therapy is like being skinned alive.

call it dramatic, but you can't call it untrue

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it’s painful. it’s gruesome. 
it’s tearing — bit by bit, at everything you are
and everything you’ve ever been. 


it’s digging to reveal what’s under the surface
and giving it the proper air to breathe. 


it’s handing permission to someone
to peel it all back — the layers and layers of skin,
that you never thought you were meant to shed. 


sometimes in slivers, other times in one large chunk. 
sometimes in slow motion, other times in one teeth-clenching fell swoop. 


nothing about this is glamorous. 
its vulnerability without an anesthetic. 


“brace yourself”, they tell you,
this will only hurt for a second. 


and while you want to believe
that they’re telling the truth, 
you can’t ignore the burning sensation:
firey gashes, left achy and raw, as the world infiltrates the freshly peeled wound. 


therapy —
a strikingly beautiful kind of torture. 


leaving you breathless, providing a cushion —
cozy enough to keep you coming back, 
with just enough durability to soak up what you bleed. 

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~ a poem by riley rae for Out of Ink