Taken.

You came in the night and you caused me pain.

I didn’t know I would feel it, why didn’t they stay?

You found me happy and you tore it away.

I was too young to understand; why didn’t you understand?

You saw things that weren’t yours to see.

I was seven years old when it began. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

I felt stripped and empty there on the floor.

You removed and you stole everything from me.

I left it there on the floor. It fell away from me.

Past my ankles and down through the carpet, lost amongst the lint and the dust.

It hurts because you are gone now and yet I still feel the pain.

I still feel the weight as if you were always there.

I shouldn’t feel like there are shackles around my wrists and ankles, around my throat.

I shouldn’t feel like I am fighting to breathe.

Here I am, begging to be set free.

I didn't want to feel such torture.

I don’t want to wonder if I deserve to be alive.

I beg, I borrow, and I steal.

I’m losing sight of what is real.

You shouldn’t be in my way.

What is mine is all I have and it was never yours to take away.

What gave you that right to hurt someone too small to defend?

I felt like I was falling every single day, and I wondered, hoped, didn't care, if someday I would fall too far and too fast and never be able to stand back up again.

I waited for the sting, the only thing I expected to feel.

I felt like I had a restraint, something holding me back, like I was forever stumbling into a black pit, to never be saved again.

I'd wonder what everyone would think if they saw me, standing in the mirror with tear stains down my cheeks and blood stains on my sleeves.

I couldn't bear the idea of anyone crying and hurting and feeling so helpless because of me.

Because those things are the only things I feel, all I know.

It’s like your stare is still holding onto me; like I can’t do anything right at all.

It was like I could feel you. It’s like I would never shake you off.

You were breathing down my neck. You were standing right beside me.

But I would wake the next morning and you'd be gone.

I would remember then that you were gone and it would hurt all over again.

It hurt because you’ve been gone for so long yet you were never gone at all, not for me.

You still haunt me to this day. You make the darkness seem blacker than before.

I feel like I'm choking on air, as if I'm breathing it in, but it's not reaching my lungs.

All my life, I've wanted to find someone who wouldn't give up on me, but I’m not worthy of love.

I haven’t felt whole in a long time. I’m not myself.

Do I even know who I am?

The world is still spinning and I feel dizzy in its grasp.

Take your hold off of me. Let me breathe, please.

The shadows on the walls joined and I couldn't decipher one from the other.

Don’t take this away from me, everything that I have.

What I have is mine to give and take. It’s not yours to make your own.

My memories are dark and cold. They are everything I wish I could shake.