I was…
not in a hole but the hole itself
not falling but the fall itself

You could say…
I was luckier than most,
with a home, my own room, a middle-class family, friends, okay grades ,
yes
but what use a hole, a fall,
have of these?

You could say that I was, at least, luckier than other holes and falls in that respect but
most of these had the more precious gift of
not being self-aware

But me
I was screams, an endless spiral of idiotic, raging fears
never peace
I was mental anguish
I couldn’t turn it off
just sometimes, when hopeless enough, replace it with a terrifyingly heavy…. grey… thing….

I had a home, my own room, a middle-class family, friends and okay grades
but not a self
not matter how I exhausted myself, seconds after seconds, days after days,
forever waking up to the same fight
to try to catch and retain bits
enough of it to call myself a person
but failing over and over again

Yet on top of that I had to drown in shame and guilt
because I had a home, my own room, a middle-class family, okay grades
and was still this tortured, panicked, desperate and miserable
thing
too busy mourning its lack of personhood

You had claws ripping it out of me
whatever bit could have been a seed or the beginning of foundations
torn away from my core
examined it from every angle - and it had nowhere to hide and nothing of itself to keep private -
and discarded as unfit, not good enough, never
and my core was left to be just flesh and sensations and datas and emotions
all in a rotating mess,
with nothing strong and coherent enough
to bind them into a I

And you said I was a difficult teenager
a rebellious one
Yet I didn’t even do drugs or make trouble at school or ever run away
(I was too afraid : I was fear)
I was in this much pain yet it was all about you and how I was making it hard on you
how defiant and disrespectful I was
how unable I was to question myself
me who had trouble even becoming enough of an I that it could possibly be something to be questioned

and to this day I still yearn for this to be acknowledged and for this hollow wound to be nursed
I finally built myself
but my years of experience that makes me, finally, an I, are standing on top of a gaping hole

And I am alone with it and yearning for a filling/a remedy so my footing stop being so tiringly unbalanced

writing this with a fantasy in mind of someone reading it and at the end of it looking back at me again
with eyes that see, really see, me, that takes in everything, even the invisible
of who and what I am
and I become a self
understood, embraced,
a self
loved, taken care of,
a self 
made welcome.