The superlative I was destined to receive, a self portrait poem.

A picture of who I was while this was written!

I’m made of bones that are green and rotting.

I can hear them creek under the pressure of holding up all the guilt at being so sad.

When I was a kid I’d spend hours playing pretend. One minute I’d be a pirate battling the Moby Dick that was my washing machine. Another minute and I’d be an adventurer climbing the Mount Everest disguised as my staircase. I doubled as a cowgirl whose horse was a couch cushion and as a rock star whose guitar was a shoebox. Then I’d be a knight fighting off a dragon, sometimes for the heck of it, I’d be the fucking dragon.

I don’t remember when I started just being me all the time.

I’ve mastered the art of self-deprecating humor paired with an overly cocky attitude. I am both shit and THE shit at the same time.

My Napoleon complex is so big that I think he actually had a me complex. The McGrath complex.

In fourth grade I would play basketball at recess. One day the boys challenged me to a girls vs boys game, a magnificent display of prepubescent flirting. One of them was Eddie, a tall and skinny french fry looking kid, who was nastier than the boogers he ate. During the game he refused to stop pushing me no matter how many times I told him to stop. I was barely four feet tall so I had to jump to slam my elbow in his eye, he got thirteen stitches.

I hope he still has the scar.

It’s hard to cut the crazy out of someone whose hair rejects a brush as much as their throat rejects religion. People are always surprised when I say things. I always wonder if they would act as shocked if I weren’t a tiny girl.

The first time I smoked weed was in an overly packed car my freshman year of college. My friend told me not to worry, that everyone’s first time was out of a bong while hot boxing a car holding seven people meant for five.

My friend is a fucking liar.

I demonize soccer moms but as a kid soccer practice was when I was happiest. I would leave with as many bruises as I had freckles but both were hard to see under the coat of dirt. My blonde curls barely fit in the ponytail, and I felt as if I barely fit in my body as I ran from one end of the field to the other.

When I was four I told my mom that I wanted to be a nun. My neighbor proudly told me that she knew how to spell D-O-G, I told her that I knew how to spell G-O-D.

I tried to commit suicide when I was thirteen.

I left lacrosse practice early and swallowed my dad’s heart medication. What kept his heart beating was going to stop mine. My younger brother attempted suicide three times, sometimes I worry I inspired him in the first place.

I’ve lost track of the amount of times my mom has told me she wished she were dead.

I don’t believe in God anymore.

I’ve found that music sounds better late at night while you’re driving.I like to climb the roof of my garage at 3pm and 3am to lie and listen to the sky. I rate my burps on a scale from one to ten.

I dated a boy who ran track. He told me that he doesn’t want to feel anything, that he runs away from his feelings instead. I told him that running track and running away from feelings sounded awfully poetic.

It felt less poetic when he ran away from me.

Dissociation is defined as the separation of something from something else. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming or awake.

I’d be watching my body go through the motions without actually feeling any of them. My knuckles would turn white as my fingernails pierced through the skin of my palm, the blood running down my wrist was the only thing that could convince me I was awake.My handwriting switches from print to script in the middle of sentences, my hand cant choose which it likes better.

I’m made up of passages of books I’ve read and lyrics from songs that I’ve listened to.

I’m made of crude jokes, loud laughs, unwavering opinions and the desire to be whatever it is that people expect me not to be.