Badges.

Do you think you broke me first?
Do you not think I’ve been through this before?
At the hands of another man.
(If we can call him that)

Do you think you broke me the hardest?
Do you think this is the worst pain I’ve ever been put through?
No, I was 18 and three quarters.
Naïve heartbreak is always the worst,
the one you don’t see coming.

Do you think you cut the deepest?
Have you not seen my scars?
From those before you
who plunged the knife further than you’d ever go,
down to the bone.

Do you think you hold that badge for me?
First? Hardest? Deepest?
No.
There were others before.

And the worst thing about it? Is that you knew that already.
And you didn’t think to handle my heart more carefully?

Of course not.

But you were the one I expected more from.
That badge?
It’s always been yours.

Lost at sea

I’m lost at sea and don’t know where to find me.
Thought I’d moved on and left it all behind me.
But it creeps up on me in the night,
Not out of mind or out of sight.
It still hits me like a train and still blindsides me.

When do you know that part of you is dead and gone for good?
I’m stumbling, can’t find my feet, nor see the trees for wood.
Will it be hours or months or days?
I have no idea who gets to say.
But right now it feels like it’s still crawling, swimming through my blood.

And when will it stop?
How will I know?
When I thought I’d reached the top of everything that I had ever known.
When can I breathe?
Or let go and scream?
When will this feeling go?
And how will I know?

Sometimes I feel I’ve taken two steps forward and three back.
It’s hard to feel like I am safe when I’m running off the tracks.
What’s next for me – promethazine?
To quell the nausea slowly killing me.
So I’ll keep avoiding manhole covers and all the pavement cracks.

I’ve reached the point I no longer have the patience.
To be polite and maybe not just say this –
You fucked me up, yes you with the beard,
You led me on for all those years.
But is it me that’s left to blame for my complacence?

little life update

Things got very dark for me in the six months since I returned from living abroad.

I’m coming out the other side now.

I read back through the poems/pieces I wrote back then, and I feel like I’ve put some distance between how I was then, and how I feel now.

I’m healing. Slowly. But slow progress is still progress.

And I don’t want to delete those poems either. Because my feelings were valid at the time. And still are valid now.

But I’m doing better.

Touch wood. Because I still have OCD, don’t I?

(And for any of you wondering, love exists after heart break. And it’s even sweeter for it.)

heartfelt deception

i feel like i’m starting to move on,
slowly.
i don’t want to jump the gun.

but i think of you less.
and when i do it doesn’t hurt so much,
or send palpitations into my chest.

i see a picture of you now on facebook,
and i think the rose tinted glasses have been lifted, ever so slightly.
and instead i see a fully grown man
who still hasn’t learnt to be open with his emotions, and show sincerity.

and isn’t that sad?
that 4 years on you still handle your emotions the way you did with your ex, before me.
bury your feelings and hide from them,
until it reaches boiling point,
and it all gets thrown out to sea.

the pain in my chest has lifted,
ever so marginally.
that’s progress
and i’ll take that
gratefully.

because it’s taken a long six months to get here,
and i’m not even half way there yet,
not even close, nowhere near.

but i’ve put my foot on the path in the right direction,
and i feel like i’ve made a decision,
to get over,
move on from
such heartfelt deception.

moving on

is it moving on?
or is it deflecting?
distracting?
and attaching
onto someone new.
or old.

is it moving on?
or is it ignoring?
burying?
so i don’t have to feel the gnawing
pain in my chest.

have i got tired of feeling upset?
or is it resilience?
have i become immune?
to the chronic emptiness?
have i just latched onto someone else as a coping mechanism, because it’s better to be wanted by someone,
than wanted by no one?

it’s not even been 4 months yet.
was last night too much?
did i take it too far?
what was i doing? what did i think i’d achieve?
patching over my fresh pink scars?

it’s done now.
moving on.