Suddenly I Don't know me

My inner child keeps crying, "DADDY PLEASE STAY" her broken voice shouts. She hopes her words will bring him back, she hopes her father stays forever.

The grieve becomes insufferable on the days I hear her pleas.

And suddenly my chest aches and silent tears shed themselves from me

suddenly I need to tell someone that I feel like a balloon before it pops

suddenly I seek pity and suddenly I hate myself because my dad's not here to love me

suddenly it's hard to breathe and I can't tell my mother that everything is too much

suddenly my I'm fines become harmful to myself and every time I say it, it is like I'm dragging a blade across my chest

suddenly I want to say I miss my dad and I want to see him and

suddenly I want him to hug me but he isn't here to embrace me anymore

suddenly dark humour is my coping method and all my efforts to be a good daughter feel pointless because he is not here to see me grow anymore

suddenly the hurt feels like it's just beginning and the years will only make it worse

suddenly all my goals feel unreachable and I feel like wallowing in a pit of tears never moving until the hurt is gone

suddenly I don't know who I am and hope that if I keep talking and staying cheerful my sense of self will appear and show itself to me

suddenly my emotions have become too raw to show others

and now currently I cannot love anyone new because it's not fair to give them pieces of me that's shattered and might hurt them.

The grief feels like a cloak that I cannot take off no matter how much I pretend the death didn't happen.

It doesn't matter if I intoxicate myself and hide the pain. It doesn't matter if I talk about it, the grief is always there, and, so is the guilt, because I feel I haven't cried enough and I'm not lost enough and my reality is still bearable.

While my inner child's whimpers echo, the woman I am tries to stay strong because if I'm not I would collapse.

If I'm not I'll end up cutting, if I'm not the devil will whisper and I will listen and the feeling that I'm worthless will be my last.

The woman is lost, but her want for stability and a sense of normality will not let her admit it. The woman feels this is something to learn from and wish it didn't feel like something to define her.

Wishes her father's death didn't feel like a label placed on her head for others to look at and pity.

Wishes grief was not a challenge of how much she could pretend it doesn't hurt before she too sobs like the child in her.

The woman wishes to make her father proud and not hear others say "your father would be proud", no she wishes to feel that in her bones and know her efforts are seen by her dad even without him being present.

No joke about my dad or dream of the future to keeps me grounded simply a void that never stops taking that's what my depression feels like now powered by grief

I feel like a lost child begging for their parent to find them, begging not to be left alone, begging for them to tell her stories to distract her from the pain of growing up

Just something for herself to keep. Not to share with others. Just something to hold on to for stability. Just something where her brain does not feel obligated to listen to every voice in and out her head just something to cling to while her heart aches.

Like a powerpoint presentation my inner child replays and flickers through slides seeking our father's laugh, his favourite songs, his stories and all the memories we have together.

I remember my father's playful nature and I see so much of myself in him. It leaves me bittersweet and awkward, the child in me settles with a tired yawn that's enough for today her tears made her tired, now she sleeps comforted by her perception of our father. Tomorrow she will wake and the pain will still be there, her tears will form and echo but tonight we shall rest.