The Trauma of Reinvention

Shedding skin again—
away with the old, in with the new.
Whispered desires
cannot constrain the turbulent tides of time.
Change is coming,
tumbling like mixed emotion—
raw, visceral, hammering.

I am not ready for it.
Even though I’ve lived half a life,
“It’s driving me wild,
it makes me feel like a child.”
I kick against reformation
in a tantrum state of rejection—
a distortion of who I truly am.

Invention or reflection?
Does violence and trauma define me?
Or am I just stuck in the mud,
dragging myself forward out of habit?

Maybe my world already changed—
but no one noticed.
So I rebel against re-invention to the extreme:
defiant, rebellious, steadfast.

“The picture you see is no portrait of me.
It’s too real to be shown
to someone I don’t know.”

Change can be violent and turbulent.
It can be subtle, or it can be swift.
It can swaddle, or it can rape—
and it makes no apologies
for the trauma sustained in the aftermath.

RebeccaRuth 2025