This is actually not a small, low-stakes ask.

A bit of cleanup and cooking and work? No big deal when a lazy snooze is calling my name.

Keeping up my home is an act of love I do first for myself.

It's okay to hurt. It's okay for things to suck. It's okay to feel grief.

I think about NOT eating a lot.

I dip my toes in many waters.

Why do we do that? Make someone else hurt because we hurt?

Violence happens inside me when I am or feel silenced.

It's amazing to have gone right back to what I already know works and find a new way to pursue it

This post originally appeared on Sumayyah Said So. driven down a path of self-destruction backed into a corner of despair breathing not alive just simply moving going through the motions and trying not

This piece originally appeared on Sumayyah Said So. Photo is mine asylum disjointed connections distorted reflections unease has taken root spread branches in my mind blanketed my center with mold tracked

I make the teens adjacent to me nervous. They wonder if I’m eavesdropping, spying for their mothers as we are a right-knit crew. Not in the sense that we spend time together beyond passing at drop-off

My mom used to take me to the mall and park me on a bench with a pretzel from Auntie Annie's. From that perch, we would watch families and solo shoppers pass. My mom would point out particular people and

photo source From the archives, originally posted HERE. cookies they praise me heap upon me accolades elevate me to the status of a legendary goddess or mythical being not quite of this earth when all

Photo Source sharp circles my spirals have spikes with knife-sharp edges waiting to stab me as i slide down circling to nowhere in particular just around and around and branches that beg me to leap erroneously

Photo Source unravel another sunset another day gone another lost chance to heal another moonrise another stormy night another fitful sleep in sheets so cold dreaming of the broken pieces that we have

Photo Source vanish how well do you trust these lying eyes of mine that bore through your skin to your soul and send signals that everything is fine while swimming in saltwater seas? do you believe the

Photo Source unfit i can’t be with you as you are your reflection and mine merged into one face in the broken mirror on the bathroom wall where we both ran to escape from each other and the words we hurled

Photo Source failed plans i overslept dragged myself from the cocoon made of cotton and polyester stuffed with feathers and scented with impending doom to find the happy occasion i’d frozen in place just

Photo Source hunt/er i have been engulfed by the gray sky i am drowning standing on concrete in the jungle surrounded by trees of steel and wire hunted through the swamp of the city by predators in shades