My Worst Habit
By Juwairiyya Eissa
By Juwairiyya Eissa
I haven’t eaten or drunk for hours,
hoping the ache of nausea and headache
will hurt more than the storm of feelings drifting through me.
I know it’s childish,
and you would’ve scolded me long ago
if you saw me lying still for seven hours,
doing absolutely nothing.
But I can’t help it;
this is my worst habit,
the one that makes me most myself.
I’ve been told time and again
how hard it is to love me,
that I hurt those who do
over and over, without meaning to,
through the very habits I can’t seem to break.
I just don’t understand
how the torment I inflict upon myself,
the story no one truly knows,
can wound others more deeply than it wounds me.
Is it really so hard to love me?
So hard that it must be said
each time a love falls apart?
My heart pulled out,
then stabbed again in the same spot
that’s been tortured for years,
as if it were agreed on at birth
that everyone entering my life must do so.
So tell me,
what does it matter
if my worst habit
is preferring physical pain
over the kind that tears the mind apart?
Everyone seems to wish it were the other way around,
as if by doing so,
they could make me feel their mental damage more deeply.
But I won’t let any of them win.
Perhaps that’s exactly the habit
that makes me most myself.