I'm A Bitter Mix

I became a bitter mix,
A result of the hospital stay when I
was 11,
Dear God, I was only 11.
I was robbed of an innocence, A small
child
Forced out of childhood to grow up too
fast.
I don't know how it happened, and
frankly,
I don't care.
I don't care how the disgusting little
MRSA
Crept into my lungs so quietly
unnoticed,
I don't care how the timing laid out
just right to where
I wound up in the emergency room
gasping for life
Ruining my older sister's 16th
birthday.
I still refuse to forgive myself.
It was all a blur, it happened all to
quickly
Next thing I know I'm in an ambulance
with people I barely know
And I'm in a hospital at the state
capitol with a ventilator hooked up to me.
I was out, unconscious, drowning in my
own mucus and a sea of black.
I swear, if that's what it feels like
to be dead,
I'd like to go back to that time, and
stay there
Because the PTSD I've been given after
waking up
Has carved my bone structure into
something else.
They tell me it was a miracle I had
lived,
My mother tells me stories of how I was
on an isolator
and even punctured a lung at some
point,
my organs were shutting down.
And then it hits you – just like
that.
Death doesn't care either.
Death doesn't care if you're too young,
If you have hopes and dreams.
You can just stop existing, just like
that
With no knowledge prior of it
happening.
I've wrapped my head around it like a
ribbon tied like a noose,
And I must say, it's an interesting
thing, very interesting.
People assume someone who's lived
through such a miracle should be grateful,
Be forever happy and instantly so much
wiser than before.
I've had these expectations thrust upon
me and I've grown cold;
As I've said, a bitter mix, ¾ tragedy and ¼ human.
Realize, that I'm still human!I do not want sympathy or to be treated
any less,
I want empathy, I
crave it, I crave for someone to try to understand,
That my feelings aren't invalid, that I have a right to be upset,
And while I may have suffered such a terrible physical illness before,
My mental illnesses, the depression, the PTSD, the anxiety, the
insomnia,
They do in fact outweigh the physical pain I had known before.
I need someone to understand, that a child that survives their illness,
has had an innocence robbed of them.
Innocence, something so, so beautiful...
I have a right to be bitter, angry, sad.
A childhood illness never leaves you.
I'll always have bad lungs,
I'll always be terrified of needles, of hospitals,
I'll always have to deal with the looks of concern when I cough,
I'll always be a conversation topic, and worst of all,
I'll always be bitter.
Oh, I'll always be bitter.
And I'm sorry that I'm not worth romanticizing,
And I'm not someone you can write beautiful poetry about my recovery.
You can't say that I used what little I may have of my life left for the
greater good,
I'll never be an inspiring story to tell.
I'll be forever tragic, forever sad, and forever bitter.
And I will never rest in peace.