I survived it all.

Each kick, each punch, each hit.

I survived.

The word rolls in my mouth as cold and solid as marbles.

Survivor.

I don’t feel light;

My body is heavy; full to bursting with pain and sorrow so undeniably overwhelming that it has fallen into disrepair.

My body is a million houses left to rot; each room disintegrating with pictures of memories in tatters on the floor.

Flashes from broken lightbulbs, illuminating fragments of broken glass jabbing up through dilapidated floorboards. The reflections each a story of what it really means to survive.

It is not simply the act of continuing to live, breathe or talk. It’s not a person healed and shining with happiness.

It is a lifetime of flashbacks raging like thunderstorms nestled in the power of hurricanes.

It is a continuous ache that masks such strong emotions that no words could ever express them.

It is a body riddled with holes, falling apart whilst I pretend to be strong for the people around me when all I want to do is stop

It is the deepest of hatered for the weakness of myself mixed carefully in with great dollops of loathing from you.

Insomnia that’s unending grasp cannot give me a full nights sleep ticking years by into a haze of confusion and immobility.

Survival is a term used to honour the strength of anyone, everyone but me. For how can I say I have survived when my body, mind and spirit are still jailed by your grasp.

I don’t want to survive;

I want to live.