I am sorry
I am sorry
that what has been left behind from my trauma
is so hard to handle.
I know the way I love
can feel heavy in someone’s hands.
I hold on too tightly,
mistake fear for romance.
I ask if you still love me
in a million different ways,
because abandonment has haunted me
for days and days and days.
So I learned to love
like somebody holding shut a door,
terrified if I loosened my grip
you would disappear like the ones before.
And sometimes—
sometimes I am seven again.
A child with a sadness
far too cruel to comprehend.
Tying that belt around my neck,
thinking pain was where stories end.
Because somehow, even then,
I had already learned
that love was not a thing you kept,
it was a thing that always turned.
Sometimes I am thirteen again,
trying to make the hurting stop,
learning physical pain
could quiet the thoughts
if only for a moment,
if only for a breath,
just enough silence in my mind
to step back from death.
Sometimes I am fifteen again,
begging to be seen.
Looking for love in places
far too old, far too mean.
Seeking validation
from hands that should have known better,
taking substances to numb myself,
convincing myself they made me lighter.
Trying to silence the chaos,
trying to quiet the ache,
trying to become somebody
people would not leave or break.
Sometimes I am sixteen again
trying to end my life.
Sometimes I am seventeen again
holding sorrow like a knife.
Sometimes I am eighteen.
Nineteen.
Twenty too.
Still waking every morning
not wanting to make it through.
Because survival is exhausting
when your own mind is the war,
when people praise your strength
while you collapse behind closed doors.
Sometimes I am twenty-two again,
standing close enough to death
to feel it breathing down my neck
with every shaking breath.
Close enough to disappearing
that even now I swear,
part of me still lives
in the darkness waiting there.
But sometimes—
sometimes I am twenty-five,
and for the very first time
I do not want to die.
For the first time
I start to believe
there could be more to life
than just surviving grief.
And sometimes I am twenty-eight again,
and on that fateful day
I find a love that lights my soul
and burns the dark away.
The kind of love
that makes broken people believe
maybe they are worthy
of the things they never received.
Maybe this is home.
Maybe this will last.
Maybe I can finally stop
running from my past.
And sometimes I am thirty-two,
losing all I swore was mine,
clinging to the life I built
And trying to stay alive.
Holding on so desperately
my fear becomes too much,
because when loss is all you’ve known
you panic at the touch.
Sometimes I am thirty-two
reliving every ache,
same wound, different faces,
same heartbreak, different names.
And sometimes I am thirty-two
learning once again
that love has always felt like something
I first must earn to gain.
That I am only worthy
when I’m useful to someone else,
when I carry all their pain
while abandoning myself.
So I exhaust myself
trying to be everything,
hoping if I pour enough love out
someone might finally stay with me.
Because deep inside me
still lives that little girl
who believes if she loves hard enough
she can finally change the world.
That maybe if she gives enough,
breaks enough, bends enough,
someone will choose to hold her heart
instead of giving up.
So I am sorry
that what has been left behind from my trauma
is so hard to handle.