Sincerely October

Year - Yours

Y for dictionary poetry.

Year
This time last year tasted like realizing that I have a problem, that I didn't want to get drunk today and I did.
This time last year I was picking up the pieces from a hollow summer, a summer that nearly killed me, a summer I spent alone.
This time last year is best captured by writing poems about my worst moments then going about this as if any of it is normal.
This time last year was sleeping in a fort on my bedroom floor, this time last year was spending hours upon hours there.
This time last year I was thinking that maybe if I write it all down I won't overdose, this time last year I was wondering how I could keep this up.
This time last year was wanting to die, it was not caring if tonight I took too much because I don't want to get up tomorrow morning anyways.
This time last year was being consumed by a haunting past and a growing addiction.
This time last year I was wondering if I would survive it.

Yearn
Yesterday I missed it, I missed it so much that the ground started to shake under the weight of the possibility that I could go back to it if I really wanted to.
I started to question myself, I started to question months past and asked myself if it was really worth it.
The truth is sometimes I miss it, and the truth is that I will never feel that way sober, but the truth is far more complex than that.
I never want to go back to feeling that way again, I don't want to feel the chronic dissatisfaction that used to plague me.
And maybe the highs were higher, but as time progressed they are harder to come by, they become limited and rare, and soon they stop coming all together.
I don't miss feeling sick for months at a time, I don't miss days of blurry vision, the knowledge that I was destroying my body and brain was an ache.
So maybe I do miss it, and maybe I will for a long time, but the drugs are not worth being missed.

Yellow
He almost always knows what to say, even when I don't.
He understands and when he doesn't he never leaves me feeling like I am wrong for being the way I am.
He loves me for what I am, he saw things in me even when I believed those things didn't exist.
He wants me to be happy and well, he wants that in any way I can find it.
He knows what I went through and he knows how it lingers, he knows it wasn't my fault, he knows things are different because of it.
He really loves me, not what I could be, not what I should be, not what I pretend to be, but what I really am.
I imagine us living in a home together one day, a shared space for the both of us, because with him I know I am safe to be whatever I am.

Yours
Always his, always doing what he said to do, always falling into his traps, always believing that I am better off laying on my back and letting him take advantage of me.
He owned me.
I'll lie for you, I'll cover up the bruises you left me with, tell me what I need to do and I'll do it.
I never wanted that, he didn't care, he never did.
I still have the sense that this is a part of what I am. Every part of myself is shaped by what he wanted me to be.
I find myself greatly affected by those moments in time. Something small reminds me of him and suddenly I am eight years old and someone is touching me in a way they shouldn't, suddenly I am eleven years old and I am going to die today, suddenly I am fourteen years old and I make trying to make peace with the thought that soon my body will be buried underneath leaves in the forest.
I get tired of telling the story. It replays in my mind demanding space but I am tired of talking and thinking and writing about it.
I don't want to be yours anymore.
Maybe he never loved me but it wasn't because I wasn't loveable, maybe he never saw anything in me besides a little girl to touch late at night but I've always been more than that.