Them

I was just there

I took up space

I felt seen

I existed

Beasts

Trauma is a fickle beast

Emotions enmeshed in the furthest reaches of our soul

To intellectualize the hurt is to allow it to burrow deeper within

The only way out is through

And so I felt them

The sinking pit of despair

The uncontrollable laughter

The sudden gush of tears

The constricting of my rib cage

The tightness in my bones

My body felt and I heaved in vain attempting to breath through it all as though I was birthing my own renewal

But the thing is trauma sticks to itself like clingwrap

Extracting one pain drudged up a thousand insistence of suffering

I carried on and plucked them all out

But packing up all the pain meant leaving behind the damage

Self-hatred is sitting in a corner with people pleasing

Authenticity

Born from movies & tv shows, peers, and parents

I've moved through the world under the delusion that I was presenting my authentic self

Trauma pulled me down off that high horse

Now I'm drowning in my own self-hatred

It was always unending love and respect for others but not for me

But coming of age stories are cringey when the main character is 35