To myself, at fourteen...

When I was you, what I knew to be true was not the truth today.

You are lovely, you are strong, and you deserve love- without a need to grovel.

You have seen so much already. Your hands have clawed their way through dirt and loss and heartache- and you have emerged clean on the other side.

You have been touched by people who love you, and by people who just love their hands on you. 

You may feel like you’ll never be clean again.

You may feel like you aren’t whole.

But you are. You are a mountain, a fortress, a goddess. 

People can worship at your feet and never even know the unrelenting beauty inside you.

You have the power within you to heal through your words, your art, your love.

You have the power within you to become something more than what you’ve been told by those who think they know what you’re capable of.

They are just projecting their own insecurities onto you. 

Trust your intuition, believe that you are worth something. You are worth everything.

Specifically, break up with that boyfriend. 

He’s not worth your time and will do you way more harm than good in the long run.

Forgive your parents when they aren’t perfect. They are fallible beings like everyone else. 

Hold them close because they won’t be around forever.

Self-care is so important. Did you know that you are gifted with the use of color? 

Meditate on the color purple. Put on a face mask and take a hot bath. 

Spend more time in nature. 

Sing at the top of your lungs and love what you love unabashedly.

There will be times when it seems like your body is failing you. Nurture it. 

When someone says that you are being dramatic, a hypochondriac, it’s all in your head, know that your intuition about these things has always been correct.

Read. As much as you can, whenever you can.

You are strong, you are wonderful, you are enough. 

Do not worry about me, you’ll see me sooner than you think.

Awake

Paper, words, color, sound, scents, and ritual.
Turning nothing into something magical
I can finally feel myself again
Reaching into the recesses.
Those parts- numbed and lying dormant
Are coming alive again, like the trees outside my window.
Recovering from the longest Winter- two years of my life.
Several homes, several states, several hands,
I look down, and mine no longer feel alien.
I move through the motions that had lost their meaning to me
and they are renewed.
I faltered in trusting myself, let someone else dictate what my life should be
Swallowed the pills and went to sleep.
I'm done sleeping through life
Much better to be an insomniac magician
than to slumber numb.

The tale.

I am a cautionary tale.
The quintessential hard luck story
I often feel like I've been written
Like this is a simulation playing out the various ways
that things can go wrong

I'm nobody's role model, I'm not an inspiration
My intuition is clearly skewed
My body is failing me and I'm out of answers
Every corner, instead of refuge there is dismay

I'm over it all. Pretending to care is so hard
When truly caring means that something will wind up breaking
When the root of all evil is the thing that's keeping you anchored
it's no wonder that things continue to fail.

I am a live wire.
My tongue sparks electric
When my heart is too full to beat
Words catch fire, my hands a conduit
I have become nothing more than a generator.

I create these platitudes, these grand declarations
As a distraction from the truth of the matter
My synapses sparking whenever things become difficult
I can run, this electricity can sustain me for miles

The end is as it began. The story can be a warning
That morphs and becomes something more, a game of telephone.
She was once, and now she's not.
Do not become what you do not understand.