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.