A Guide To Obliterate My Heart Poem by Lauren Harper

A guide to obliterate my heart.

Step one, tell me my sadness isn't real,
That the chemical imbalance in my brain is me being irrational,
That it is me overreacting.
Because no one could possibly have a lingering sadness that is about as consistent as Louisiana weather
But like the humidity always there
even if not so evident that it sticks to your face
Like sticky
Like I already washed my face four times this morning.
Like I'm sweating and its winter, its Christmas... I think.

Step two cut me off from friends.
Refuse to believe I was the overweight award tomboy girl
who wore only my brother's clothes until middle school,
that girl who hung out with the boys playing flag football at recess,
the only girl who wore shorts when the other girls wore skirts and won all the burping contests.
The girl whose mom begged her to wear Nike shorts that all the other girls,
Instead of sharing my brother's shorts by Nike that went to my knees.
A part of me is still that "tomboy girl" I just look a little different now.
I'm friend's with both sexes get over it. But you couldn't do that, could you?
Isolate me, so that the sad starts coming as tsunamis instead of crashing waves to my chest until the sad starts suffocating everything,
all of me.
So much so that it makes me forget about the happy.
That it makes me forget about why I am even trying anymore.
Because I'm tired of waking up in the morning.

Step three, after confiding in you with all that I have been through
take everything that you know that hurts me,
Take it like ammunition, and fire away at the already crumbling beams inside me.
Then ask me,
why I struggle to tell you the truth,
why I struggle to smile,
why I struggle to tell you anything other than what is obvious.
Completely serious ask me what's wrong, and for a moment act interested in how I feel

Step Four,
Tell me I'm too damaged, and leave me,
leave me because your pride was too great to admit that you molded me into what you thought was the perfect woman
but forgot that if you wish what you asked for too vaguely
that there will be hiccups in the voodoo magic trick that you so naively bargained for.
You got what you wanted at a price and now…
Now you toss me aside after two years of investment.
And return uninvited to cast your judgment on your own creation.

Dear creator, I hate that I love you. I think...