I wrote this poem in May of 2023.
hold me until I forget about how this story usually ends
With me having a meltdown and crying
and you leaving cause you can’t handle it
Hold me until I find enough courage to trust you
to be vulnerable and soft with you
Hold me until you make me believe in love again
I wrote this poem in May of 2022.
I want to scream, I want to cry
I want to throw myself off the precipice of some cliff
but faith whispers to me
“You will not always feel like this”
and slowly I begin to piece myself back together
and It’s hard at first because I don’t know where to start
Because so much in me is shattered and scattered
But somehow I know that faith is by my side
and hope will quickly follow
and I won’t always feel so lonely, so hopeless
I wrote this poem in May of 2023.
in front of our fireplace we remember who we once were
the unhealed and unhealthy versions of ourselves who met
And threw caution to the wind and fell in love
Built our own sanctuary of intimacy
only to give in to our insecurity and fears
and sabotage it all years later and tear it all down
and while we’ve said
It needs to be left in the past
it’s not who we are anymore
We both live with the hidden fear
One or both of us will break again
And brings a war of words
back to our newly constructed universe of love
I wrote this poem in May of 2022.
Old insecurities come to visit me again,
they shake up my newly acquired confidence
they tell me I’m not smart enough and I’ll never be truly loved
They tell the only thing I have going for me is how sexy I can be
Otherwise I’m a waste of a person because of my bpd
And I try to shut it all down and not once again drown
Because I have made so much progress and have come so far
Only to once again fight an anxiety and depression war
but it’s daunting not to let the negativity get to me
So here I go once again trying to calm down my brain
from intense and intrusive thoughts by covering myself with self love
So this year I was able to do the napowrimo challenge last month in which I wrote one poem a day and posted it to my blog. For information about what Napowrimo is and where I got my prompts, here is the link: https://www.napowrimo.net/
I wasn’t able to do the challenge last year because I was in Peru and well, I was too busy enjoying my vacation to think about the challenge.
I did do the challenge in 2022 and I can definitely tell a difference in my poetry from that year to this year.
Here’s that blog post: https://wordpress.com/post/lifeonthebpd.com/3708
So a few things I have noticed in my poetry this year is I’ve gotten stronger in using imagery, my vocabulary is way better and I’ve even written some funny stuff.
Here’s one inspired by Yung Gravy that I loved and read at open mic:
Another thing I noticed is that I’m getting better at telling a story through my poetry and here’s an example of this, this one is also one of my most vulnerable poems that I loved:
I will admit that not all of my poems were “good poems” and I’ll also admit that there were some days that it was hard to stay on task doing this daily since I do work 60 hour weeks but my discipline and determination won and even on the hardest and busiest of days, I still manage to write and post a poem. Also, I was determined to use the prompts from the napowrimo site and at times those prompts were challenging. However, I still used those prompts to the best of my ability. Also, when I did the challenge in 2022 I said something about turning off my internal editor and writing the poem and posting it right away. While I did turn off my internal editor (somewhat) when I wrote the first draft of the poem, I actually edited that first draft after I wrote it. I wrote a second draft in my journal and that’s what I posted in my blog. This shows I’m growing as a writer as I’m editing and paying more attention to what I post. I think one of the major reasons I’ve grown as a writer is because I’ve found community with other poets online and in real life. One thing I thought a lot about as I was doing this challenge was my audience. My friend Alex (another poet) told me that when he writes his poetry, he thinks about how it will sound while reading it to an audience and that really stuck with me. I know I’ve said so many times, “I write for myself primarily” and while that is still true, I think that in order for me to build community I need to also think about my audience and my readers. I don’t think this takes away from my authenticity at all; I think I’m just growing as a writer who aims to become better.
My advice to anyone who’s thinking about doing the challenge next year is do it for yourself and be gentle with yourself. Understand you don’t have to post it if you don’t want to and use any prompts available on the internet. As I look into doing this challenge this year, I’m thinking of making my own prompts in Spanish and English for anyone interested in doing the challenge.
I hope that next April when God willing I do the napowrimo challenge again I’m better at my craft and I can inspire some of my fellow poets to do the challenge with me.
I wrote this poem in May of 2023.
in the dark corners of the earth the karma gods get together with their hit list
they scheme and plan lessons of devastation,
destruction, and death to teach someone a lesson
about poetic justice
I wrote this in May of 2022.
What’s the cost of being authentically me?
not everyone will like me, lovers will run away from me
I have a hard time finding someone who accepts me
but it’s fine, it’s okay
my worth means more to me than anyone
who wants me to swallow parts of myself
to accommodate to them
because my self-esteem means more than acting
like someone else’s dream
so maybe the cost of being truly me is low
compared to the parts of my true self
I would lose for false friendships and false loves
I wrote this poem in May of 2023.
It’s been almost a year since I saw you
Almost a year since I allowed you to treat
me like your on call whore
almost a year since I got a sinking feeling in my gut
when your text appeared on my phone screen
almost a year since I allowed any man have the power
you had over me
almost a year and contrary to popular belief
you were the easiest of my addictions to get rid of
I wrote this poem in May of 2023.
Can I blame the morning rain for making me crazy yesterday
it’s like I lost all of my emotional regulation skills
and I had to constantly struggle to reign my anger in
To not key my annoying coworker’s car
To not drive off somewhere and never come back
but HEY I still managed to get through the day
and not rage quit
I wrote this poem in May of 2023.
the end of the fiscal year brings out the worst in me
it crushes my soul and creativity
and makes me want to run into the woods and go feral
but my kids need food and shelter
so I put all of my distress tolerance skills to use
and my try my best to emotionally regulate my anger
and the fire that burns inside of me
hide behind phrases “okay, I’ll get that done”
“no worries” and “it’s no problem at all”
when I want to tell everyone to fuck your purchase orders
and spreadsheets
but sigh-I like my nice car
and Alexa playing Olivia Rodrigo in the morning
so I hold everything in
because I desperately need this paycheck
it sucks to be held hostage by capitalism
I wrote this poem in May of 2023.
almost cried out anger today
but instead went for a drive
a good choice for me and who I wanted to kill
blasted my music and screamed
“I fucking hate white women”
they seem to be a thorn in my side
all the fucking time
focusing on my mistakes
and snitching to my boss
pretending to be friend
never apologizing when they hurt me
constantly trying to bring me down
trying to make me feel less than
and while I hate how much they affect me
at least today I’m grateful that today my hatred for them inspired me
to write this poem
I wrote this poem in May of 2023.
not every day can be filled with peace, calm, joy or excitement
Some days are absolutely shitty and depressing
Some days it’s hard to get up in the morning
without screaming fuck repeatedly on your way to work
Some days are overwhelming to push through
as hormones and emotions fuck you up
Some days are for questioning your life choices over
and over again allowing doubt and insecurity
to cloud you its accomplice self invalidation
Some days are for getting up only to look forward to the end of it
when you can sleep with the hope for a better day
I wrote this poem in April of 2022.
I overthink, I overthink and I overthink
and my head hurts from so much anxiety
Society puts so much pressure on me
to be nice, to be pretty
to be kind, to be smart
the stress is tearing me apart
but slowly I start to breathe
and the pressure starts to decrease
I change the narrative
And stop with listening to my inner critic
Fuck societal expectations
so what if I’m an aberration
the only person who determines my identity
is me
not you, not him,not my parents
and not society
Life on the BPD 