TRAGIC Poem: EPIPEN REQUIRED, by Hailey Sawatzky

The weight of my past, my pain…my potential…
is sitting heavy on my chest today.
And it’s making it hard to breathe.
Making it hard to find any breath at all.
I feel like I’m suffocating, again.
Throat closing, lungs burning, fingers grasping.
Emotional flashbacks.
Emotional anaphylaxis.
But I find it…sadistically comforting.
How sad.
The frantic panic – a well worn, familiar groove I always settle myself into.
I willingly throw myself into.
Settling down because there is no calming down.
Battening down the hatches
because this ship is going down.

If you need me, I’ll be on the floor.

…Could someone please come and find me on the floor?
Please?
Someone? anyone…
I know it intimately by this point…
The floor.
I’ve logged more hours panicked and prone then with other people…
My bodies impression is worn neatly into the carpet
An outline of my darkening depression,
perfectly depressed into its soft pile.
A shoddy substitute for a compassionate other however.
And terrible, terrible company.
So few things in common, so very little to talk about…
Not nothing, but you know, not a lot.
…At least I have someone to be lonely with.
Something?
Doesn’t matter…
Sure wish I did.
But I’m alone
Again!
Why do I always end up alone?
It’s confusing.
But… it feels like home.
Why has it always felt like home?
Probably because…it’s really the only place I’ve been.
Where I’ve always been.
It’s been my life.
Choking on the very air I breathe.
Reaching for the hand I know isn’t there.

Rejected by the ones that brought me here, and wouldn’t let me leave.
Trapped,
alone,
and choking.
Suffocated by the storm of emotions that weren’t even mine,
at least, didn’t start as mine.
But rocked my body nonetheless.
Curled tightly on the floor, trying to stay small,
trying to survive the staggering waves of emotion as they crash
one, after another, after another, after another…
Fighting to hold my screams inside…
they were safest there.
I was safest with them there.
The sound of my voice has never brought help.
Only hurt.
Hardly seems worth it
I stopped speaking up long ago.
And so, I lay.
On the floor.
On the carpet.
On my own.
Silently as the grave I wish I could fucking be in,
alternating between soft and shuddering sobs,
without a lifeline in sight.
No wonder I wanted out.

Some days I still do.
But it’s more fleeting now.
Usually.
There are days that still bring me back down to my knees,
Back to the floor.
Back to the curled little girl, softly sobbing, eyes screaming, heart hurting.
But now, I can usually find my own calm voice somewhere among the screams…
Steady, strong and soothing.
I know better now how to listen for it,
and while I don’t always manage to find it,
it is getting easier.
Easier to find, easier to hear, easier to believe. And easier to amplify, so I can find it
with even more ease next time, find it faster.
Find it, and cling to it.
Hold on for dear life.
Which I never thought I’d want to do,
but here we are.
Breathing.
Being.
I’ve finally found a lifeline.

It’s a work in progress, but it’s work that I’m determined to do, determined to succeed
at.
And so I will.

Who would have thought,
to finally find my breath, I first had to find my voice.

Have I thanked you yet today Camille? ￿