Healing

I had someone tell me once,

I could not love anyone else

Until I learned to love myself.

They laughed like self-love was a sick joke.

This time, I got to laugh

This time, the sick joke was mine

Was me

I remember hating myself at the age of seven

Journals filled to the brim with criticisms by eight,

I had enough pages to stitch them into wings

To fly close to the sun to see if my tears turn into steam

Felt the wax burn on my shoulders

I was nine when I wanted to die.

Thirteen when I found a solution.

Figured, if I cut my legs enough gravity would let me go.

When it didn't, I tied a pillowcase around my neck, twisting like the rope swings I knew from childhood

Heard my heartbeat pound in my ears like a warning drum, then fade.

I'd almost convinced myself I'd done it.

I have died...so many times

So when I told you loving you almost makes life worth it, I was not joking.

When I tell you loving you makes me forget how much I hate myself, it is not poetry.

Loving you is taking all the love I could not give myself and putting it to good use.

It is reminding myself that if someone can love a dying thing this way, if someone can hold the Lazarus of my body and give thanks for the way it holds back.

If someone can kiss the scars, administer the pills, absorb the bad days and wake up smiling next to me.

Then I can try to breathe again.

Because self-love doesn't always come first or second or even ever.

But your love is the guardrail on the ledge.

Be the drawers that hide all the sharp things. 

Be the flowers you bought,

Because even though they are dying too, they still dance.

Maybe love can teach me a joke

That I can stay alive long enough to laugh at.

I love you,

Enough to want to love me too.