I fear the day I stop avoiding my gaze in the mirror. I push away the people who try to help me, because I’m sick. Somehow, I want it to get worse. I want it to grow, to take over, to control me as if I’m trying to prove something to myself. I choke myself until I can’t breathe. I can't make it better. I don’t want it to get better. My worst fear is having it good. My worst fear is acceptance. If ...

What’s this?

You take the bullet and I’ll take the bruises that won’t heal because one of those lasts forever and it’s not the bullet.

The bruises will take their time and toll on you. They’ll wear you down. They’ll make you wish you chose the bullet. So I’ll take the bruises for you, the ones that don’t heal. The bruises that cause grief, the kind of grief that drags its nails across your chest, ...

It gets to a point where you have to stop fighting the world and start fighting your own mind. And that’s where I’ve been living, in cracks between voices that aren’t real and memories that are, and both hurt, they kill. 

People talk, they tell me I’m so strong, and I’ve survived so much, but they don’t see what survival looks like when your brain keeps replaying trauma like it’s stuck in a broken...

You seeped into my veins, barely there, almost nothing, like a habit I didnt see forming, moving through the cracks, going unnoticed. It felt natural, like we fit. Our thoughts circling back to the same place where everything made sense. Same understanding, same actions, like mirrors facing mirrors. Your words wrapped around me, like ivy strangling a stone. It felt like something real, like findin...

What is resentment? What is hatred? I never truly felt them. I never felt anything. Did I love her? I was supposed to. My actions hurt her, but did I feel resentment? No. It didn’t sting when I looked her in the eyes and lied. It didn’t ache when I watched my choices cause her tears. Even when she revealed how I broke her down, and how I made her feel worthless, I continued to do it.

She tried, an...

I don’t know how to think for myself. My mind is loud with thoughts that never belong to me. I turn the desires of others into thoughts of my own. Is this what I want? It’s been so long and I can’t tell the difference. I’m afraid to be the reason someone leaves. Afraid that a “no” will sound too much like rejection and too much like unlove. I let people take pieces of me, hoping it’s enough to mak...

An inaccurate version you clung to like truth, but what I held of you was real. So how did we switch places? You named me difficult, distant, cold, but I never was. I believed in a false image of you because I buried the truth of you. I saw you, the real you, but I ignored it because the truth was too selfish, too much, too cruel. I was quiet but I was not blind. You did everything you say I did. ...

Your weight crushed my ribs as your fingers surrounded my throat. Your actions were a cold reminder that love was never what you meant. Your hands moved intently, and they knew the path too well. They tightened, and I felt the familiarity of someone who once held me gently. I searched for you. I searched for the part of you I knew, but it was replaced by something I couldn’t begin to recognize. I ...

I reached out my hand as the distance between us grew rapidly. A part of me was slipping away and I could no longer grasp it. The light was fading as I followed behind your towering figure. Your presense now failed to offer comfort. Motivated soley by my love for you, I persisted down your path. The unknown journey led me deeper. Our footsteps echoed in the silence as my heart grew weaker. Your ne...

The world went black, and then I woke up. I was back in the house as if I had never left. I saw my wife rushing down the hallway, desperate to know if the gunshot she heard was just a dream. She creaked the door open and heard me gargling on the blood filling my mouth. She stumbled back, her face pale as she dialed for our oldest daughter. I wanted to comfort her, to reach out, but I couldn’t catc...