"This time, we don't need another perfect lie"

In the middle. In the middle is how I will describe this while I wonder if I will try to erase this from my mind later on in life.  In the middle of a dark past and a bright future is when I struggle to block out the memories. Just like my siblings. They try, too. We all try. But it never really leaves. You always remember and your eyelids are always struggling to stay dry when you’re in the middle.

All my secrets cannot forever be holed up in my head for the sake of maintaining a normal front in society. One day they will spill over. One day the floodgates will break under the pressure of wet eyes and stories untold, and one day, the whole world will know what we concealed in our hearts and minds even though it almost drove us crazy as her, crazy until we broke in front of family and friends who left because they got busy and all we really had was ourselves, me and my sister. 

Erasing the middle, I wish I could tell you how it was. It’s like knowing your name begins with an S and ends with an H but there are blanks spaces in between, blank spaces and you don’t know what you became in the middle, what changed and gave you courage, courage to run away from this, run away from home, run away from her. Run away even though the voices in your head called you a coward for not fighting back, not standing up for him, run away because you’re brave enough to confess to yourself that you  have no strength against this.

Screw the stars for promising us a better future, for making the skies look like they were shining for us and screw the world for telling us everything would be alright, happy endings are only in chapters that lead to bad beginnings.  “You don’t know.” He sighed and I wish I could tell him I did. I did know of pain and terror of a very exquisite kind, something he would never know of. 

Erase the beginning because that’s where it all began. Erase the beginning, erase the moment you were born from the pages of the history books of the world because that’s the only way to escape the middle. If it wasn’t for the beginning, you wouldn’t have found yourself here, here in the middle.

The middle. Where you define yourself with words called adjectives to give yourself a ground to stand on.  And you can stand as long as you believe the lies the voices in your head breathe, the voices that everyone else believes. But when you realize you’re here in the middle and you don’t want to be here anymore, you notice the cracks in the ground before it gives way to your feet. 

When you realized it was all a facade, and it wouldn’t hold any longer. 

When the past finally caught up to the beautiful middle and ruined it. Despite all your efforts to run, run, run away from it.

I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to be patient.

I’m sorry this really has no beginning or end, but I’ve stopped trying to make sense.

I need a compass, I need an atlas

I need you, and the ground to walk on

And stay steady under my feet when I cannot carry my own weight.

I need to be able to speak the truth

Like I know it, like we know it, the truth because

Nobody else knows it.

I need the blanks in the middle to go away

Please make them go away.

I need to not be afraid

Anymore.

And I need you to stay

On days when I’m in the middle.

And there are blank spaces everywhere.