What does it say about me

What does it say about me?

I can only write about

Death, pain and loss

I try to write about happy stuff but all leads

Me back to the same direction

Death, pain and loss

I get a happy idea in my head

And still it always ends the same

Me in tears, writing dark words on the page

Death, pain and loss

I learned too early about these things

My sensitivity is my fate

Watching too many people, I love die at a young age

Learning of my families losses as I aged

My Grandfather’s deaths in December two years in a row

After my birth

The pain it must have been for my Grandmother’s

A constant reminder of their loss

Alone they spoke of this to me

How I reminded them of their dead husbands

No one will ever know this has happened in my family

I never spoke of it to them because of my shame

I always felt as if it was my fault they were dead

My life traded for theirs

The sacrifice they made to allow me to be here

The guilt I have lived with

Only shared with people who were sworn to protect me from myself

Some were shocked at what I was told

Others sympathetic to my feelings validating my own guilt

Without knowing, they were doing so

Without reservations

In my mind, I had a hard time living with my shame

A hard time coping with the pain

The pain of only understanding one grave thing in life so it seems

Death, pain and loss

I have seen moments of happiness don’t get me wrong

But, at times, I still knew the truth

It was never meant to last not in my world

My manic, personality-disordered world

Of black and white, no grey

Of death and pain and loss

An empathy for those in pain of which many cannot understand

I barely understand myself

But I know who and what I am

I am the destiny, I am the darkness, and I am the demons

I have become what I have fought hardest against

The victory’s a hollow few, the losses an empty consolation prize

My loves, my family, my friends

I still see them in my head

Each day I pray they understand

I never did it to hurt them

But to protect me from my deeper demons

Death, pain and loss

I pushed them away to avoid feeling of loss as they leave me behind

The one person unafraid of death

They struggled against the idea

Fighting of the diseases, the incurable things that darken us all

And I’m still present with words stuck in my head

The darkened words of it all

My guilt, my understanding, my empathy for them all

Within tearing myself apart

My sensitivities causing my soul to bleed with each death

Each pain a cut against the grain bleeding me more

Each loss left me fighting against my nightmares

Each funeral a fight to hold it together

Tears over them and the question I cannot stop asking

Why them and not me?

What have I done to deserve to stay?

What did they do to deserve to leave?

Why must anyone die from cancer?

Cancer, another scar in my already weakened psyche

I’m not much for astrology but what is my sign?

Cancer.

The death, pain and loss.

My proclivities hold true, my dreams hollow but ash

A dream of a better place where I find peace

Where my kids don’t see me as a disappointment

Just a dollar sign that isn’t enough

My family a black sheep, a joke at holiday gatherings

The blame when something goes wrong

A giggle and the ache begins

Too many times it’s said I began to believe it

Our minds focus on the negatives, ignore the positives

Especially when you’re stuck in the throes of Manic cycles, depression

Sensitivities so strong it is as if I were stabbed in my heart

I am no longer a threat

My mind is at its peak

Death, pain and loss

Still breathing, kicking and screaming

Waiting for peace to arrive.