When is it enough?

Take away my sanity and leave me be 

Take away my filter and let me bleed

Don’t try to stop this rage you see forming 

Let it spill over and drown my surrounding 

Let me cry until I’m sick 

And when I’m sick let me cry again 

For all this trauma has left a feeling 

A feeling I cannot shift

It weighs me down like heavy shopping 

I’m starting to wonder what I’m even carrying 

Put down the bags and go through it all

Get rid of that, which doesn’t serve me 

That curbs appetite or causes sickness

Check dates and ask how long I really have 

Will I even want it when the time comes 

Choose what I like not what they say I should

Then condense it

10 bags become 5 bags become 1

Stand up and look at all that baggage I didn’t need

Those feelings that did not relate to me

That behaviour was not my fault

My illness was not my doing 

As I leave the store of my life 

The existence I have observed and witnessed has been overlooked at times 

Some of the hardest memories swarm me at nights I cannot sleep 

The treatment I have endured was the making of me 

Through that line pumping poison around every inch of my body came gratitude and clarity 

It opened my eyes to realities I had ignored

It made me choose me 

The days I felt like I was fading away 

So pale I was barely seen or recognised 

The comfort and securities of life packed up and left 

I was left in pain I could never write 

My body was fighting whilst being fought 

I was drowning whilst helplessly blowing up armbands 

I will never forget the smell, or the sensation of chemo entering my once healthy body 

The insomnia and pain 

The inability to do anything 

So now I walk away with my bag 

Only what I need 

Life is all about only what you need 

Mortality is real 

Life will end

What do I really need 

What should I really carry 

What serves me 

What enlightens me 

What helps me see the calm through a storm 

Healing when broken 

The light when lost 

Me 

It was always me

And only in that moment of my diagnosis 

And only in that moment of scans 

Lying in mris, rts or ct machines

Veins being pumped with dyes and poison and antibiotics

Injections daily 

Medications so high it was endless

It was me 

I kept going 

I didn’t give in 

I had to talk myself into every round 

It was always me