This Is How You Get Better

I guess this is what some would call getting better.

This is healing,
Crawling back into my skin,
then peeling off the scabs,
bit by bit.
Exposing flesh,
Dripping crimson droplets of lost girl,
of 20-something girl,
of choking on exhaust,
Girl,
and admitting it’s okay to start all over again.

This is not swallowing cyanide pills
in the form of self doubt
and sabotage.
I stopped looking for a way to carve his name into my DNA,
thinking logic and reasoning were in my favor,
Desperate for a reason,
This is stopped looking for a reason.
This is accepting lack of clarity,
and discovering clarity in that decision.
This is breaking the addiction
to oncoming headlights,
and lonely.
Darkness and manic,
waiting in bars for people who don’t come
for you,
Lost girl,
I started getting better.

But this,
this is not miracle.
Not sudden newfound calling.
Epiphany,
Light bulb that hits you and suddenly everything changes.
It does not work like that,
damaging notion that you’ll figure it out
in a single moment.
This is not exorcism of demons,
because I know they still whisper.
But I’m learning how to listen,
without acting.
I am little changes,
spilling truths that I had kept under my tongue for too long.
I am fulfillment,
and day by day,
I am celebration that I have made it this far.

I have made it this far
.

This is the strength
to live up to be the woman
my Dad said I was.

Said I am.


This is what some would call
getting better.

I think,
this is living.
This is living again.

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