“What did you do to yourself?”

I look down at my arms,

I look down at my legs,

My stomach,

My hands.

“This Isn’t me,”

I say.

“This can’t be me.”

I look at this body that claims to be my own.

I touch its face, and cover its eyes,

Hoping, 

Praying,

That this is just a dream.

But in disappointment, I open to see the same rough hands,

The same crooked fingers,

The same body,

Damaged, yet somehow still hanging on.

This body that was once young and pure,

This body that used to cry thick tears, but they never stayed,

And they would leave the body healed and stronger. 

But after 17 years,

After 17 long years,

This body became ingrained with all that haunts it still.

The color from its face is gone,

Its smile faded,

The eyes no longer bright, but instead,

Dull with hopelessness.

This body,

Once being able to feel its skin with your eyes closed and mistake it for silk,

Now felt like the skin of a tree, rough and scared from age and regret. 

This body that has been trusting too many times. 

This body that has been given to those who have treated it like a doll,

Unable to control what happens to itself as it is thrown around and torn apart. 

This body that claims to be mine. 

This body that has been used and broken to the point where anyone can see the cracks. 

“This isn’t me,”

I say. 

“Well then, whose body is it?”

“This is my body. But I haven’t owned it for a long time.”

My body is not who I am.

My scars are not who I am.

My body is not who I am, but a record of how the mind has been treated.

While the body decays overtime, one day sinking into the earth,

The mind is what stays scarred.

But the mind is also what keeps the body from decaying too fast and too young. 

The body has a harder time not giving up from all that pain,

But the mind will live on no matter how broken it is. 

“This isn’t me,” I say.

“This body is but a prison containing my bursting soul. My body will die one day, it is already falling apart, but as my body takes its last breath, my soul will finally be released from the pain of humankind that weighs us down from reaching our true selves.”

“This now, isn’t me, but one day, I shall be free.”