I cry most nights thinking I’m not good enough for this world. I make myself believe that I’m not worthy enough to be loved or cared for. I feel like I’m in quicksand and I can’t get out or that I’m under water and the pressure is pulling me in and I can’t get out. Maybe that’s why I never learned how to swim because I’m scared of not getting out. I hid my depression since I don’t remember when I gotten really good at faking a smile and showing people I’m ok but in reality I’m not, I’m scared to disappoint because I never heard anyone say they are proud of me, I’m scared to love because I never gotten pure love from anyone not a friend, significant other, sibling, or parent it was always tough love because I was taught that being truly loved always becomes a disaster. I hear my parents arguing everyday since I was little it never stopped only gotten worse once I fully grown up, I never realized until now how broken my parents are and how they project it on me, how my mom belittles me and later argues because it gives her power over me the words and tone she represents she knows affects me and she likes it, she’s a force. My dad is just a narcissist who likes to control and throw out people, who not only couldn’t take care of his family but he was the main to break us. I guess that’s where my brother learned it from the uncontrollable range and using then throwing out people. I feel like a stranger in my own home. I don’t belong here. I cry most nights in the bathroom. I don’t tell anyone because I don’t want to be a burden. I think about how life became after a while and how broken I am. I just want to leave and start new. The anxiety and depression that has happened over the years I don’t think it would stop not until I make a change, I used to cry for my mother’s love, crave my father’s affection, expect my brother to support but that was never the case with them I don’t want to be like them ever I want to be better. I am in quicksand that’s only getting worse and worse, I dream about being underwater or having broken teeth, my anxiety takes over and there’s nothing I can do about it. Uncontrollable breath, lungs getting tighter, head pounding, hands shaking. I can’t ask for help from my own family because they think it’s a phase and it’ll be over but it’ll only be over once I’m gone. The black hole I carry in my mind sucks all good in my life and I let it be how stupid of me. The silent panic attacks I get from time to time shows how much stress I’m in and I can’t stop myself. The distraction I cause doesn’t even work. It’s hard to do so in a household of toxicity. One bedroom, broken handles, crippling walls, I don’t even have a room for privacy, parents yelling in front of me, brother nowhere to be seen for fifteen years not even a “hi how you doing” I’m tired of everything I just want to leave and start new. I cry most nights in silence so no one can hear me. I bottle up everything because I rather hurt myself than hurt someone else. I know it’s wrong to do either. I just wish it gets better sooner than when it’s too late. I hope to overcome and escape this nightmare and see some light shed soon.

I’d always believed that if I shared blood with a vulture
Then surely I was just like them;
The ones that slip beneath the surface and devour you
Before you are dead
Because surely, if they can’t have patience
Then I must be a monster too.

But now that we know that true vultures don’t engage in torture
And feed their lust by feeding off the innocent
This is no circle of life, it is a cycle of hell.

True vultures eat the deceased, so they cannot be monsters
And you aren’t one either,
The mistakes that you made were paved by fate
And while they are stains already made,
It is not a adultery to your kind
To love the vultures for who they are,
and hating the monsters for what they’re not,
Nor loving yourself, for being a true vulture.

Something I’ve learned
Is that Sometimes I think I’m cursed, Because there’s this shadow that follows me. 

That most would consider an inevitability, but to me it’s a fiend, 

An enemy that would take my innocence away from me, similar to the destruction of Helene in my home of western NC

Death.
It all started with my mother, when I was just a kid,
My little worried eyes watched as she slowly got more sick Though we didn’t understand,
her death, unplanned, she knew when she’d go,
So she wrote us all letters to let us all know,

 … she loved us, And we finally knew when we saw her coffin on the stand,

She was an unlucky one.
this was just the beginning of our family being undone,
death our constant companion from day one.

Its unfortunate but most men in my family die young, 
I watched helplessly as my brother became one. 

Thinking he was invincible as he flirted with death,The somber silence of hearing as the phone rung,
a call we hoped never to get.

we are the ones always riding behind the hearse,

I had to sit by and watch my grandmother cry, wishing she wasn’t alive,as she had seen another of her angels die
.
Because I was left Helpless to bring back the dead,
wishing in my head, that it could of been me instead, 

like life the cycle only started over again. Things stayed tough, 

Because as if we hadn’t been through enough,
we were barely able to grieve for those we loved…

My grandmother hiding the family Bible, saying it was bad luck, all the names and death dates written in the front.

I was home four days from school
hoping to enjoy the summer sun,
When death …claimed another one.

This time it was my uncle,
my grandmother’s youngest son,
only in his fifties.
His heart was not up to snuff
he fell,
Because the woman with him,
left him without help, to die by himself.

For us to find where he’d lain those four days,
The smell still makes me sick to this day
a month later my aunt too passed away following my uncle to the grave.
Another fallen one, Another cursed son,
More fear of who will be the next to come.

Cursed through life to always live and worry who’s next to die.