epiphanic (a poem about PTSD)
I was feeling low and talking to my bro
and I'm tellin' him about how
when I first got here, I was
combing the basement floor
looking for dropped nugs amongst
the cockroaches and mouse
turds
bug carcasses
lead paint chips
and as I sparked up my very
sentimental bowl of some
very sentimental resin
I felt a thrill of euphoric contentment
rush through my entire
body.
It was something I haven't felt
in so long
not since the first few weeks after it happened
when I didn't realize I was in shock
and hadn't even processed the event and
what had happened to me
and what it meant
But soon,
I started to slip.
My childlike giddiness faded away;
the pillars of denial I was leaning myself upon
began to shake and give way
and a sick psychosis set in.
I began to play games
like
russian roulette with paint cans and steak knives
and the burning ends of
countless cigarettes.
Soon
the countless cigarettes became tools
and my flesh a canvas
marking days
weeks
forming lines upon lines upon lines
of round scars.
And then
the tears I hadn't cried yet
the agony I hadn't felt yet
the paralyzing fear upon realizing the gravity of the
"event" --
all began to break loose.
My nights were filled with screams,
sobbing, pounding on the concrete floor
and no one ever heard them
no one ever saw
how these demons would torture my body and mind
as soon as the sun began to set
every
single
day.
Today, I am haunted
with images
of the slow decay
of my core; my very being.
At every stage of this thing
that has been given a name:
Post-traumatic stress disorder
,
a new fragment of person emerged
and the task at hand, now,
is to "integrate".
Somehow
I am supposed to take all of these
shards of girls
who used to be parts of one ME
but have each grown into their own beings...
glue them together
and be fixed.
But
I wonder: won't I just be a monstrous fabrication
a bastardization
of a person
like an Elephant Man
but instead of flesh,
there will be shards of girls
sticking out all over the place
?
My epiphanic moment has perhaps passed
but it happened.
I need to remember it, forever.
