to be loved is to be changed

"at least i never made you feel unloved"

the first time i ever thought about killing myself was after you yelled at me for what felt like nothing. in my memories it will always be nothing, because to my tiny kid brain i didn't understand why you were yelling.
you said you were tired of me and stormed out of the house. you were gone for half an hour. after years of joking about running away and leaving me behind, that one day you were going to move to mexico with out me-- i'd actually done it. i'd pissed you off enough that joke turned to reality

i don't think i'll ever remember what i did, only the blinding panic that siezed me. it gripped my heart like a vice and i burst into tears.
it was the horror of finally realizing that i'm too much. that just being myself really did drive people away. that i was unloved, unlovable

i was small. small enough to wedge myself behind the piano, in that dusty space in the corner, pressed against the wall. it smelled like dog piss and fish food.
i hid, because why wouldn't i? i was only 9, maybe 10, and i'd already been annoying enough to have driven my own father away.

i was only 9 when i considered wrentching myself out of that corner and marching to the kitchen.
you'd taught me the proper way to hold a knife, how to not hurt myself, and how much slip-ups could hurt.

i was still small enough to wedge myself behind the piano.
you always called that corner of the house nasty, filthy.
i hid in the smallest, darkest, dirtiest place in the house. and sobbed.

the only reason i didn't crawl out is because i was afraid.
not of death, but that i would get in trouble.

coated in cobwebs and dust i begged and prayed that god would strike me down, leave me dead there. that i'd rot away in the nasty corner of the house.
where a nasty thing like me deserved to be.

i was convinced that i deserved to die so i didnt burden anyone anymore. so i couldn't hurt anyone else.

i was still missing my two front teeth. i was still small enough to slip through the doggy door.
i was only 9, definitely no older than 10, when i realized that i could leave.

(i try to not let it haunt me now that you never noticed, or if you noticed you didn't care.
i try not to remember how you didn't apologize sincerely, how when you got home you made up some excuse that i had pushed you over the edge. how sometimes i was difficult to deal with.
it doesn't matter now.)

i was only 9 and wondering why no one loved me, why i was such a burden, why i wasn't dead.
i was only 9 when i wrote my first suicide note.

you never made me feel unloved, because i knew, deep in my bones that i was--
the wretched unlovable ooze permeating my entire being, built into my dna like some sick joke.

i was only 9 when I realized that i was different because god hated me.
god isn't supposed to let people suffer, so why am i? i must be a sinner
i was only 9.

but.. to be loved is to be changed, right? and i've definitely changed, therefore i must have been loved. even if it hurt. love is supposed to hurt, because how will you change if you're not hurt?