birthday blues

Birthdays have been hard won. Is "won" the right word when it has been a battle but not a victory? I didn't try for this. 

Every year I'm here feels like a shameful failure, honestly. I value the love I receive and others' care but I would really rather not still be here. It's a reminder I have failed my suicide efforts, reminds of the crushing despair of coming to in another ICU bed, or the taste of charcoal in my throat, the tangle of wires and monitors, stitches and hospitalizations.

Survival is a lie. It doesn't show the death I feel in my soul and it does not do justice to the pain and trauma I have endured. I was killed off early on, something essential stolen from me. Who I was supposed to be forever altered and destroyed. I am a ghost girl wandering hospital halls and emergency rooms. I am a scarred spector searching, self destructing to try to fill the sinking emptiness that consumes me, the longing that will never be filled. Black hole never whole. What you see is not what has survived. I am still walking along by chance, dragging this thing called a body that I don't want and am trying to rid myself of.

I am nothing but a walking memorial, a candle lit vigil that no one attends. No one noticed I'm gone.

I planned on dying at an early age and each year I surpass that age I feel I have outlived myself. I linger, lost. What am I doing her? What is left? Does anything remain from the wreck?

I am another year older tomorrow. My therapist tells me he is proud. I do not feel proud, I feel this has all been an accident. I'm off my medications and floundering for a reason to continue.

What can I make of tomorrow? What will I do with the knowledge that there are people who still want me here, the ones who have not abandoned me when everyone else ha? I am trying to find the pieces that are good, the growth that has happened in my journey. What can I do with what I have, even if I haven't wanted it? I have survived but I am not a survivor. I am confused and conflicted, sinking and trying to breathe when it feels like there is no air left. 

I am here, somehow. I hope I can find a way to honor my past while living in the present. Whether there is a future or not, I am here Today and trying to be with that. I am grateful for my chosen family who continue to believe there is more for me and I strive to grab onto something salvageable with what I have left.

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