When I was five years old
I thought life would always be good
thought my best friend and I
would always be together
thought I'd always be that happy and carefree
thought nothing in the world
could ever bring me down.

By the time I was nine I had learned by myself
that every problem, challenge, little obstacle
was Mount Everest
and I was climbing it with my bare hands
that what everyone told me was just a little downhill slide
was a cliff a thousand miles high
with sharp rocks at the bottom
and I had no other way to go
but down.

At twelve I was pushed off that cliff
before I was ready
somehow I missed the jagged stone spikes
but the ocean surf at the bottom
crushed me against the smooth unyielding rock
slammed me into it again and again and again
until my very soul felt battered and bruised
and the effort of trying to find a handhold
of trying to hold on just for a moment
became too much for my damaged being.

As a youth of fourteen I finally sank
beneath that dark sea
felt cold water swallow me up
as easily as a black hole swallows light
and by that time I knew how to swim
but my limbs wouldn't move
and my mind was so numbed I could hardly think
to call for help
and I knew it wouldn't matter anyway
because nobody can talk with lungs
full of water.

One day I reached sixteen
and by the time everyone realized I was drowning
I too realized something
that it was too late for help
and they looked at me and told me
"JUST BREATHE"
but how could I breathe in that crushing blue despair
how could I breathe in waters
that had spent ten years dragging me deeper and deeper
until I couldn't have found the surface
if I still had the strength to try.

At seventeen I gave up trying to swim
felt the weight of every word and every bruise and cut
and every person who had the immeasurable audacity
to look me in the eye and say to me,
"get over it"
Absorbed it, became one with every hurt
until the very being I became was nothing like who I started as
because I had no choice but to change
no choice but to hone the blade of my temper
until nothing and no one
could ever make me feel
so unbearably worthless again.

Finally, at eighteen I hit bottom
found myself shaking though I felt no cold
realized I wasn't scared any longer
I looked around in that shadowy blue solitude
and found beauty in the darkness swirling around my middle
reached one arm up towards where the light
had disappeared so long ago
and I, too, was gone.

Why should I wait for the Light
when all that ever comforted me
was Darkness?

~February 4, 2014~
~ShatteredScribe~