I have not always had the best self-esteem. I am, at heart, a people pleaser. I want everyone to like me, and when they don’t, a level of self-doubt and even self-loathing starts to infect me. Poor self-image can be just as debilitating as any other mental health issue. The times in my life when I have not liked who I was, most often brought about by trying to be someone else, I wanted to cut out all the parts of me that felt like they didn’t fit. It felt like the person I was trying to become had to kill the person I was pretending to be.

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I wish you would penetrate my spirit

This darkness that craves you wants me to become

Something different- something made of you and me.

So force your will on me, violently, so I can’t protest

An overpowering of me so complete that I disappear.

Choke out this darkness that has become me

And devour all my bright, hot parts until

My blood runs down your body and then lick it

Off your teeth.

Slip inside of me so far

Until everything I feel, you feel

One creature, one life, one beating spirit

Push yourself so far into me that I can’t tell

Where you start and I end,

Until I fall out the other side of this disease

This darkness that would let me be consumed.