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I'm not sure I was ever fully alive.
Maybe when I was three or four and my parents took me out for ice cream.
But parts of me started to die around that time. When Daddy started to show the real father he was.
A part of me died when I was 7 and he cut my braid off cause I held hands with a boy at recess.
Another part died when he kicked me for not cleaning the floors the "right way" at 9. Yelled at mama real bad after that too. And he didn't like yelling at her.
A part of me died that summer, for more reasons than just him. But maybe a part or two was reborn too.
When I moved out, some parts regrew, weeds were replaced with budding sprouts.
Some got ripped out by friends or ex's or the boy that raped me my sophomore year of college. The sprouts that remained grew as a finished school and started out in fashion.
I thought I had nearly been reborn into a new person when I met Tom. For the first few months, it felt that way.
But with each outcasting, each slap, punch, curse, assault; he ripped out an alive part of me. He built a wall around me with the remains of the life I had in me.
And then Mike called.
The life in me that remained inside me bloomed, breaking against the shield of thorns and weeds around it. I used those thorns to my benefit and got the hell out of there.
I catch myself now, that death within me still present - my eyes have a dead stare to them; there's no life to be seen, not an essence. I sit and I stare and I think. Ben will wrap an arm around me and I feel just a bit more alive and a little more in my head again.