Liv Writes

There are many times in my life

I can recall being called

‘Psychopathic’

‘Malicious’

With ‘potential to kill.’

I laugh it off and reply,

Hiding my brutal honesty with a smile,

“If I had to do it I would, no hesitation.”

If people do believe me,

They ask how I could deal with the overwhelming guilt,

The guilt that comes with killing a person.

They never understand when I say

I’ve carried that guilt on my shoulders

For as long as I can remember.

I cannot visually remember their deaths

But I can still hear their screams,

Their pleads.

I killed them before I knew what I was doing,

Before I knew actions had consequences,

When I still thought I did it out of self-defence…

I buried their bodies behind my wide smile

And bright eyes,

Knowing I had the capacity to keep this a secret.

I killed them but continued with life,

Continued with the guilt others claim would end them.

It wasn’t until They began digging into my past-

My story before the facade,

That the ghosts reemerged to haunt me.

The ghosts of the girl I could have been,

And the little girl I never had the chance to be,

Filling my head with their haunting tones.

“Why did you kill me?”

“Why did you let me die?”

“I had so much potential”

“I had so much growing to do”

“I never got to have a childhood”

“I never got to say goodbye”

As I attempt to apologise,

With tears in my eyes and

Trembles on my lips,

I realise that it was never self-defence-

Nor was it homicide-

It was the act of self-preservation

Done by a girl who feared what the world would make of her.  

Over the years I have taught myself how to share

Pieces of me with others,

Even if my past self may have been horrified.

It has lead me to be hurt,

Betrayed,

Words flung at my back without me looking.

Yet I continue.

I decided that it allows people to see the true me,

And should they react negatively,

They just couldn’t handle it and weren’t worth the effort.

There are still many words left unsaid.

Despite drunken nights where my mouth never stops moving,

And my mind disconnects from my body,

Making me unaware of the weight of words I am spilling.

Words left unsaid.

Left to rot inside me.

Left behind in fear and embarrassment.

I never claim that my favourite colour is red,

Too frightened for the moment where someone asks why,

And I am taken back to those late nights spent awake,

Tearing at my own skin in an attempt to free the thunderstorm inside.

Too frightened to admit that as I watched the blood spill,

I was enamoured by the deep and bold hue-

Too frightened to admit that the colour dispersed

Was the only beautiful thing my body had ever achieved.

I don’t talk about ripping apart my own skin religiously,

Addictively,

Obsessively,

In an attempt to keep seeing the only that made me think,

Just for a second,

That I could be beautiful.

So I just say my favourite colour is blue.

Blue,

Black and blue…

When I was younger I had a lot of bruises.

They’d appear seemingly out of nowhere

It became a joke between everyone around me.

As I got older,

The bruises remained and I claimed that it was still clumsiness,

Not my own hands attempting to punish myself for not being able to live ‘right.’

My need for schedules and order drives people nuts,

And I laugh along as jokes are made

Or annoyed sighs fill the room.

I never mention that my compulsiveness for order scares me.

I never mention the thoroughly thought out plans

The ones that left me alone to suffer,

Muffled tears as red lines formed across my thighs-

Neat and deep enough to draw blood but not deep enough to scar.

I don’t talk about how that continued for too long,

Carving my flesh over and over again,

Every few days having a blank canvas,

And always thought out well enough that no-one ever knew.

Unless I explicitly told them,

No-one knew of the pain I was trying to carve an exit for.

I don’t mention how I had to drag myself out of that routine,

No-one helps what no-one can see...

Men terrify me.

And the issue is

I don’t know why.

I don’t know whether something happened when I was a child,

And whether I repressed it like the good girl I was.

The good girl I had to be.

All I know are these words left unsaid:

I can’t handle my hair long enough to pull from the back.

If a man gets drunk and angry I begin to panic.

Being alone with a male family member terrifies me.

If a man hugs me for too long, I forget how to breathe.

These words left unsaid boil inside of me,

I doubt they will ever be said aloud.

Afterall,

Good girls are seen and not heard. 

As my slow journey to recovery (to some degree)

Rears its unlikely head,

I begin to take notice of things about myself;

Digging for possible triggers but discovering so much more.

Every time in the past three years

When a clock strikes 11:11,

When an eyelash falls and I catch it,

When I blow out birthday candles,

Or when someone asks me what my one wish would be,

My immediate response is

"I want to be happy."

I'm beginning to realise that it may never happen-

That I will never again experience true happiness,

Stuck instead with random bouts of fake 'happy'-

But that will not stop those 5 little words.