I wanted to share a poem that helps me.

Please feel free to share what helps you make it through.

I put on the trigger warning, just in case.


"Song for a Girl"

by Jessie Childress, age 16

This is a song
for a sixth-grade girl
who, after trying
to kill herself
once a month
for six months,
has failed.
The marks, burns, cuts
are beginning to fade,
as they do
after three weeks' time.
She still wears long sleeves.
She still lets her hair hang over her neck.
Her body is trying to forget,
scar tissue is forming,
her liver is trying
to rid itself of the aspirin
she breathed in like air
in hopes of making herself stop
breathing.

This is a song
for a sixth-grade girl
who, like myself,
has failed.
We carry the failure with us
everywhere we go,
like an organ donor card.
Our thoughts are consumed by this failure.
It haunts us,
unfinished and twitching.
At night the corpse of this urge
struggles to stand,
tries to convince us,
squirms through the cracks
in our head.
It kicks our walls and
in the morning we find
bruises we don't remember getting
or giving.

This is a song
for the pattern that began long ago,
that ate us alive
until we finally got the hang of it,
learned how to cut our skin,
learned how to hate ourselves
like so many others.
It took us years
but once we knew,
it became all we knew.
Pain was our best friend,
it was our lover,
it was the only thing
that we would trust.
We became dependent,
couldn't make it through
a day without our pain.
When we tried to stop cutting ourselves,
our skin ached.
It demanded our attention
and pain was the only attention
we knew how to give.

This is a song
of recognition.
We have learned to recognize
the urge as a part of us.
It has grown with us
through the years.
It has changed and
grown on its own as well.
It is in my body
no less than my heart.
It is a part of my existence
no less than my soul.
It is ancient,
burning through my body,
and I have learned
to find a peace in it.
A home.

This is a song
because we cry without
explanation
because we are two beings
because we shift
in our desires and moods
like the wind.

This is a song
for uncertainty,
for the way we wake each morning
hoping that we won't
lose control that day and
end up walking through our days
only out of respect for habits.
Hoping we will learn to let out
the yelling fighting
screaming crying hating
howling that's caught in our heads
so our insides can match
the images we project.

This is a song for that fight,
a perpetual struggle
between honesty and composure,
between realness and masks,
a perpetual struggle
to bring our split lives
back into one.

This is a song
and I'm trying to sing it.
I'm hoping this song will help me
loosen the grip of these patterns.
This is a song
and I want to give it to
the sixth-grade girl
who's failed
time and time again
as I have.
I want this song
to convince us both that
our failure to die
might be okay.

I want the song
to be a shield
between now and the next time
the urge takes over.
I want this song
to save the girl I don't know.
I want this song
to save myself.