Day 8: 25-Year-Old Liz Reacting to Old Poetry I Wrote… Again.

Dear, guys – welcome back to Letters From Liz!

During last year’s Blogust, I reacted to an old poem that I wrote back in 2012, and I found it both fascinated and embarrassed to look back at the travesty that was my work.

Guess who’s back to do it again!

The poem that I’m reacting to this time around was a shitty one nevertheless entitled, “Charm Bracelet”. It wasn’t that great back then if we’re going to be honest here – but I wanted to share this one because I feel like a lot of the things said in here I thought were true, and reading it back, you could clearly see that I wasn’t my own mascot during these times. The references to killing myself in all of my poetry back then were just read as being an “angsty teen”, but man, I truly did forget just how much of a bad place I was in while writing this poetry. Maybe that’s why I don’t write it anymore? 

Anyway, “Charm Bracelet” is a metaphor for the labels and qualities you carry around with you in life. I guess my teenage self thought that I was always wearing my labels on me like different charms of a bracelet, while everyone was seeing it. Anyway, here’s this very interesting poem:

Fact.

Low self-esteem wears on me like chained charm bracelets.

Each and every charm is just another flaw I hate about myself.

Charm #1:

I’m not the skinniest girl on earth.

I don’t have the greatest body like the rest of your exes, nor do I have adorable back dimples,

I have more like stretch-marks,

And I believe that I never been in a relationship before because I am thick in all the wrong places.

Charm #2:

I speak English as if it was my second language.

If I was a better speaker, I’d be one of the greatest public speakers out there because my thoughts make sense, but comes out as ignorance once words are replaced with thought.

Charm #3:

I love too hard.

I fall head over my heels and into the ground when I’m in love, because I do a little too much to keep love around because love never stood around when I needed a role model of a husband and wife through a dysfunctional “marriage.”

Charm #4:

Every two months I do something stupid to my hair.

I feel the need to color it and chop it off to feel like a completely new person when really I can look back and love the person I destroyed to make this phony copy of myself.

Charm #5:

I’m only 5 feet tall.

Tall enough to at least ride life’s roller coaster but too small to actually understand the ups and downs of it, as if in my mind I’m only 6.

Charm #6:

I’m fucking naïve as hell.

I let people influence my decisions because I feel like if I were to put that much responsibility into my own hands, I’d quickly would not be able to take the pressure.

Charm #7:

I love control.

I must take things into my own hands because I know for a fact if I didn’t have a hold of anything, things would be easily forgotten, especially when people are mad at me.

Charm #8:

I’ve cut myself three times in my entire life.

Every slash released frustrations of anger that consumed into the deepest peek of my body that I don’t know who I am anymore, that every time I take my nails or take the ends of scissors I would gently put it against my skin and open flesh to release the cries of my conscience out of all the things I wish I never did, and the release of emotion feels great.

Charm #9:

I hate how small my boobs are.

My boobs are only a 40C due to the fact that I’m not the thinnest girl in the bunch, and even though they might fit around my fat, there’s still so much space in my cups with nothing really to fill, and even though smaller boobs makes a big girl look thinner, it makes me feel uglier when I see a girl about my size with the whole package, while I’m standing here with my hideous pear-shaped body.

Charm #10:

I’ve been known to be a homewrecker.

I destroyed so many homes just to find a home that I was allowed in for once in my life because I was tired of living with mommy who had my back from daddy when all he wanted to do talk about was how completely worthless I am and such a failure that when I went to find a home, I loved it to then not realize your wife comes home from work everyday at 5.

Charm #11:

I fake smiles.

I cake on this face that covers up the unhappy things I hate about myself so that I don’t have people calling me an attention seeker. Sometimes I seriously cry for help due to the fact that I need it, that I can’t be left on my own with no one being able to calm me down because although that’s life, I’m at the state of mind where I don’t want to live in it anymore.

Charm #12:

Nobody likes to listen to a girl who’s cried wolf too many times.

Charm #13: I’ve never thought about suicide because I’m afraid of being the one taking my own life,

So I let people kill the life out of me to make my job a lot easier.

Charm #14:

My job is to basically beat every flaw to the bone where I don’t realize that I’m back to being broken.

Charm #15:

I cycle this process twice a month and then start to love myself again.

Charm#16:

I will never, ever, be satisfied with myself.

 

Yeah, another intense poem from a very intense person. 

It’s so crazy to believe that this is written by the same person who’s now 25, sorta put together, more accepting of herself, and mentally doing a lot better. This piece (as well as my old poetry in general) just feels foreign & old; I wonder if singers feel the same way with their earlier albums?

Anyway, a lot of these things I believed about myself where just things that were said to me, indirectly to me, at me, whatever. I just believed anything that people thought about me and soaked it up like a damp sponge. While yeah, the facts that I am fat and short still remain true, a lot of these things about me and what I thought about them was just simply false.

Yeah, I hated my body when I was a teenager and thought fat was ugly. Do I see it that way now? You can read all about it through the many chapters of Overexposed. I don’t believe that my fat was the reason why no one wanted to be with me, but growing up, I did. Yeah, I was five feet tall (still am, practically) but my height isn’t so heavily looked at anymore by those around me because who the fuck cares about how short or tall you are? And yeah, I do love control still. It’s a major factor in why I have an anxiety disorder, and I’m more self-aware of that aspect and I’m able to handle the messiness that trait plays.

But simply just calling myself naive and stupid that I had a speech impediment was just wrong. Calling myself a homewrecker for being in bad situations at the time was extreme and toxic. Saying that if my boobs were just the right size I’d be prettier? It was all just superficial things that people fed me throughout my teenage years, and it’s this type of stuff that makes me realize that I’m getting therapy to help myself realize that I am human, and humans are not perfect. I’m also in therapy to learn how to let go of these things that maybe I still don’t forgive myself for being. Trauma and any type of experience are really fucking hard to undo, and I’m learning to be patient with myself. I don’t think my teenage self knew even how to do that.

Again, like my other poem, this poem does reference to not wanting to live anymore, and reading them back at this present time is still haunting. I question myself how I was so comfortable just admitting that I didn’t want to live anymore, and I knew that I didn’t.

Sometimes I seriously cry for help due to the fact that I need it, that I can’t be left on my own with no one being able to calm me down because although that’s life, I’m at the state of mind where I don’t want to live in it anymore.

It makes me wonder if the people who read this ever thought that I was asking for help. Maybe we were all just too afraid to be called out for our concerns and worries, and too ashamed to seek help.

But, she got through it, and sometimes I don’t even know how I’m here today. But, I’m grateful to be an example that things will and do get better; all you need to have is a little patience.