everyday is a battle. i battle with the frowning moon and the pull of the darkest tides and the scars i refuse to part with. i only write what i know and only write well when i’m the most alive: thriving on pain or thriving on love. everyday, my costume is strength. rather than naked fear and despair, i seem  like i’m grabbing life by the horns and steering into high waters, fearless and mighty. my friends perceive me as a fierce sun, and a result of undying, vigorous wrestling with mental illness. yet i don’t know myself, i don’t know who this girl i’m portraying is. i seem to be everything everyone says i am, and nothing i tell myself. if i were to peel myself back, piece by piece, i would be unrecognizable. only a handful of people will ever see my invisible thorns; only a handful of people have realized, and have run.

but yet strength is not something i truly hold, and it is not something i’ve ever held. it’s my element of gas; invisible, and not quite there, as i wish. strength is something i’ve found to be ridiculously toxic, but then again, it’s really only the idea i’m in love with. i wish to have the power of being able to raise my own chin, and stare down my nose at the binds that used to hold me back.

if i were strong, truly and greatly, i never would have let abuse cripple me, i never would have resorted to hurting myself, to drinking to forget; i never would have wound up in the hospital, and i never would have relapsed.

everyone says that i’m the strong one. yet i know deep down, if i were to hold that kind of power, i would be unstoppable; breathtaking; a force of nature; an intoxicating kind of destruction.

i would be a tornado.

but here i am, just a gust of a passing breeze.