Learning to Exhale
I told myself the only way to heal is destruction.
“You will be rebirthed,” I said, “your destruction equals creation.”
I told myself that drowning was not enough, I could not suffocate on water but by the words you breathed into my ear.
I told myself that cutting was not enough: why harm yourself when they’re all lined up with tickets waiting to crucify?
You must destroy everything while all the blackbirds are watching.
Laughing and taunting.
I ripped the flesh from my limbs so that I could finally feel something—I could never show you the broken pieces of me.
But, am I really, —..broken? I’m not sure, I think so. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but my vision has been compromised.
I’m standing with all of you, but you don’t notice the signs:
how my heart beats so loud, irregular
how my eyes are blank, vacant
the stupid fucking scars on my wrist, nonexistent
notice that I exist, transparent
I wear skin that is not mine. I’ve slowly suffocated because the air that I’m breathing was not meant for me. This environment is not my own.
I was carved in your image, but I was never able to take charge of my own canvas.
You said that I was a bad artist, that I could not create myself.
I attempt to now, and I feel—guilty.
To ruin what you created, but then I remember that I am no one’s possession but my own.
I forget this often.
I wondered why you never realized that my canvas was broken, with the cracks I etched into my side.
You tried to go over them with watercolor, but I had too much saline.
I think about the way you used your arrows to dissect my self worth.
When I try to paint myself, I feel inadequate. I start with light strokes to symbolize who I want to be, but then your hand takes over.
I feel the harsh smack of the ocean, —or is it your hand?
Maybe it’s the reality I’ve been avoiding.
I search for meaning in all the wrong places, because you were the first to misguide me.
You never showed me how to slow my pace or clean my brushes, but you taught me about the vulnerability that I can bare.
You showed me how it felt to get everything ripped away.
I said that I was uncomfortable with you painting me; touching my canvas.
You taught me that what I want or feel doesn’t matter, now that I’ll never be a masterpiece.
Now, I can’t even stand to see the result of my own artwork. There’s jagged lines on the surface and psychiatric compulsions protruding out of every crack.
They tell me that nothing is set in stone,
but it’s dangerous to tamper with the work of another artist.
I have died for you so many times—over and over, but you don’t appreciate it.
My insides are rotting, my flesh is decayed. I’ve finally began the process of destruction—it only costed me my life.