erasing traumatic events

And I had endured 4 years of it at this point

Loving a man whose concept of love was hurting someone else adding 2 years

Yet I have learned “endure” is carved in my bones

Passed on from my father and his siblings, his parents

From extreme poverty to a war they did not want to fight to the repercussions of service to addiction

All surviving, enduring

I am learning to mourn the years I lost

Learning from my father, I am being taught by the best qualified teacher

I am enduring the pain

Despite the decade of damage

Daily Prompt: Present

Trauma survivors are noted to experience derealization

Meaning life is lived like a dream you can’t quite wake up from

No matter how hard I try – pills, the blood, trying any drug that will make me feel closer to earth

I could never wake up when I really needed to

Wishing it was all a dream when it wasn’t

What happened to me remains as a limestone memorial reaching the sky

Memory picking away at it with a knife making no headway – I never wanted to remember

I wanted it to be a dream but instead what was suppose to be the best years of my life I was convinced it was all a dream

Stuck in a loop rewinding the previous day over and over and over

Because did I really live it if she wasn’t actively hurting me? Giving me what I deserved?

 

One day years later, I woke up in another nightmare

Panicked because it couldn’t be happening again with a boy’s sickly sweet smile drawing me to his addictive mahogany eyes

Abuse can’t happen twice, can it?

I’m stuck in replay again because every day passes without him hurting me

But that’s all I’m convinced I’m worth

Someone bring me back to the present

via Daily Prompt: Present

Guilt of a Survivor

Someone’s rugged hands translated to the scars on my hips

His words were the poison drowning my lungs

I befriended addiction and thought I had no one else to blame but myself

The thorns at my side didn’t kill me but they sure as hell tried

Spiraling down to a rock bottom lower than I thought I could go

Watching someone I love also struggle, thinking if she was making it out then so could I

She never made it out but I am still surviving with ailments shared between us

The weight of her loss carried with me now, wishing I succumb and she survived

How could someone who once brought light into my dim world have her shine turn to darkness

Every day my heart breaks knowing I will never get to see her recover alongside me

I wanted to take all her pain away and I failed

I failed her

Sleep

One night you wanted to sleep next to me to keep me warm but I was afraid I’d wake up screaming

I vividly dream when I’m down but I was overrun with anxiety and the buzz of mania, so there was just darkness preparing me for the grave

You cannot fully tell someone how it is living with what happened to you and its reprocussions

The best analogy I have is a locket bound around your neck with memories you do not wish to remember but you cannot take it off

No matter how much you scratch, tug, pull – it’s still there

I still have yet to explain to him how alone you are in addiction – the pain fading for a moment while you destroy some other part of you

And how you chose this because no one could hear you screaming

 

Tango With Death

Someone asked me “what if you go to hell?”

I had to refrain from saying I had already seen it in the illness that took me away from this realm

Coming back to earth was a feat I still haven’t totally accomplished

I could not tell you the exact moment I felt death’s breath on my neck but 6 years on he still reminds me he hasn’t left

There are years lost in translation, still in the dark because I didn’t know how to turn on the light

You cannot bring the dead back but you can revive those on the brink

And I cannot shake the survivor’s guilt

There are people whose hand betrayed them and stripped them from this world who had more to give than I

The ground still knows the soles of my feet but it has forgotten yours

Hell was seeing you fade in front of me

Hell was replanting my feet on the earth after the voices told me to leave it all behind

Some days I still think of taking up that offer

And some days that is hell

Windows

Poets write a lot about people having windows you can see into souls with

Often about how the morning sun glitters through, covering everything good in gold and leaving the bad in darkness

But we are more stained glass than perfectly clear

Refracting light color coating parts of us that we don’t want people to see

How I felt guilty that my friend died and how 3 years later I wished it was me instead of him – he was much kinder than I

I wish he was still around so I could see the man he would have become

How my heart still aches for her to come back but I know she never will

I still dream about her but she’s hundreds of miles away barely remembering my name

How I regret getting sick like this

Suicide still hangs at the back of my mind as an illuminated exit sign, never leaving but not as prominent anymore

How I learned happiness after the man who’s outside was pretty but inside left me a ruin of who I was before

If only he cared to see me now

Souls are dark twisted things shaped by who we were and who we are

The bad parts of us don’t hide in the corners

Body

We all live in these vessels that carry us to the grave

Souls occupying until it feels like the right time to leave and start over

Leaving behind mourning of who was once in this now shell

My body has endured me opening it up in attempts to let the unease fly free

The chemicals my brain has been known to produce are out of date

The boards of this ship creak and let water in – only replaced when I am but nearly drowned

My skin is decorated with tattoos for a love I can no longer whisper the name of

His name still feels like a house fire out of control in my chest

I no longer wish for him to recognize my soul as one he once so intimately knew

This vessel I own in this life is littered with stories told and those yet untold wait to emerge through the old, the weary, the hand-me-down

I have not sank yet but dear god I know people are waiting to see the day I no longer exist on the same plane

But this worn out body has not seen its last days yet

Daily Prompt: Foggy

Empty planners are scattered across my room

I buy them in an attempt to remember things I need to get done but the key is remembering to write them down

A symptom of PTSD is memory issues

There are years clouded with smog dark enough to only let a few moments escape

A heart breaking in silence, knuckles to skin, going silent

Good years have a mist, moments slipping away to it yet many remain intact

There are years my existence was lost in all but photographs

I still walk around in a haze not sure where to put what memory

Unsure if this is all a dream or if I am actually here

via Daily Prompt: Foggy