I wrap my arms around my thin structure and connect my hands in a death grip, my body like a rock because only a rock can survive the raging wars of insanity and self deprivation. It protects itself from the outside dangers of the world because it doesn’t want to break. I am that rock. i use my body as a shield, physically i am capable of taking a blow like a rifle with a kick back, however, mentally one pebble, one nudge to my mind could send me spiraling into a panic attack like a student who trips sending their books into the air as time stops and the urge of eternity swallows up the confidence you once had, had when you were happy, young. When your parents still held your hand. But now they rip at you from both sides as if you were a rope in a game of tug of war but only you can see the pain and struggle both endure. They fight as if there will be an award but little do they know, the award they once both shared now bends and breaks. Though you still plaster a smile on your boned and paled face, you not only see yourself as broken but like the glass that is thrown, shattered into a million pieces and scooped up but only to be thrown away and defined useless. The rope at which they both pulled was attached to your young and fragile heart. You don’t show your pain, you’re quite good at that. But you cry alone because that seems to be the only place you find yourself at peace. You’re broken battered and bruised. Your mind constantly in a roaring thunder storm, the kind that rattles your windows and leaves you restless. Your body shakes and shutters at the loud banging that you just can’t muzzle. It’s oh so familiar, the sound of the door opening and closing viciously to not welcome but to leave as if unwelcomed. They don’t realize you’re broken, desperately screaming for help but they stay too busy with their own child like behaviors to see that you are missing out on your own. The words that spewed and shot out in the battlefield you call your home fire at you like a machine gun with a never ending round. They aim at eachother but you seem to always get caught in the crossfire. Each time slowly losing a piece of yourself. You’re broken. Both seem to realize that you stand in the middle as a barrier to put a pause to their petty game but get too caught up in their own world to notice you’re wounded. You try to crawl to safety, only to just dig yourself 6 feet under because you felt that hiding yourself from the world would be better. Better than adding ammunition to the constant battle that you pray for an end to. The rock you once considered yourself, now crushed under the weight of the world along with your happiness. You were broken. But even the shattered glass pieces of your heart have a chance to mend together to one as you grow of age and come to realization that the deepest of wounds have a chance to heal over time.