There are parts of me that that I cannot control. They are sometimes violent, sometimes lustful, sometimes passionate, but always intense. Trying to control these parts of me end up ripping me apart from the inside out.

Instead I focus on not letting them control me. It is a subtle difference to be sure, but a critical one. One tries to stop the impulses, the scratching inside my veins to be the things I shouldn’t be.

The other accepts the things I shouldn’t be but am and sips them from affecting who I need to pretend to be.

Subtle indeed, and if you don’t understand this, or have never had to consider it, then I am happy for you. It means your demons and monsters aren’t so close to the surface.

My control is good. It has to be. I’m just careful about what it is I’m trying to control.

I write so much about being broken, as if I know what it means. But if I don’t know what whole is, how can I know broken?

I know I don’t want to be fixed, I wear my jagged edges with some degree of pride. They represent all the battles I’ve won, even the ones I didn’t realize were battles at the time.

Each one of my scars, inside and out represent something I survived, physically, emotionally, and mentally. Every one of my nightmares represent a demon that couldn’t take me in life, so they had to settle for getting me in my dreams.

These writings of mine, these poems, prose and musings, they aren’t cries for help. They are abstract trophies. They are reminders of what I’ve survived, and if needed, what I can still survive.

So when I read or hear others words here or on Twitter, I don’t see the scars, I see past then to the strength that survived them.

Maybe we are broken, maybe we are some definition of whole, I don’t know. But I do know that we have survived.

My mind, it’s a dangerous thing. It goes places it shouldn’t, and often lingers in them.

It goes back to memories, ones I wish I could forget: A dark and dusty room that would be the first of many broken pieces of me; a cemetery with too many people that managed to feel like the emptiest place on earth; trapped in a small dark closet; a blade piercing my skin; blood on my hands not my own; and how the light faded from eyes staring into mine.

Too many places, each darker than the last. The more I try to leave it all behind the more these memories seem to haunt me. To taunt me.

But lately, I wish it wouldn’t, but too often it goes back, replays us. Trying to figure out when and how things got to the way they did. Always trying pinpoint the thing I did, the thing I said that set the end in motion. Did I know the consequences when I did or said it?

My mind gets so lost in you, completely and utterly. Distance has not mended these memories, time has not dulled this ache.

And so softly, slowly, it feels like my mind is killing me, and all I can seem to do is is wonder – how can I help it along today.

But it’s ok… this is just like every other day.