Best Broken

My disorders don't leave me alone.
My disorders don't just go away.
I can't "just do better" because this is my best.
I have a broken best, and that's okay.
I'm healing, I've been hurt again and again for years, I had no idea how much I was being hurt.
I had no idea how much hurt I carried until I discovered kindness.
I had no idea how much the storm poured on me until someone held the umbrella.
My disorders don't leave me alone, neither does my therapist, nor do my demons.
I made a year self harm free, a hard fought year clean.
My relapse does not define me. 

My relapse will not, in the paper chains of failure, bind me.
I have a broken best, I feel it in the way my anxiety makes my overworked heart ache within my chest.
Guess what, news flash, a bit about me and my PTSD; it's not just war, it's not just one form.
It has an awful sibling.
C-PTSD.
C?
Complex.
Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
PTSD is one event, one thing, one wreck, one fire, one act...
CPTSD is multiple or prolonged events.
It is a lesser known hell.
For me, it is derealization and some forms of maldaptive daydreaming.
It is sitting, in the serene calm by brush lake, when the hands slide down my side as mine are on the table and my brother is across.
Hands as we are alone.
Hands on my hips, hands on my neck.
Hands and bless that saint of a man in the fact he understands how much one kind touch can ground me.
Hands under my shirt.
Hands pulling my hair.
The hands that hold are best exorcist to the hands that haunt.
I'm beside Brush Lake, but my mind is beside itself in the visiting bleachers of the high school, calling out a teacher's name for help, watching him meet my molested eyes.
Calling out just before being choked out... to watch him walk away.
Hands squeeze my neck from the past, I squeeze my brother's hands in the present.
I am beside brush lake but I am trapped seven years in the past.
My brother squeezes back, the hands fade away.
It's only a few seconds, it felt like days.
Hands and my brother has known in this small extent my hell; anxiety, anxiety, there is so much that those 7 letters cannot tell.
My disorders don't leave me alone.
They whisper in my ear.
"You're faking."
"You're only as good as the job you do."
"You couldn't save him."
"You're not worth a dime."
My disorders don't leave me alone.
"You aren't worth the time."
"You don't belong onstage."
"You don't belong in life."
My disorders don't just go away.
"Think happy thoughts!"
"Manifest joy!"
"Have you tried essential oils?"
"Maybe it's the gluten!"
I can't just "do better".
My brain doesn't produce the chemicals right.
If you can't make your own, pharmacy bought is fine.
Fine until you have to pay.
Fine until you have to hold a job, function, get paid.
Fine until you are standing in my worn out shoes, and two days of overtime doesn't even begin to cover the cost of the medications that keep you sane...
I have a broken best.
I have a broken brain.
I have an alphabet soup looking list of disorders, but it's okay!
Because I'm a writer, and I can thrive off this pain.
I don't want to, but here's an insidious truth.
Depression, oh my familiar, my mistress, my broken brain friend, hurts.
My body. Hurts.
As above, so below.
So the body, as the soul.
My shoulders carry mountains few have ever seen, I've been lucky enough to have a brother willing to admire my climb from where he stands beside me.
My right wrist aches from ancient abuse, scar tissue traveling free and loose.
My body clicks and pops, ask my brother, my sounds, his shock.
I have a broken best... and maybe I am like an egg; best broken to make better things.