You Made Me This Way

You made me this way,

I am silent because you never listened,

I don't trust because you taught me that trust just gets you hurt,

I feel small because you never let me feel big,

I feel like a burden because everything you ever did for me sits on a mantel in my head, framed, listed, and categorized,

Placed there by your careful reminders of how much you've done for me, how much I owe you.

You made me this way,

You took the bloody needle that you masked as parenthood, and you forced it through my skin again and again,

Now I am a puppet on strings.

Puppets don't make choices, Puppets don't make decisions, Puppets don't have a plan for the future,

Puppets obey their Puppeteers, they dance on their strings at their will.

But now you don't want me to be a Puppet?

You cut the strings expecting me to dance on my own,

But I don't know how to dance on my own.

My body is so weak from the strings that once controlled me, bloody wounds where they once were, it no longer knows how to move on it's own.

You made me this way, and now you want me to change?