shreya

poetry blog | all things literary

[nmolesofadrenaline]

[nmolesofadrenaline]

No amount of friends I have now can fill the empty chair at a lunch table in fifth grade because some hungers don’t understand the concept of time.

Childhood loneliness is peculiar, probably because the concept itself is alien; how could a seven year old understand what being lonely and unwanted feels like? But sadness knows how to fold itself into your bones and grow tall with you.

It’s in laughing without knowing the joke because atleast you’re included in shared laughs and giggles and is in finding friends with Willy Wonka and being in awe of James and his giant peach. It’s eating lunch on the floor near the bathroom where nobody looks, or not eating at all because the thought of being seen alone feels more unbearable than hunger itself.

I am sorry mom. You did all you could; you packed my lunch, you ironed my uniform, you knot my tie with hope and braided courage in my hair; you did all you could but i’m sorry there’s a black slug inside me that every park recognized before children could ever get to know i’m sorry i brought the pancakes unattended but i’m sorrier that i might have no place to eat them tomorrow too.

It’s feeling relief with assigned partners because me belonging wouldn’t be an active choice someone could make, and i’d feel included and needed even if it was fake; even borrowed inclusion feels warm on a winter afternoon. It’s bringing home a shirt with barely a name on it and scribbling across the empty spaces yourself because Mom shouldn’t have to know they never really saw you.

It’s becoming useful: it’s learning every inch of the prose and poetry and doing homework and teaching before exams and even becoming a doormat because atleast a doormat has visitors and knows what footsteps feel like.

Because maybe love wasn’t something you deserved but something you earned in the form of 75% attendance or the first prize in debate or a gold medal.

One more achievement. Maybe one more reason to not let go of me.

Those friendship bands were never real mom but how could i ever tell you that they don’t talk to me because this is a war you never started and a slug nobody planted but i’m sorry mom it tells me that every room has already decided against me before I open the door.

This cruel childhood doesn’t end but grows taller and sits beside me in college,

I walk into anatomy lab knowing the sternocleidomastoid more intimately than I know the people standing beside me. I can trace the deep cervical fascia from memory, yet I still don’t know what it feels like to have someone save me a seat without asking.

it makes me wonder if loneliness is inherited or one afternoon in fifth grade lasted forever.

I hope there was meaning in it. I hope all those silent lunch breaks, untouched pancakes, blank shirts, and imaginary friends were building something I cannot see yet.

Because if they weren’t and loneliness was just loneliness, what was all of this for?

[theconcealedweapon]

[nmolesofadrenaline]

You say you want to d!e.

And maybe you do mean it, in the moments when the exhaustion settles so deep into your bones that you can't remember what it feels like to want anything else, in the moments getting up from bed feels like a camel clutch.

But then you put on a mask before hospital rounds.

You say you do that because the AQI is above 200, and that you don’t want to catch a cold and that you do not want to infect someone with the flu.

But if there is no tomorrow, what for and why are you protecting yourself?

You study and you cram and cram and cram. You sit for hours memorizing the neural supply of the thyroid gland. You learn the steps of a total thyroidectomy. You force yourself to understand the difference management of follicular thyroid cancer and papillary carcinoma even when your eyes ache and your head hurts and you would rather disappear; even when you disassociate thrice in an hour.

Why spend tonight preparing to save a stranger five years from now? Why learn how to preserve someone else's voice if you are convinced your own story is over?

You say you're tired. You say you don't want another Christmas, another Easter, another year; it’s all extremely exhausting. And yet, in the privacy of your mind, you still imagine being loved. Not in some grand , impossible way (even if it may look like that for you). Someone choosing you everyday. Someone who doesn’t make you earn affection. Someone who stays when times are tough.

Why would you dream about a future version of yourself , if you genuinely believed there was no future waiting for you at all?

You say you’re a menace to love. That you cannot maintain relationships. That you’re an awful, awful person.

And yet, your sister wakes up from a bad dream and texts you at eight in the morning to ask if you're okay. She wakes up frightened, and somehow her mind lands on you. She most definitely doesn’t have to. She doesn’t owe you anything. Hell, she isn’t obligated to do that. It’s because she loves you.

Because your existence matters enough to interrupt her morning.

People do not lose sleep over “burdens”.

You say you don't want to wake up tomorrow, but you still refuse to wash your hair too often because you don't want the cherry-coke red to fade.

Such a stupid little thing.

Such a human little thing.

Such a small, minuscule thing .

How insignificant of a detail that nobody writes proses about it.

But here you are, actively telling yourself you deserve no love, safety or protection while you’re trying to save a colour. Probably Protecting the version of yourself that will catch sight of it in a mirror and think, for half a second, - that actually looks nice.

The most awful thing about being sad is that the part of you tells you it wants to end things speaks very, very loudly.

It screams and fills rooms and screams again and again, over and over just so that you’re convinced that this is the only voice that exists.

But there is also a part of you that cares, the part that cares about something as mundane as cherry coke coloured hair.

It doesn’t scream. It doesn’t shout. It’s very scared. It just hides somewhere inside. But it’s also very stubborn like you; because it keeps showing up in small, very stubborn ways

It shows up in the masks before rounds, it shows up in the exam notes you dont care about, it shows up in the fantasy of being loved, it comes up in your sister’s concerned texts, it shows up in the red dye you do not want to wash away.

And no this doesn’t mean you’re not unhappy. It doesn’t mean that you’re okay, and it doesn’t mean that everything appears in a way that it’ll be fine.

But they mean something. Because despite everything, there is still a part of you that keeps acting as though you'll be here tomorrow. This is the part that keeps the porch light on.

And perhaps that is the most heartbreaking thing of all:Not that you want to die. But that even now, underneath all that pain, underneath all that hurt, there is still a part of you that cannot quite stop wanting to live.

And that part hasnt given up yet.

[nmolesofadrenaline]

[nmolesofadrenaline]

[nmolesofadrenaline]

[kosmogrl]

[nmolesofadrenaline]

[nmolesofadrenaline]

[nmolesofadrenaline]

[nmolesofadrenaline]

[memeuplift]

[nmolesofadrenaline]

[mrrstealurriotgrrrl]

abortion is valid and completely okay even if the mother wasn’t underage or wasn’t SA’d.

“The mother just doesn’t want the baby” that’s ok !

“The mother isn’t financially , mentally , and / or physically able to take care of a child” that’s ok !

“The father left and the mother doesn’t want to / can’t take care of the baby by herself as a single mother” that’s ok !

“The mother is addicted to something that will affect her child ,, therefore wants an abortion” that’s ok !

“fetus isn’t healthy ,, therefore abortion is necessary” that’s ok !

some people have got to understand that a woman doesn’t need to be violated to earn the rights to her own body. if you want to think of the children ,, think of the mother first. save the tree , not the apple.

[animentality]

[fahbee]

(source)

Bonus:

[singular-disease]

i like this one. I also like demanding to pro-lifers that organ donation after death should be mandatory

it’s fun to watch them get all twisted about how no one has a right to their body. it’s hard for them to make a case that an actual corpse has more rights than a living woman: both should have the option of saying no to literally anyone who requires their body parts to survive

but if you’re truly pro-life, you have to be pro-mandatory organ donation. Oh, you worry that there would be major problems in such a program, like doctors letting patients die to get their organs? Kind of like doctors letting patients die because they can’t give abortion care?