Soft in the Middle

by Shelby Eileen

when you cut me, does it not feel like you are cutting yourself? or is it just me that feels everyone else’s pain like it’s my own? like I deserve to be torn down buried in the ground at my feet simply because I care too much and feel it all

I have an awful bad habit of running away and expecting people to follow like they’re attached to my heels an awful bad habit far too hopeful and damaging for a girl who cracks so detrimentally at the thought of being turned away from

I don’t know what it is to feel wanted only what it is to want

WHOEVER made me think that love and sex were inevitable did more damage than whoever made me think that being fat would always stand in the way of being beautiful did more damage than whoever made me think that loving myself was selfish and unbecoming did more damage than whoever made me think that as a girl I could only have feelings for boys did more damage than whoever made me think that my gender was as simple as this. or that. did more damage than whoever made me think that it was more important for others to be happy with who I pretended to be rather than me being happy with who I really am

I have all but become my words even the ones I don’t speak even the ones that aren’t true that’s what happens when you think too much and say too little words have created me and they let me create and isn’t it terrifying and beautiful how much power they have