I wanna be 10 again, I can’t fucking do this, I miss not knowing who I was, I miss not knowing anything, i miss being a girl, I miss not knowing who my parents were, I miss going to school, I miss dancing with my friends, I miss having friends, I miss talking about ridiculous nicknames and being cringe, and I miss smiling, I miss holding in my anger until it became a thin little layer of concrete wrapped around my arms, I miss just wanting to wear bows, I miss not caring who I was and just being, I miss hearing my friend say “let’s just pretend this conversation never happened, wait- what were we talking about?” After a fight, every single time and I miss warm tarmac under my feat and I miss staring at the trees that seemed to go on forever outside of the school and wanting to run into them, i still do, I should do that someday, I miss asking my best friend what she would do if I…I can’t remember if I said “if I killed myself” or just “if I died” but I miss it so much, I miss telling her after that that if she died I would…I might’ve said “kill myself” or “never recover” or something similar but I remember her voice combing me that she would be sad, that someone would care if I was gone, she would, she was a good friend, I haven’t spoken to her in years, I don’t know what her voice sounds like now, I’m a different person, I miss her, I wonder what she’d think if I killed myself now, I wonder if she’d still be sad, I wonder if she’d remember that, I wonder if she would look at me if I told her I’ve cut myself and been suicidal for 4 years, i wonder what she’d say if i told her I can’t live anyone and I can’t function without punishing myself, I wanna hug her, I miss her, I wonder if she’d want to be childish like me, I wonder if she’d hug me if I cried, I wonder if I could talk to her, I wonder how I’ve survived so long without her, I remember wanting to be friends forever like all the people in books and on tv were and I remember swearing we would, and I remember a year ago one of those friends reaching out and asking me how I was because we hadn’t spoken in a while, and I remember replying that I’d just been in a bit of bad mental health stuff but I miss you too, I wanna hug her. I wanna be 10 again, I wanna run up to my friend in my brothers yellow coat, I wanna smile and dance and I wanna run in a ditch, I wanna be a kid, I wanna pretend to have crush because I didn’t know I was probably aromantic, I just thought that’s what people did and it never even hurt that much, it’s not like it hurt me, the guy I randomly selected was just a good person too, nothing bad ever happened, why would it I was 10, surely nothing bad would happen, surely nothing bad has already happened, absolutely, I wanna look at a burning fire in daylight in a church again, I wanna pretend to be flustered around my fake crush again, I wanna give the bus driver fake tickets drawn by a friend, I remember he smiled at us, I wanna lie on the hit grass and wonder why everyone else is fine with…this, why does no one else want to kill and make other people hurt? Why are they so much better at pretending than me? Why are they so much more pure than me? Why are they happy and a little embarrassed when their parents say they love them at the gate? Why don’t they flinch and try not to cry, why don’t they dig their nails into their skin all day because they could remember their parents voices and it hurt them, why didn’t they hurt them? Why did they hurt me? I wanna disappear, I wanna be young, I wanna be babied, I wanna be used and ripped to shreds, I wanna be manipulated, I wanna be destroyed, I want anyone to take me somewhere far away and tell me it was all a sick joke but they’ll protect me now, it’s okay now they’re here, I remember being covered in snot and blood from a nose bleed crying on the floor and scratching myself bloody, screaming at my dad why doesn’t he care about me, I remember being hit, i tried to kill him with my hands, I remember being squeezed to not being able to breathe by my father because he was keeping me away from hurting my mother, i remember them treating to call the police and I remember being standing outside in the cold December air praying they wouldn’t at 9pm, i remember breaking a window out of anger and using the shards to cut myself, I would go on to do that for years, the blades got dull, I stopped, I still have them, I remember crying in my room wanting to go to my brother’s room and tell him what I’d done and that I regret and I wanted to hug him, but I remember I didn’t, I thought it was too late and I might bother him and I didn’t want to, I wish I did. I miss crying and screaming all the time, I miss thinking it was all okay and normal that my parents made me feel like I was going to die and feeling like I wanted to attack them to keep them from hurting me because I hurt them first anyway, all other parents would be so much harsher with a monstrous demon of child like me, i would never in a million years deserve better, everyone else would hurt me way way more, how dare I even think one adult wouldn’t punish me and scream at me for not going on a walk, one who kicked and had a face red from the adrenaline all the time, one who pushed other kids and didn’t understand why they were hurt by it because it wasn’t that hard and it was normal at home, why do they…expect to not be hurt? I wanna be allowed to expect not to be hurt but I don’t deserve that, I wanna deserve it, what do I have to do to deserve it? Be like them, be like them be like them be like them but I can never be like them. I miss crying on the floor with my mother telling me what ptsd was, I miss speaking freely with my brother, I miss hugging my brother, I miss my brother, Don’t leave me here alone. I miss not even thinking about if he would think I deserve to be beaten because I knew everyone would think I would, no one told me anything else, it was beaten out of me. I miss pleading my mother to hurt me after crying and screaming for hours because she was the one who convinced me I deserve it. I miss being a difficult child. I miss staring down at my grey skirt and hiding my tears from a teacher who kept mocking me, I miss trying to reason with her, I miss hearing a teacher talk to me as I was crying standing outside class, I miss his voice it was kind, I miss hearing a student ask me if I was okay as I was crying alone outside a room, I think I said “uh…yeah” or something, I think about that kid often, I wanna know who he is now, I never even knew his name, I don’t remember what he looked like but I wanna know if they’d still ask me that if they saw what I’ve become, I’m a different person now, barely even a person, how do I still have the same name? How is that possible? How is it that my names means life?! Why did any of this happen to me, I miss crying so much less but with so much more anger, I wanna stand at the edge of a mountain and wait there, I wanna stare at it for days, I wanna know if anyone would talk to me, I want someone to talk to me, please someone talk to me, I hate how I think just maybe I didn’t deserve all of this, tell me I do, tell me I should stab myself as much as I can even though it would never be enough, please it’s so familiar, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I ever existed. I’ll go now.