Tell You Something

I gotta tell you something;

I gotta tell you a secret.

Because I’m just tired,

I’m waring down.

I’ve been bruising and cutting myself since I was 12;

I’ve been crying and withering away for almost two decades,

tried ending it for good a few good times,

And I am tired.

I don’t know what this is called

But I listened to some TedTalk about

Being truly honest and vulnerable with yourself.

And I wish Today was different

But I keep doing it you know.

It is so often I wonder you know,

What does it even matter that I’m here.

There’s so much hope in this world,

So many reasons to change, you know.

There’s so many good people

Trying to save our souls,

Offering homes.

But you know, I was never taught how to receive love,

I was only taught how to give to others,

And to take what ever crumbs of “love” and its “forms” were thrown at me.

And I’m just tired.

You know I’m tired of coming home

And bathing in blood and misery.

Yet life just seems perfect from the outside;

days just passing by;

The irony of “all together in one place”.

“Adults” have children these days

But the families are empty

We are just left alone to find home,

In this vast, big world:

Unconsciousness, loneliness, hypnotic conscience, hypnotic inductions.

Sometimes I come home,

Take a shower, hours pass:

Scraping over and over

The dirt and filth

From my disgusting self.

It’s only safe in there;

Locked doors but even a pin drop

Out of the ordinary

And my soul sinks and shrivels.

They call it “c-ptsd”;

I call it my living, breathing reality.

Talking to myself “don’t worry you are safe here”:

We are just left alone to find home;

I cannot find myself

In this vast, big world.

So again, I just fall asleep

And I don’t have anything left for me

As I wrap my lovely feelings around you

Under the covers,

And you reclaim yourself.

And in all the wait and giving,

all the parts of me are drained,

and having rescued the home,

I, slowly die one more time.

~By Maryum Khalid~

Photo (taken by myself of a cold, winter window)