Revelations at 3 am

Sometimes, I have to

tell myself

I am okay.

It's usually around three in the morning

when anxiety decides to take hold

of my heart and make it beat irregularly

They say it's from Anorexia

I say 

No, it's from all of the hurt, doctor

Because the bruises and marks she left faded but never disappeared

and to this day, to this very moment, I still flinch 

when I see a black woman coming out of a nice car.

Every single one looks the same as my own mother and I have to tell myself

It's okay, it's not her-

but the paralyzing fear i feel in my chest

says the opposite.

The doctor says it's just emotions, not physical

And that this is a serious problem 

I say

 No, the serious problem here is that I can't stop

coming back to the bottle

pushing the gas to full throttle so

I can return home to my secret stash

of Rays Blood Orange mixer, 17 percent.

The serious problem is that I'm always looking for my next drink

and I'm f*****g 17 years old.

Another serious problem is that I cannot turn the calculator in my head off

I can only turn down the volume

so whenever I see a plate of food I calculate the damage

and then the numbers rattle around my brain all day

or that whenever I see a African American man with dreads

I'm dragged back to the day 

where I got into a stranger's car out of desperation

and i'm reminded of what feels like the biggest mistake of my life

He says

Perhaps you should speak to a therapist

I say

perhaps you can just prescribe me some medication to take the pain away

because this advil doesn't seem to help the pain

in my heart.

He says I need to heal.

I tell him healing is all I know

because whenever I drag the blade down my skin

I have no choice but to heal

my body sewing the crevices closed.

He says on a scale of 1 to 10 how do you rate your pain?

And I shrug and tell him the lies I tell myself everyday at 3:00 in the morning

"I'm okay."

Reviews

[Correspondence]

I can't...I'm at a loss for words. Please know that this hurts me, even though I do not know you - but I see the pain here. :'( Here to help

[Planet x]

your poems just stub my heart and it keeps bleeding until I read them all