What You Didn't Know When You Met Me:

Mon, 10/31/2016 - 22:27 -- Sara-h

You didn't know that when you met me,
I was sad.
You didn't know when you met me that I didn't know how sad I actually was.
You didn't know that when you met me
I didn't care when you said things that hurt me because I convinced myself that I wasn't supposed to care.
You didn't know that when you hurt me I thought it was my fault.
You didn't know that when you hurt me

I had already been hurt.
Hurt like a soldier being injured at war in the middle of an open space where no one would find him.
You didn't know I was suffering a disease with no cure because it wasn't actually a disease until it was diagnosed.
You didn't know how much I didn't know.
I didn't know how to feel.
I didn't know how to feel without fearing.
I'm not talking about my heart being broken by a failed romance or a shattered friendship,

I'm talking about my heart being broken by life and life alone.
And you didn't know how strongly I felt about life.
You didn't know the anxiety I had met when I was so young when I didn't even know what anxiety was.
I would cry, Daddy I have bad thoughts.
But it wasn't only the thoughts-
It was the feeling in my chest that weighed me down.
The feeling in my bones that made my five year old self cry in bed because the thought of life itself baffled me so much that I couldn't bare to be trapped in the prison of my head any longer.
The bad thoughts would creep up on me and I wouldn't know how to defend myself.

They would swallow me whole.
I would think myself into situations that were only possible in the depths of my brain.

My young, little brain.


You didn't know when you met me the broad spectrum inside my mind.
The spectrum from light to no light at all. The black is the color of my sadness. Darkness that blinds me. Darkness that comforts me when the light fails to show up when I'm crying in the corner of my room. The darkness became my friend when the light was too afraid to help.

They say that when things get too dark to turn on a light. But I can't see in this darkness and the light switch is on the other side of the wall. So when I'm feeling around the walls of my mind looking for a switch, I'm let down when the light turns on because someone outside the room had just bumped into it.
I'm waiting for the ceiling in this room to be torn from its walls. So the light switch will serve no purpose. So the light I will receive will be from the sun in the morning sky.

And when night falls, and the darkness returns to the room of my mind I know I'll be fine because the moon will still show me light.
You didn't know when you met me what exactly you were getting yourself into.

But that's okay. I don't blame you.
 

This poem is about: 
Me

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