Perfectionist Rehab

Trust is tricky, it must be earned,

Long forged and quickly burned.

Happiness, I’ve learned, is really a choice,

To focus on the moments in rejoiced.

Everyone has their burden and trauma,

Only if you don’t care will you label it drama.

“Happy” is not a life absent of darkness,

Rather it’s the bravery to leave the arctic,

To realize you’re more than your trauma,

You have the ability to break through the dogma,

That you are but the perception of another,

Even if that person is your mother.

I’ve mentioned peace throughout my story,

The truest you in all your glory.

Peace, I’ve come to see,

Falls after calamity.

Freedom to script without dictation,

To be proud without hesitation,

Of who you became despite all odds,

Morphed from the fight and all the qualms.

Realizing you can’t change what happened to you,

While never forgetting what you’ve been through.

The lessons you learned weren’t a debt to pay,

They were unfair, but learned anyway.

How not to be.

How not to speak.

How you want to feel.

How not to reel,

Into others just because you had a bad day,

For you know the hurt caused by behaving this way.

I wish I knew someone when I was young,

Who’d help me learn to cease holding my tongue.

So, grant me the priviledge of being that for you,

I’m so sorry for whatever you’ve been through.

The Lady in Blue: and other lies I told myself by Michelle Gosselin, page 83.