CW: Low self-esteem, weight dysphoria, references to food obsessions
Gorgeous. Thrilling. Smart. Nerve-wracking.
You –
Heartbreak.
My heart was drilling through my veins.
You smiled
In a way that told me I wanted to be your friend
But I cracked everytime you looked
Too broken; undeserving
Of
You –
Everything I was not. I could not live up to it, I could not live up to it, how could I?
Hardworking, smiling, skinny, smart – have I talked about how smart? I was ashamed of myself, if I had to think in front of you. But that wasn't all. No. Even if I worked harder, somehow, to make up for all the years of not working hard – my food, there was always the food. The eating – neverending – more than I was happy with, never, never – hunger, gnawing – never satisfied, never satisfying. Harder, harder than anything, than
That was the hardest part… no, all of it was hard, more and more and more – the fight that had been going since I was six and my family told me I had a belly – just my mother and brother, that is – not my dad, he was never at home – I don't know what he would have said
– Looking at your music prodigy, you playing with your eyes closed – everything, unreachable, commitment, work ethic, weight, too much. It was too much.
Too much.
– No more, please.
No more.
Coming up for air, trapped under a dock. Smack up against it, the failure, who I was supposed to be, who I could have been. Smack against damp wood, suffocating in the wet dark.
What could I have been? If I had worked hard, dug in, struck out like a strong oak. But there was no one to show me, no scaffolding I could wrap my tendrils around, and by the time I met you –
I was a lifetime behind.
Besides, the eating – that would not go away, had not gone away – it had been a long time. It has been a long time. Just yesterday, it was still here. Not a minute goes by without it. What I'm eating next, how I can't, how it was too much. Counting, recalculating… clamouring, and clamouring, and I can't get a moment of silence here. In my head. I don't know what peace is, but
I wish – I wish –
Who was I, when I was younger? Who did I love, who did I know? Who could I have been? If I had tried, excelled, introspective, reflected, then maybe…
We would have something to talk about.
We could have been friends.
You were so great – everyone I knew topped the state – I was just a sap among the olive trees. Could I have been like any of you? I wondered – I still wonder – I wonder what I could have been.
If I will ever be.
But there are no excuses. I simply have not been trying hard enough. I wonder if I can, I wonder if it will be too late? I can keep going for a bit, but when can I stop this struggle to be like you? To be as great as you?
I have failed so many times, sometimes, that's all I can remember, how I ate too much today, and yesterday, and the day before, and the day before
So many ways to describe it – from tree to space – I still am me. Here. Hate it, a small asteroid rock, lumpy, misshapen – trying to be friends with a blazing supernova.
Every great person I know, every new great person I meet, blasts my asteroid apart
– smithereens,
smithereens.
Nothing,
nothing
What am I?
We could have been friends..
If I had just believed in myself?
Who knows. You have been replaced by someone else, someone greater.
No – you are still great. Some things are incomparable.
But I compare them all the time. You – me – every new person I meet.
Measured up, tallied up, down to the microgram
Someone new and amazing comes along
I am trying to keep up
So tired – so tired
The greatness, the awe
Trying to be like them,
deserve to know them
I am privileged to know them
be around them
Though they do not know me
And they don't try.
But this hole in me
– what I am not
Gets deeper and
– deeper
And I don't know how I'll ever get out
I keep digging and digging and digging
and digging
But it doesn't bring me to where it is safe,
where this will stop.
Down we go
Just down
and lower
down
downer
and more dark.
I don't know how I'll ever get out
I don't know
I don't know.