higher education, lower self worth

i am a participant in a system that introduces me to friends
who literally do not have time to care about me.

and why should they?

the problem with hating yourself
is that you make yourself a very easy person
for other people to hate too.

and i am so tired of waiting
for somebody to prove me fucking wrong.

it's not fair of me to pin this burden on anyone else,
and yet lord knows i can't be trusted
to bear the burden
myself.

for all that everyone sees my flaws, i'm the only one who sees how to fix them

my roommates told me i was selfish and i
wanted to melt into the walls;

every day that i'm alive is a struggle
for the sake of everybody else and i'm
sorry if it's still not enough -

i'm so tired of always getting angry
only to find that i'm the one at fault.

everything in my life proves the same thing,
over and over and over again:

things would be better
without me here.

a riddle

i want a break from being. my bones are heavy
and i'm tired of fueling this flesh with anything but fire.

burn me alive. char me to death.
i'm so tired of sucking in breath,
i need release.

i am tied to so many things that i can't bear to care about
and everyone i try to love enough to explain this to
sheds tears that i can't mirror.

there are a lot of somethings that i wish i could destroy,
but there is only one someone.

ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
i am tired of mattering.

no more, no more.

guess who.

i'm sorry you can't see it

'cause it's all inside my head;

it's a beautiful morning

and i can't get out of bed.

nurse

sign my cast.

sign it, "get well soon." sign it, "bffl!"
sign it with your name in a heart.

i can't draw my name in a heart
because most of the time it makes me laugh,
but some of the time it makes me cry.

yesterday i gripped the desk and gasped for air
and cried so hard i blew out my candles.

happy sweet 16 years of therapy,
happy's just another word whose definition doesn't strike me quite right,
but i have prescriptions for that.

shall i show them to you?
in lieu of a doctor's note, a letter from my parents?

this is what's wrong with me.

this is why i couldn't come to class last week,
why i had the readings done and my paper complete
and they stayed on my desk until they were four days late.

i can't get out of bed some mornings.

i hate it.

i'm awake and i know i have to go and i just can't.
i can move, can roll over, i'm not paralyzed, it's not -
it's not something i can explain from the outside,
but i can't get out of bed some mornings.

sign my cast.

i want to look down at a plaster case that's going to hold me together and heal me.
i want to see all the names of the people who asked me what happened;
the names of who i got to tell.

i can't carry my prescriptions around like a fucking battle wound.

you can't sign my fucking pills before i swallow them,
trying to heal up the cuts that bandages can't hide because they're fucking inside me.

how am i supposed to tell people what's wrong
when i don't fucking know?

nothing is wrong.

it's just that sometimes i forget that my room is messy
and then when i remember i start to cry.

sometimes i think people hate me,
and then i hate myself for thinking i'm important enough
for other people to anything me.

sometimes i want to die.

a lot of the time, i want to die.

there's no splint or sling that can hold me together.
and the worst part is that if anyone asks me what happened,
i will have to tell them,

"nothing."

this was no accident.
i was born broken.

there is no such thing as "get well soon" for me.

sign my cast,
"i'm sorry. i'm sorry. i'm sorry."

fog

spent all morning fending off the heat, the hurt;
the cold-sweat bleeding through the soul, the skin, the shirt.
spent all morning in a single blink; my eyes sealed shut trying not to think -
spent all morning fending off the heat, the hurt.

numbers

six minutes to go and i
can't force myself to start, i have to
wait until the time is right.
it's longer than five and shorter than ten
and seven is sometimes okay but not now.
not now.
the clocks have all gone digital,
so i can't map out two and a half minutes anymore
unless i count,
i count,
i count the seconds while pouring out a glass of milk
and if i don't time it right it overflows
but i can't just turn it back.
i have to
wait until the time is right,
until the numbers add up,
and now it's four minutes to go and i've missed it.
i've missed
being free from numbers,
and maybe if i wait for three i can squeeze on through but
that means there's only two minutes that have passed
and it's not okay.
it's not okay, it's not
a matter of choosing to count
as much as some days it feels like the counting chose me
and i can't, i can't, i can't
just leave, come on, we're going to be late.
i can't
just stop in the middle of ten taps to the desk,
how many lines in this poem before i can leave,
how many lines must i force myself across
before i stop tallying them up in my fucking head;
i have to skip steps at work because there are fourteen of them
and it is one step short
of okay.
i am always
one step short
of okay.

my friend elizabeth - though we never call her such -

gave me quite the inspiration, though she never said that much.

if i lied, i could have kept you when you left me back in august,

but alas, instead i cried, and my friend told me it was honest.

you are fine and i am not: memoirs of an honest fool

it's selfish, but
this would hurt me less
if it hurt you more.

shame, embarrassment, humiliation and bitterness:
all products of a hurt that you do not feel
except through me.

i'm sorry for lashing out at you, but i -

for some reason,
i still believed you might share my burden.

i'm sorry i couldn't make it worth it
for you.

feature presentation

i'll blame it on the movies
for making him think that if he could just
trade his opinion of me with my own,
things would be okay.
for making me think that if i could just
give him some space, let him come to me,
it would all work out.
because in the movies,
when she walks out of the hotel room
crying because,
"well that's it then, isn't it?"
he comes after her,
catches her in the hallway and makes it better.
and in real life,
she goes all the way downstairs
and waits in the lobby for a half an hour
until her dad comes to pick her up.
and he doesn't call or text
doesn't show up at the front door with flowers
doesn't throw rocks up at her bedroom window
and play her music from a shitty boombox.
because that only happens in the movies.
and in real life, he's left alone in the hotel room
and he's crying too.
in the movies,
if a boy tells a girl she's beautiful
it somehow makes it okay.
and in real life,
no matter how smart or funny or good
he told me that he believed i was,
his beliefs are not my own.
in the movies i guess
you can change someone's perspective
with a few nice lines of dialogue,
but in real life i can't like me just because he does.
and never mind the fact
that maybe we didn't love each other
the way the movies say we were supposed to,
but at least what we had
lasted longer than your
hour-and-a-half feature film.
in the movies,
we'd be angry.
but in real life,
we're just sad.
because i don't blame him.
and i can't blame me.
so i'll blame it on the movies
instead.

never enough

the tale of the girl who always was

caution, crime scene

i suppose
that a growing sense of ambition
ought to be encouraging, but -

i can't help but think
of the way that each time i fall,
it is because i set myself up to do so
from greater and greater heights.

i am several stories in;
i am several storeys high.

after it happened, i went to the doctor.
i had to get tested.
and as i sat there,
covered only by a paper gown
and the last shred of my dignity,
the nurse prepping my swab told me,
"you should have been prepared."
as if was supposed to anticipate
that "making love" could be spiked with hate,
i don't think i had it in me to know
that he could do that.
that he would.
and that i was supposed to know,
that i should
have been prepared.
it was my fault
for putting myself in a position of trust.
"well you were alone together, so you must
have known."
"you should own up to the repercussions of your choices,"
and so i went voiceless for a while.
i believed them.
i believed them for a long time.
years of torturing myself,
playing it over and over again in my head
trying to find the moment i said yes instead
of the no's i so vividly recall.
to which there was no action at all
except to push me down harder.
and i have been pushed down every day since
by people telling me,
"you should have been prepared."
i was unaware
that i would be expected to take responsibility
for someone else's actions.
i never reported it.
i figured if it was a rape,
people would be on my side...
so i guess it's not a rape.
i hear stories of girls being persecuted
for the actions of their perpetrators -
as if punishment enough was not being used like a piece of meat.
being deceived by the institutions
you thought were there to help you -
what is so hard to understand about rape?
why are rapists getting away with it?
maybe because, after it happened,
the nurse preparing my swab told me,
"you should have been prepared."
and made me think that it was me -
and if only i was smart enough to see
what was wrong with that
and report that motherfucker.
and i could have stood up for myself
and so many like me
and faced my rapist
and told him,
"you should have been prepared
from the moment you ignored my protests.
from the moment you pinned me down.
from the moment you pushed inside -
you should have been prepared
for a properly-functioning society to recognize
the wrong that you have done upon me
and upon all of us."
but we don't live in a properly functioning society.
we live in a society of slut-shaming,
naming single mothers whores and missing fathers nothing at all
because we don't even want to acknowledge that it happens.
well, rape happens.
trust me - i know.
and rape prevention doesn't start with the victims,
especially when they are so often outgunned.
he was twice my size,
and i have never known the meaning of powerlessness
more than i did in that moment.
i would like to never feel it again,
but evidently it doesn't always matter what i want,
because i wanted him to listen when i told him no
and i wanted someone to listen when i told them what he did to me
and nobody fucking did.
nobody fucking did.
in a properly functioning society,
someone would have recognized that i needed protection
and if that could not be granted to me before or during,
at the very least grant me that mercy after.
it should not be a fucking revelation
every time someone tells me it was not my fault.
but we don't live in a properly-functioning society.
and maybe that should have been hint enough for me, huh.
i should have been prepared.

if i could write a suicide note that would explain away everyone's misplaced guilt i would kill myself in a heartbeat; alas.

my dad used to say, "it's selfish."
with the fury and conviction of someone who's never thought to themselves,
i am tired in a way that sleep cannot help.
because trust me, i have tried;
slept for days on end pretending i had died,
leaving food out 'til i was surrounded in waste,
wasting away to try to get a taste
of that sweet relief.
i've heard people say that it's the easy way out,
and i've heard people say that things are hard because they're worth it,
but all i want is one day.
one day of not constantly thinking
how much easier it would be to swallow a bunch of pills
and get in the tub
and go.
i know, i know i'm supposed to want to try
but no matter the reasons i don't understand why
i'm supposed to want this struggle.
i'm supposed to want to be alive when
being alive means fleeting happinesses and
heavy, haunting sadnesses.
and if i had a choice in the matter,
i would've chosen for me to never have happened.
if i could just be unborn,
things would be okay.
then all this mess would go away
and i wouldn't have to hurt people with this great dirty s word:
suicide.
i've had people cry to me, beg me,
ask me to promise, please, please, don't you ever -
and i've never once agreed because i refuse
to make a promise i don't know i can keep.
i'm sorry that i am hurting you.
but there is a great hurt inside of me
whose origins i can't detect,
and i can't predict where that will lead me.
so far:
strapped to a gurney, wheeled out in front of a playground
where children stopped playing to watch me scream at my mother
for pulling me out.
staring at myself in the mirror of my hospital room bathroom,
scraping my nails through the skin on my wrist
trying to see how deep inside of me i had to go
before i could feel anything.
withdrawing from school without telling my parents,
lying, telling professors i would work, telling friends i would travel,
setting up my room for whoever found me after.
my dad used to say, "it's selfish."
and it is, i know it is,
but how am i supposed to keep living for other people
and be happy with that?
i want to not be alive anymore.
i do, i do.
and i'm sorry that that hurts you.
but i can't go one fucking day without watching a bus drive by and thinking,
"i could have been in front of that."
home alone, cutting up vegetables and thinking,
"yes, right now, do it, you could do it."
taking my nightly medication, pouring out every pill,
counting them up and knowing,
"this is enough. this is it."
but i wait to cross the street
and i put the knife in the sink
and i take the proper dose
and i wait.
because i will gladly do worse things to myself
than i will do to other people.
maybe it's selfish -
but i find redemption in knowing that i have lasted this long
for everyone but me,
and i think that maybe it's high time i was a little bit selfish.
maybe, for me, just this one thing. please.
i'm sorry.
but if suicide really is some great unforgivable offense, well -
that's just one more broad burden
i will no longer have to bear.

i remember hearing about it in the third grade;
there was a complex on my street for "financial aid",
and a class that i was not a part of laughed.
a whole condominium of victims of condescension,
mockery of misfortune and i was scared to mention
my address. i didn't know whether we were on welfare too
or i should be laughing along with my peers.
how do you ask a single mother,
"are the kids at school right?
do their parents pay for where we sleep at night?"
it's not like we ever found ourselves on the street,
and she always made sure we had enough to eat
but the anxiety remains:
was i present for the mockery of my own position?
i remember no-name fruit snacks - i hid from my friends,
scared of the message that no label sends
or what it meant to have less.
my birthdays were spent at mcdonald's with two guests
and i never knew that that was strange
until another girl's party was horseback riding.
i've spent so much time hiding
and so much energy clawing my way
to a place where the careless shit people say
won't apply to me.
i wanted to be an actress, a singer, an artist
minus the starving part - not for lack of love for my art
but for fear of the perception of my funds
and what the digits in my bank account meant i was.
there are those who have it worse, and i can't imagine -
i worked since fifteen just to keep up with fashion
so nobody could mock me for second-hand jeans.
i don't want it all but i just want the means
to not have to worry about being perceived as lesser
just because that is what i have.
and i am clawing my way up as far as i can get
but it still feels like i haven't even caught up yet
to my middle school friends who got a cell phone on easter
and weren't even happy with it.
and there are times when i am so happy to know the true meaning of gratitude,
but the desire for more still drives me
to dejection and disgrace.
i'm tired of working so hard to save face
when my belongings shouldn't dictate my state of being.
i remember hearing about it in the third grade
and ever since i've been preoccupied with getting paid
enough to make me worth it.
my life at discount pricing.