Poems for the Heart

Living in a world where non-stop ‘do this fad diet’ and ‘get thin quick’ mottos because the standards base our beauty off the number on your jeans. The higher the number the lower the praise. The willingness to fall in line with the set standards dependent on your need to fit in and desire to have others approval. With the new culture coming around preaching ‘self love’ and ‘ embrace the skin you’re in’ after already being bombarded with the complete opposite. Preaching the self embrace of a self love’s embrace which is what will heal the cracks in the facade you created for your outer shell. When will what exists be good enough to exist! Climbing up from your rock bottom that is so deep it might as well be called hell is a special kind of torture. God gives his hardest battles to his toughest soldiers - well I wanna know when I asked to join the war? When was I given the choice to not have to be tough! Be strong. Be resilient. Funny how these are all meant to lift me up when all they do is beat me down. It’s the water on the rocks I’m using to climb from my rock bottom. Slippery and brittle. Wet moss makes every grip and lift a task of sheer will but sometimes that’s not good enough. When will my body stop keeping score. Every 7 years we have shed enough skin and this body will no longer be a body that has been touched by those that induced my trauma. But that’s just it. The outside might have been able to shed a new layer but the inside remembers. The constant fight or flight etched into every organ every cell every square inch and they all remember. Have you ever looked in the mirror and stared at your reflection and thought “what a masterpiece”. Yeah me neither. Not even being able to meet my own gaze because of the self deprecating thoughts that race through my synapses from a body that remembers. A body so scared and battered that it refuses to offer a kind word or phrase. How can you expect to have someone love you when you can’t even look at yourself in the mirror? But the truth is they can. You are worthy to be loved with your scars and your bruises no matter if they can be seen. You are worthy of all the praise in the world because you have survived. You look at yourself through drunk goggles and distorted glasses while they see you as you are. They don’t have years of experience picking apart your body and highlighting the flaws till those are all you see. They see you. They see your smile the way it causes your eyes to shine. They see your hair and the way it billows around your face and frames it as if you styled it. They see your body in all its glory from all angles and they are happy to be there. Happy you took off your clothes. Happy and awestruck. Would you take off your mask then? The one that shields you and holds on to the possibility they won’t like what they see and is ready to make you numb. The mask that makes you apologize or beg for them to not look in “that area” as if you don’t have multiple and they would have to not look at you to be able to avoid them all. That mask that makes you hold back from love as it whispers ‘just wait’ because it knows the other shoe has to drop. Just like a self fulfilling prophecy they do leave and you blame yourself for the hundreds of flaws you see in yourself and yet the reality is they weren’t it. A relationship can end and you don’t have to blame yourself for its end. I didn’t sign up for the war but I ended up being the last one standing. When you survive the war and you’re the only one left, that leaves you with no one to understand what went on in that war. Good for you, survivor but who will hold you when no one can understand your battles?