lady lazarus

i lost myself
in my blanketed tomb
scars on my wrist
and pills on my tongue
 
couldn't breathe
although i tried
i tried and tried
no air reached my lungs
 
panic seizing me completely
as i begged
to meet the standards
set to me by the society 
i was raised in
 
raised to never be
quite good enough
"you can do better
i know because you're
smarter than the rest"
 
like being smart excused you from feeling
 
no one thought to ask
how i felt or 
how i was feeling
or how i was burning out
 
like a comet pushed too far
a cigarette burned until it reached the filter
or like a child who was forced to grow up
too fast
no matter how hard she tried to stop it
 
because we were
i was
i am
one of the special kids
but i used to try too hard for others
striving burning
out
 
until there was nothing but ashes
 
and so i took to the colourful rainbow
in the cabinet's orange bottles
that promised some release
to sleep
to stop worrying
over a's and over doing and over being
 
and soon two or three somehow became forty
because nothing was good enough
just like how i felt
about me
 
and when i awoke 
the room was cold and white
like the tiny, sleeping pills i had mixed with the aspirin
and the nsaids
that i could feel still eating at my stomach lining
 
and i cried
every time i woke up
i had cried
because i was tired
i was the ashes
and nothing more
 
two years 
or three
i've never been good with time
passed me by so quickly
and now i read over the entries
i wrote before
 
the ones where i begged
for someone to help me
until i learnt i had to help myself
create my own positive energy
and delve into my spirituality
delve into me
 
and learn that i am more than grades
i am more than an honours status
i am more, so much more, than textbooks
and workbooks
and SAT prep books
i am more than a tally on the school's board
bragging about how great their students are
when they only ask "how are you doing" when your grades fall
 
i am made of stars and shooting comets
i am made of the universe in all its vastness
although considering its size
i'm just infinitesimal
i know i am more to the people around me
that i am a friend and a shoulder to cry on
i am a teacher who helps you learn the mechanics of grammar
because i enjoy seeing the smile when people learn
spreading the joy school had denied me before when i had attended
 
i survived
 
i survived and rose from my own ashes
a phoenix
a lady lazarus rising from her tomb
made of the burning thoughts
that everyone else had planted inside like weeds and grass
soiling her mental dirt
 
and now
i blaze and scorch upwards
burning across the sky
higher to soar above the pains of limitations
set by that toxic society that breathes
only in perfection
when it doesn't exist
and cannot see
that the only perfection is the one
that exists in being
perfectly imperfect
in being you
and only you
and fuck anyone who says otherwise

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