A Design To Be Changed

By Ashleigh Hatter

Stopping is an option—
at least for me, but my voice is the only one to say so.

“You need to go. Just take it slow. The others didn’t work, but you never know; the answer could be near.”

And honestly—oddly—that’s what I fear. Just getting better for the sake of it; for the evening out for,
the averaging of an extreme into a beige, a middle ground, so in the end, then, I can shout—
I can say—
“I’m just like you—like all y’all—now.”

And that causes me to worry: agonize, whittle away the pleasant nights into shitty days I can’t survive.
Consternation: that’s my constellation, not up for conversation or any more argumentative deliberation—concentration not on bettering me, but on changing me into something not me so that “we” can be better, you see? It’s a wheel and I’m caught; rolled over and over unable to walk.

“They just wanna talk,” is what they say, whenever I shirk or chastise or balk at the suggestion to see a person for 200 an hour, and all for what? So they can shower on me their grand degree, and tell me to see—”just try to see”—it in this way, or that way, or rearrange your thinking with this trick to makeway for better thoughts and bettering tinkering…

All these pros and still I’m sinking.
All these patch jobs, still I’m leaking.

It all started, why?
Cause they say I’m broken, suffering, in need of support.
What a load of shit—a classy retort, and one they don’t take kind to and therefore resort to ultimatums and rebukes and secret reports—all given to the doc behind my shoulder.

It’s been a long time and I’m guaranteed longer, and honestly, I’d fight back if I were stronger.
But all this time is weighing me down, and I just want to nap, either on or in the ground, and whether or not a solution is found, I couldn’t care less cause my options are bound. I only move when I’m told to.

Stopping is an option, I tell them. Just let me be, and let me free to be the way I was meant to be—don’t seem so bad—so I say it again.
But my voice is the only one to say so.