Spent

Yes I was

No fuel left in my tanks

Everything consumed

The wind took from my sails, whilst a gargantuan wave advanced 

I thought I’d travelled the distance

The end

My end could not have come too soon

Like the passing of the tides or rising of the moon

You see, it had been a perpetual cycle

A merry go round of chaos 

Not a childhood, but a battle ground

Pain and fear my only constants

All was quickly accepted

Compliance my middle name

Terror became my normality 

And horrifying things just quite plain

Did that not happen in your house?

The teasing, testing and torture

The burning, bruising and beating

The pornography, touching and other

Did they not see how much you could take before your heart would give out?

I don’t mean attack, just a spill of emotions, that was enough of a show

The attack was one of the soul an attack on humanity and will

A trail of wanton destruction

That soon formed a vacuous hole

My compliance merged into darkness

Emerged angry, bitter twisted and violent 

Defensive, lashing out

Keeping emotions in and people out

Never too close to the truth

That I’m terrified inside

If I tell you my insides will shatter

So instead my defences rise high

No connection if I don’t look you in the eye 

You can’t see my broken soul

I keep it all in

I build a wall

My attempt at control

But no person can cut themselves off completely, retreat inside and never come out

Connecting felt like I was being defeated

Self abandonment, my safe place, my out

Addiction, risk taking, attempts and self harm

Trying to escape the internal demands

Of the pain, the terror and horror that wants to inhibit every etch of a memory inside my consumed noisy brain.

Battered body

Tattered soul

Defying the odds continuing on

Travelling white water rapids

Tied to the bottom of the boat

The occasional respite with a short gasp of air

Then plunged into darkness, the depths of despair until nearly I choke

Somehow, just somehow just through the surface I held onto the light, a twinkle, a glimmer of something that I never let out of my sight; I held on

The journey is not without remnants

Fragments that are lodged in my mind

Some days are better than others

Some days it seeps from inside like toxic waste

This I learn to navigate

Each little detour I take with this disordered brain

Each misinterpretation of emotion, each critical commentary and thoughts too insane 

I’ve had to embrace them all

Even the dodgy bits, the parts I’d rather erase, the bits that remind me of the memories; the hurt, shame and pain

They’ve somehow become the fuel in my fire

The light to guide my way

I know all that shit don’t define me now

I’m more than a list of dismay