This year I didn’t turn another year older , seven months prior to my birthday.
But what have birthdays been for me anyways but pain?
Disappearance. Reappearance. Freshly laid.
You know what you are a real bitch.
And a trip to nowhere with a forced “happy bday” and a last minute book I already owned and had talked about for many years.
There weren’t cakes. Not of any type. And especially not the sparkly pale pink decorated ones made for me alone that I’d received for the past four years but didn’t deserve.
There was emptiness and a house full of nothing that meant nothing. There was me who wasn’t anything, not to you. There were tears as there often were but if nobody saw them did they even exist?
But three years ago, I gave you a night in the city I swore I’d never forget. And two years and 364 days ago I held onto you on the train, like I wouldn’t and couldn’t ever let you go. Like you were the one. And what made it better was that you held onto me too. Like I was the one.
As if my almost thirty years and so much pain later, Just melted away .
It didn’t matter that my finger held the promise of an eternal love, or that my veins carried the blood of another and the scar was still visible. It didn’t matter that the photos on your parents wall reflected a happy you and a happy her. None of it mattered.
The one time you brought me around your friends you grinned you were happy and so was I. But It was a novelty and I filled a void.
Birthdays became shit. All holidays did. Broken promise after broken promise.
My head into a brick wall, and the pain that reverberated instantly through my entire body.
My chest into a bundle of logs and the breathtaking pain that shattered my heart.
The taunts the torments and the misery.
The hatred that spewed and foamed from your mouth.
The hallway that became a weapon.
The bracelet ripped off my wrist.
The guitar shattered.
My belongings on the ground like the trash you believed I was.
The broken finger nails.
The bruises.
The begging and pleading to please stop.
The breakdown that resides inside me. Inside my hand, inside the vein the flows to my heart.
The exploitation.
The neglect.
The broken lamp that my body in motion destroyed.
The groceries left to rot.
The blood on my face as you used me like a rag doll.
The cereal in my hair you threw at me.
The broken flower pot and the life I had grown inside of it.
The tears i fought hard to hold back, not give you satisfaction and the tears that burst out enough to drain the entire hell hole I considered my (our) home.
The day on the train was just a day on the train and this year and the years to come I remain my rightly age for seven more months.
And you, well for you, may you enjoy your ride on the train and may you find in another what you found in me, even if it was only for one day.
7.1.20