I will always remember the way my heart sank,

When I first showed my mother the cuts on my wrists.

The way she struggled to mask her reaction,

As I stood in the hall

Showing her the hatred towards myself

That I had carved into my own skin.

Her eyes struggling to hold back tears.

I stood before her, a young women,

Having faced sixteen revolutions around the sun,

And not wishing to have to face more.

In her mind I was still five,

Bright eyes

Messy hair

She could solve all my problems with a hug and a kiss.

 

But the image before her did not match up with that.

 

Before her stood a girl full of self-loathing,

Begging for her help

I watched and felt her heart sink as she realized

I wasn’t a little girl anymore,

That she could not fix me with a hug and a kiss.

 

Then, months later, refusing to return to therapy

I could hear her voice shake,

I could not see her shadowed face,

But I could only imagine the tears she was trying to hold back,

Her voice pleading with me:

“I don’t know how to help you, I would do anything to make you love yourself as much as I love you”

How do you go back to your mother and tell her

You stopped taking your medicine,

That your two months clean have been eradicated,

Only minutes separating you from when you last took your anger out on yourself.

How do you tell the person who keeps you hanging on that you just want to let go.

That you can’t imagine doing this anymore

How could you even think of doing that,

When you can already feel her heart breaking.

 

That the little girl she still sees when she looks at you is long gone