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Poem Details
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| Title: | You wanted to get somewhere so badly you had to lose yourself along the way. |
| Date Submitted: | 7/22/2006 |
| Email: | crimson_surrender@hotmail.com |
| Poem: |
“You’re a lion” my father told me. “That’s what the nurses called you.” When I was born, everyone believed I wasn’t going to make it. My father told me the story when I was at one of my low ebbs, telling me how strong I was, how I’d survived and surprised them all. If I had strength and resilience then, if I held the willpower, I told myself, I could do this too. I convinced myself I could make it. But the world was cold and life was difficult and there’s only so much you can bear before things wear through even the thickest of shields and take their toll. And I couldn’t bear to see me fail. So I didn’t see me fail. I’d sit at school with my hand in my pocket and a blade clenched tight in my fist, cutting into my palm. Failing to be seen, I was in a daze and probably as invisible as I felt, slipping away. Life and soul. Slipping away and finding myself in a toilet cubicle slamming my head against the wall, not knowing how long I’d been there. I was slipping away from my self, from my own consciousness. I swallowed pills. Sometimes pills were thrown up, there was blood in the sink in a daze of alcohol and too many painkillers that stretched on infinitely. I thought nothing of this. I thought nothing. I didn’t fall. I'd fallen long ago. I'd tried so hard and I couldn’t bear to acknowledge that I was looking for something I'd never find, that I was never going to be able to try hard enough. They took me away in an ambulance.... |