I Have A Problem With Guilt.

I have a problem with guilt.

I am haunted by these specters

One by one

Till all I can see is the need for my damnation.

It is easy for me to get turned around in it.

Perhaps I can force down a couple thoughts

But all it takes is one big self-accusation

Then I am drowning beneath the broken damn.

Everything is my fault.

So my mental anguish tells me.

I am responsible for all the bad

Makes me easy to manipulate.

I gaslight myself for fucks sake

And always need to see the best in people.

Suddenly years are lost

While I'm still wondering

"maybe it really is me?"

Add to this a troubled connection to reality

And all the other psychological insecurities,

I risk reverting to that corner

Holding my head

Rocking violently back and forth.

I don't want to go to those dark places.

I don't see poetry in it like I used to.

I don't want to die

And I do not wish to feel compelled towards it.

My torturers have always been loved ones

Ever since I was a little child.

"I love you!

I'll never hurt you!"

While his hand is wrapped around his child's neck.

Kept repeating

Hurt by love.

"Be this do this don't you love god?

Wicked

Sinner

"How can you even face yourself!"

I always bowed.

Evolved to hide in plane sight.

Subservient

I never did anything of my own volition.

I didn't offer ideas or options

I just recycled what I knew they wanted to hear.

I became perfect

And was perfect

A marvelous reproduction

Of the conscience of the person talking at me.

I regurgitated their own words

"and it was good"

I mimicked their neuroses

"and it was good"

I broke me into a malleable putty

So I could be molded into their image.

I became a shape shifter

And disappeared entirely.

.

I have made a lot of progress.

Hurt the people I cared for most

When I turned out to be hollow.

Worse than hollow

Filled with raging psychic pain

From the life long concealment of my person.

A lie

Who professed to love.

Drew close to the door of my own extinction.

Saw what I had become.

Been fighting to heal

To grow and mature.

Yet somedays I still get low

Even after a stellar day,

Especially after a stellar day,

And begin to question myself

Wondering

"what if I am wrong?"

Guilt for being happy.

Guilt for being free.

Guilt for refusing the old pains

And the ones who caused it most.

The subtle changes make me smile.

The softness in my legs

The delicateness of my eyes

Smoothing skin freed from rigour

As my muscles let go of false life.

Carried aloft these earthly highs

I recognize myself

And give in

To this vision from my dreams.

I don't dress like a boy anymore.

When I go out I am a girl.

When I speak I am trying to sound feminine.

I aim for a loveliness I have been haunted by,

And now that it is growing

I know new kinds of fear.

I fear the world I live in

What they might do to me.

I am allowed to have bad days

Or weeks.

Even if I know who I am

It does not exempt me from all the problems I have had.

Life still hits me

And sometimes it hurts pretty bad.

This does not erase my identity

Or mean that I am wrong.

I am happy in the knowledge

Of who I really am.

I am simultaneously sad however

About the other parts of my life

Which are not going so well.

This poem is more for me

Feeling guilty over feeling sad.

As if those in my life who don't want me to be true

Will use my hardships as "ah ha! Gotcha!" moments.

Life is hard

Regardless of my sense of self.

I remember when I was younger

Preaching before god's children.

I alluded to the possibility

That god might be a sinner.

"To be capable of sin

Is to be guilty of sin"

And Jesus Christ

Was tempted to sin.

Indeed

god said we switched places.

If I were a sinner damned to god

Then god was damned to sin.

I exalted free and clean

Having never been guilty in any case.