Writing as Therapy: A Journey of Self-Discovery

It has been a rough couple of weeks but I will keep persevering because life is about moving forward. I have my lease taken care of for my future apartment. So that is one less thing that I need to worry about in the next few months. Tomorrow, I have a follow up appointment with my doctor and will need to go over my immunization record to get signed off for school. I am in a way sad about the day that I will be moving but I know it is only temporary. With all that is going, I have been doing some reflecting and realized I am not good at putting my emotions into spoken word. 

What does that mean and why am I bringing it up? Well, I have been trying to figure out a way to process things in therapy and realized writing is much easier for me to connect to those emotions. In light of that revelation, I had been working on processing some stuff on my own for therapy and decided to use my writing to work through that stuff. I would like to share it here and remind myself that pain is only temporary. But, love and life is for a lifetime. 

there was never a path
(for the girl in the mirror who came late and stayed)

There was never a path –
just a clearing full of smoke,
the burnt husks of choices made for me
before I had a name for myself.
My father’s voice lit the first match:
Bi people don’t exist. They are just fags in disguise.
And I was too quiet, too soft to argue,
so I swallowed it –
held the flame in my throat
until it shaped the way I said “I’m fine.”

It took years to cough that fire back up.

You want to know what survival looks like?
It’s me in a bathroom mirror,
midnight,
counting body hairs I’ve plucked and still not feeling clean.
It’s a girl trapped in a body that remembers
too much of the wrong kind of attention.
I used to dream of peeling myself out of this skin,
layer by layer –
a molting that never quite finished.
The weight hangs wrong.
The angles lie.
Every reflection a betrayal,
every photo a eulogy for the girl I almost get to be.

I have screamed into towels.
I have starved my body trying to erase the curve of shame.
I’ve stood naked in the dark and begged my own hands
to disappear.
And I’ve planned it –
more than once.
Not a cry for help,
but an end to the math I couldn’t solve:
How do you subtract a body
from itself
and still remain?

Some nights,
I still wonder what mercy feels like.
Not hope.
Not healing.
Just the soft blank of not having to try anymore.

The smell of Pall Malls still knocks the air out of me –
not because of my father,
but the men who touched God with one hand
and me with the other.
Sunday suits and breath like ashtrays,
they spoke in tongues and
called it salvation
while their fingers made maps
I never gave them permission to draw.
They said I was chosen.
They said I was special.
I learned how to disassociate
before I learned how to multiply.
And no one asked why I flinched at prayer.

Marlboro 100 Lights smelled different –
sharper, cheaper.
My stepfather’s ghost wore it like cologne.
No church.
No scripture.
Just hands that took
and a house that blamed me for bleeding.
But I fought.
I yelled.
I told.
I said no.
Again.
And again.
And still they called me dramatic,
confused,
a liar.
He smiled while they told me
to stop making trouble.
I was punished for every truth I ever tried to speak.
And even now,
I still carry the silence they forced on me
like a second skin.

There is grief in being seen too late.
Grief in never being believed.
Grief in a girl who had to carve herself out
with nothing but shame
and Google search results.
But I learned to shape language into armor.
Learned that silence is a weapon
only if you don’t scream back.
I wrote myself into existence
when no one else would.

Don’t mistake this quiet for surrender.
It’s the pause between revolutions.
It’s the inhale before I speak for someone
who hasn’t yet found their voice.
I may still flinch at mirrors,
may still want to disappear some days –
but I don’t.
I stay.
I stitch myself together
with thread I’ve made from every broken moment.
I get up.
I fuck up.
I keep going.
Because someone out there needs to know
they’re not alone in this fight.

There are people who would rather I not exist.
They craft laws like nooses,
spread lies like oil slicks over truth.
They say my name is a threat.
They say my body is obscene.
They look at me and see a problem to solve
instead of a life worth protecting.
But I am not a theory,
not a debate,
not a phase.
I am flesh and fire and choosing to live
despite them.

I am still here.
I am not whole.
I am not always kind to myself.
But I am mine.
And that –
that is a kind of resurrection
no man, no god,
no system built to erase me
can take away.