existential

Alternate,
that’s all I am.
Mind-state,headmate,
just a few of the names.
But I’m real enough
to play games,
real enough to
be able to take
all the blame
from all those
who claim she’s
not mentally stable,
and so incapable.
Still, they’ll take
every single chance
that they’re able
to say I’m not real,
that I can’t possibly
feel and that I don’t
exist and it can’t
really be trauma that
made her like this.
Like all that I did
didn’t matter at all,
like I wasn’t the guard,
like I wasn’t the wall
that kept her safe
from every attack,
that it wasn’t me
always pulling her
back from ledge and
back from the edge
of an early demise.
Of course I’m not real,
of course I don’t feel,
and of course I
don’t even exist
in their eyes.

But they’re lies.
It’s all lies.

Because with you
it’s different and
I come alive when
you look in my eyes,
like I’m not just
the shadow of
someone else’s life.
Like I matter and
you make me feel,
and when I’m with
you, I know that
I’m real and
that I do exist
and despite the
trauma that made
me like this,
that just maybe
someone can get
through the wall.
Someone who’s not
too afraid of it all,
of all the demons
that linger inside
and every single
dark secret I hide.
And you understand
why it is that I must
keep my thoughts
to myself and
default to mistrust.
Yet you manage to
show every time that
you hold me that you’re
not going to go and
that I don’t have to
always revert to
the cold me.
To you I am real,
so I don’t have
to care what anyone
else says because
now you’re there to
remind me I’m human,
whatever they do.
Because what
matters to me
is that I matter
to you.