Three years ago, I wrote this.

I had forgotten about it until today, when it came up in my Facebook memories.

I think about the three years since I wrote that poem. So much has happened.

I’m living a different life now. I don’t even go to therapy. I don’t process any trauma. The exact opposite of what I was doing the first couple of years after I ran away.

That’s not to say I am unaffected. I still have flashbacks. I sill have unresolved grief and anger. I still live in fear. I make jokes about my trauma. I’ve always been great at deflection.

I talk about my illness and of dying as if it were normal, as if I’ve accepted it all. I stopped going to doctors. I use work as a distraction and an excuse.

But the denial, the distraction, the deflection — it keeps me going. It keeps me alive.