A Dead Mind In Power of A Body So Alive

A Poem by baobaoz

This was written in context of how I was raised and how my perspective on the dynamics of my family have changed since I've turned 17.

For the memories I’ve lost, and the memories you’ve stolen; I truly hope you understand my grief. I cannot be a girl; with a father who refuses to understand pressure nor expectations. Ironically, he’ll set the bar so high I’d learned to fly. My fear of failure stems from the bruises that scattered on my body at 8 when I wasn’t good enough. I am not afraid of the dark, nor do I fear people. If I wasn’t so torn, blood spilling with stitches protruding, I would be such a beauty. I can be pretty on the outside, though I’d never believe it, while the entirety of my soul is patched over with cheap procedures and a layer of guilt to infect it. My current state of being alive is due to an expensive bill of care, care of which has never made me feel so loose in my own head. Now that I have aged just enough, my heart will not calm because my mind won’t stop the process of it all. I need to get out, but to get out, I need to survive. All of which dribbles down to something I didn’t even expect after the age of 9. My father, a man of word and of reputation, is a liar and a crook. His reputation exceeds him only because the man is briefly accelerated. Things that he is praised for, were expected of me at numbers in my life that he most likely hadn’t even the mind to think of it. I feared the pain that erupted from the parts of my skin that were hit, the heart rate that followed any loud noise, and the physical response to a movement faster than a snail. I was terrified by my father. He took so much, and only gave enough so he could continue the taking. He says it was so generous of him to pay for my bills. I wish I told him that his daughter didn’t want the “generosity” of life anymore. She wasn’t living, truly, she hadn’t been alive since the day she met him. I am an ill mind, stuck in a body that refutes collapsion.