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As a child, I never felt comfortable. I believe that this is something that a lot of us can relate to. Other than feeling more like a boy than a girl, I struggled with mental illness. I was eleven years old when I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and I was eighteen when I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. At twelve years old, I was placed in a hospital for self-harming behaviors. Part of me never left that hospital.
I felt as though my childhood was lost in those walls, and I never felt comfortable with myself to begin with. I thought that I was not good enough for anybody, the whole world, because I couldn't be who they wanted me to be. I was the contradiction, the grey area, the thirteen year old who feared medication instead of math tests.
With every breath, I tried to become this girl. This perfect girl who fit every bill. Yet, the entire time, I heard whispers. I saw myself through their eyes. I saw that they couldn't see what was behind mine. I only saw fragments. Another day. Another pill. Another moment when I had to laugh at the right things and smile at the right times.
Yet, I see these things as part of myself. I am not bitter nor angry. There are days, of course, when I ask why. Why has my life gone this way, and why do I have to be this different? The answer is usually the same. Because it's how it should be. Even though I hear the whispers, see this tangled past, I use the negativity to create. Something. Anything. To express myself. But, mostly, so that others can understand that we are all different and we are all haunted in some way or another. And, it's all right.
Thought that I'd share one of my free verse poems. It's about these whispers. Trying to figure out yourself, who you were, who they see you as. It's on the negative side of things, yet I think that maybe someone might relate to it.
Whispers
When the world was asleep,
The girl was alive. I heard the child’s
Cheerful chortles in the corridor, and
Her face was familiar like a lullaby
That my family never sang.
When the dawn rose,
The girl was a shadow. I felt her
Long after she vanished like a
Second-rate magician. She still
Lives in the mirrors of my funhouse.
When I am in that maze,
The girl hunts me. I am caught in
Her gnarled jaw and cannot outrun
The past that we have shared. Part of me
Never knew her.
When I settle into night,
The girl comes back. She whispers,
I am you. The one they want you to be.
This spine collapses as a damaged umbrella,
And I will drown in their eyes.
