Dear Universe, Dear Universe, Fuck you. Fuck you for everything you threw at me. For every time you threw me to the ground. For every heartbreak I have had to endure. For every love you told me was mine, then ripped from my grasp. For every hard choice you made me make that meant guilt and regret no matter what I chose. For everyone you walked into my #life only to let them walk out again. For giving me dreams to grip on to and believe in only to let me watch them shatter beneath the bones in my feet. Fuck you for the people you let me give my heart to, destroy myself and deprive myself for. For the love I have given away, never destined to have it returned to me. For the time you let me spend chasing people who didn't even know my name. For the parts of my soul I let be torn from my chest because I thought it was worth it. Fuck you for the oceans I have cried. For letting me flood the bath as I weeped into my own arms, because no one else's arms were for me. For the rivers of red I watched swirl around my feet with shaking hands. For the purple stripes that will forever serve as a reminder of the paths of unwanted fingers all over my body. For the flexibility you gave me that made my legs so desirable. Fuck you for the pain. The altogether unbearable ache of sadness I feel. The all-consuming fire of anger I feel. The intoxicating high of happiness I feel. For the complete and utter lack of control of these wildfires. Fuck you for the inability to feel. For the underwhelming emptiness that plagues my soul in an erotic embrace. For the ice I feel in my veins as he traces my skin. For the frostbite on my lips as I kiss him and try to remember how it felt to be warm. Fuck you for gifting me with the cold grip of unfathomable anxiety. No poetry will ever come close to explaining the complete disconnect you feel as a human unable to escape a body that is processing too much sensory data at one time to physcologically comprehend meaning that your lovers whispers have turned to shouts and the second they touch you, your voice screams hoarse as a victim and you flinch to the other side of the world. Fuck you for this existence. I can hear my mother. I can hear her silence in the car, I’m 10 years old. I’ve just been diagnosed with Major #depression Disorder, Stress Disorder, and Anxiety Disorder. I can hear the silence that weighed so heavily I don’t remember how my small bones took the weight. I remember when she said ‘why would you do this to me?’ That’s what it feels like now. 12 years on. Why would I do this to you. I can hear myself. 18 years old. My #life dreams shattered with the bones in my ankle. My career gone. My passion destroyed. Beaten and despairing, lying on my bed and crying. It’s so hard to hear. It almost isn’t there. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t been there. Underneath all my sadness and rage and despair that I am screaming in my mind. Behind the wall of #depression and anxiety and empty condolences- A little voice. A little voice, barely a whisper, barely a sound at all. Picking up shards of glass that was once my heart and soul. Shaking the rug I swept my pain under. A little voice, filled to the brim with the pain I refused to feel. A little voice that said 3 words. 3 words filled with more fire than a dragons breath. 3 words barely audible, and yet carried weight heavier than my mothers uttered sentence. I am alive. I. Am. Alive.