Picking Up The Pieces

A MEANS TO AN END

A MEANS TO AN END

In my time attempting to escape

My reality, I've learned that

There are many ways that

One can go about self-harm.

There's the obvious, cutting.

An act that's supposedly reserved

For the teenage girl population.

As if they have the majority.

In reality, their majority is a tall-tale,

Used to shame the adults who

Need pain to not be so present

In the chaos that is their life.

A lesser known way:

Unprotected sex.

The thrill of not knowing

In the moment seems okay.

And in the aftermath, you panic.

The feeling of impending doom

Rises in your chest as you realize

They could have any disease in the world.

And you just exposed yourself to all of them.

As a trauma survivor,

It can be hard to handle any kind of attention.

Are they staring at me? What are they thinking?

How many bad intentions can I catastrophize?

Sexual attention is a no-go.

Except...when I want myself to hurt.

Maybe it's a female thing. From a young age,

We've been taught to weaponize our bodies.

Put on the shorter skirt,

Drape the shirt off your shoulder, show your straps.

Lingerie isn't for you, it's for them.

Put on eyeliner, but not too thick.

God forbid you look like one of those street-whores.

Sexual attention causes a PTSD reaction,

A full-on trauma-response within me.

My frozen muscles can only appease my partner.

My aim is to please, so it's over with.

In the aftermath, I flashback to rape.

I flashback to every single time

My voice became so small that you need

A hearing aid, on the highest setting to hear it.

I flashback to looking up my rapist on Facebook.

His smiling face and the poor girl next to him

Have been ingrained with a laser

Onto the insides of my tired purple eyelids.

It hurts.

Some out there, don't understand why.

Why would you want to feel pain?

To them I say:

It's how we survive.