Because of the concerning topics in this poem, I want to clarify that this is not based on my personal experiences, but the experiences of a friend of mine who gave me permission to write a poem about her story.
I don’t know the exact day I lost myself.
It could have been the day my dad slapped me in the face
And growled
In that terrifying voice
Don’t ever do that again
Or I’ll hit you harder
When all I did
Was walk into my bedroom.
Or it could have been when I was 12
Seventh grade
At my brother’s volleyball game one Saturday morning
When for the first time in my life
I understood how one could feel completely empty.
It even could have been the first time I cut.
I was home sick from school that day
Scientific studies said it helped
Helped take away emotional pain
And I thought it did
For six months I thought it did
I was wrong.
Whenever I lost myself,
I had to have been before May first, 2017.
Because you can’t lose yourself
The day you try to kill yourself
You had to have been lost
Way way before that
You had to have given up on finding yourself
Way way before that
And so, your last resort
Is trying to find yourself
In death.
Now when even finding yourself in death doesn’t work
You start to give up any hope you had left
That you’re ever going to be found.
But when you’re lost,
You have to find yourself
You just have to
Because no one can stay lost forever.
That’s not a way to live
That’s a way to die.
Being lost
And trying to find yourself
Is hard for a number of reasons.
It’s hard to be all alone
Unsure of where to go.
It’s hard to not even be able to remember
The last time you actually felt happy
Or anything at all.
And the hardest part
Is finding yourself
When you don’t even know where to look.
…
…
...
I don’t know the exact day I found myself.
It could have been at summer camp
That first year
When Alejandra hugged me so tight
It put all my broken pieces back together.
Or it could have been when I was fourteen
Ninth grade
When Suzan sent me a long paragraph about how much she cared about me
And got all my friends to write me letters about how they valued our friendship
And they would always be there for me
When for the first time in my life
I understood how it felt to be loved.
It even could have been at summer camp the second year
When I forgave myself
For letting her die
For not being able to save her
For not being able to save myself.
Whenever I found myself,
It had to have been before April 14,, 2019
Because you can't find yourself
The day you get baptized.
You had to have been found
Way way before that
You had to have been grateful that you never stopped searching
Way way before that
And so, your next step
Is showing everyone that you’ve found yourself
In the water.
Now when you’re living this new life
Where you’re found
You start to wonder how you ever thought
You were going to be lost forever
Because when you’re lost
You have to find yourself
You just have to
Because no one can stay lost forever
That’s not a way to live
That’s a way to die.
And I wasn’t ready to die yet.
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