a sheep in wolf’s clothing

I read about this thing online called "glimmers"

for traumatized people to counteract their triggers,

Sometimes I think language is lovely, brilliant, a tangible truth.

Then I think it’s meaningless, not everything can be named with a word. (There should be a word for that.)

The best things are often the hardest to describe

and too often, so too are the worst.

Pain. Love.

On my flesh, in my blood.

On my mind, in my thoughts.

Doctors created a scale with faces to measure the pain.

I trained my face not to change with my mood.

When I look in the mirror I see the result of a life dedicated to embodying improvement.

If I look too long I begin to question everything.

So instead they asked “What’s the number, from zero to ten?”

I don’t know if I’ve ever felt ten, have I ever felt zero? How can you feel something that isn’t there?

Apparently I think too much.

To change my thoughts I needed more knowledge, so I dug in. Like a ravenous, rabid, wandering, dog I tore through books and burrowed down into unwelcoming rabbit holes.

I screwed around until the screws got loose.

There were no lightbulb moments yet something illuminated the no on a previously defunct, paradoxically bright, vacancy sign that shed light on my foggy mind.

I had to carve out a space to hide on my inner arms and thighs that I left open wide to accommodate this new information.

Maniacally, methodically, I chiseled myself away to expose new truth.

I was sick, it was pathological, I felt exquisite.

Pleasure and pain are overwhelming by nature and I longed to be enveloped by an embrace that would explain why hugs never made me feel better and I couldn’t tell the difference between people who loved me and people who’d hurt me.

When the mirror I looked into stopped making sense so did I. I became the mirror instead of the girl in it. With nothing to reflect a mirror is just a delicate void.

I wanted to feel full, but when I filled myself with love or filled myself with you I only grew more empty.

I patched holes in a dam that needed to break.

I was so preoccupied with the vast light and dark of the sky I forgot about the ground beneath me, and the water that flowed through it.

I was tired of floating on the surface so I pulled myself under.

Pain is so intimate. Pain is personal, Pain is all mine.

I became greedy, I had promised myself I wouldn’t.

I’ve had little to hold on to for large chunks of time.

I’ve lived in poverty and learned to be resourceful. I built up a wealth of pain.

But even as I sat upon my throne gilded in fools gold I knew I was an even worse master than I was a servant. I don’t feel heard as the shepherd or the sheep.

I have been the sheep, using my own wool to sew a sweater onto my body to stay warm, only to immediately give it away to someone who seemed colder.

I have been the shepherd who sheers the sheep so it doesn’t have to keep tearing itself up.

Either way, I am the one wearing the garment I poured my blood, sweat, and tears so lovingly into.

I still can’t describe it well, and the calloused jagged skin I caress reminds me it is in the past, but much like loves I’ve lost,

much like myself,

I can’t leave pain behind.

I tried so hard to let it go but it would just spill and seep into crevices only to relentlessly rise again when invisible forces changed the tides of my life.

There’s never been much consistency for me so I learned to rely on idols too far away to know in detail. For comfort I looked to the moon and the sun

and the pain.

I’ll stop reincarnating my past self when the tide ignores the moon and the sun sleeps with the stars.

I knew love and time could heal pain and that balance was key so I tried with all my strength to love objectively, consistently, voraciously to make up for pain I tried so hard to avoid. I didn’t deserve this.

In all my therapy I must have never understood projection. Perhaps I never understood therapy.

I’m afraid if I tell my therapist I am doing a better job than her she will think I’m a narcissist.

I just learned to love my scars before I learned to love myself, because they carved out space for me to grow.