All Those Knives Turning Inward

You see your pretty face crumbling away. You're a beautiful girl with knives for hands. You're just a beautiful girl with knives, and no one has ever found that beautiful about you. God, they're missing so much. All those knives turning inward with no place else to go - years and years of that, and still no one sees you. Eventually you start to feel like this is the beauty you can offer: I can be sliced to pieces but my mask never falters. There can be a knife in there right now, buried in the tissue, stabbing, stabbing away and no one will find you beautiful for that either. But they'll like the way you keep it quiet and attend to them. 

I'm talking bout blood, babe. Isn't it interesting, that alliteration that's just waiting to happen: blood, babe, bloom. Makes bloom sound like a command, the way it always is for us when we're young. Spotlight on you: bleed, babe. Bloom, babe. 

Everyone's a liar. That's what empaths know. How we reconcile that is where the knives come in. Lack of coherence. Everyone saying they're fine when they're so clearly not, and bang -- we're Edward Scissorhands. Because we can't stop knowing what we know and there's nothing else to do. 

Will my body forgive me? Please, body, forgive me. I'm sorry for that sharp transgression. I'm sorry for my weakness and the proximity of that steel. I can feel your anger. I hear it, I just don't know what to do with it. I'm frightened of it. You know that, right? I spend all my energy trying to supplicate to you. I know you're a scared kid, that that's where it all comes from, but you're a taskmaster too, and I don't know what you want from me.

This came out when I gave my body a voice inside Body Writers, my somatic writing and healing circle. Learn to give your body a voice here.