Bianca Sparacino - The Strength In Our Scars

Copyright 2018 Bianca Sparacino. All rights reserved.

Published by Thought Catalog Books , a publishing house owned by The Thought & Expression Company. Cover design by Josh Covarrubias and art direction by KJ Parish and Chris Lavergne. It was printed in 2018 and published in an edition of 3,000 copies .

ISBN 978-0-9964871-9-1

Poems

I am a firm believer in there being beauty in the contrast. In the light and the dark days. In the hope and the hurt. In the fire and in the ash. I am a firm believer in the fall and in the rise; in the sin and in the saving. I am a firm believer in the broken, the people who hold their pieces together with belief, who bandage their fear in faith. I am a firm believer in the souls who have always managed to protect their soft; who have always known, even when it ached the most, that their wounds were healing them, that the hardest parts of life were growing them from the inside. I am a firm believer in there being beauty in the contrastyou have not lived until you have died.

The world is going to give you beauty,

but it will also give you pain.

The greatest lesson you will ever learn

is that this, too,

is a gift.

It is all I have lost

that has set me free.

It is difficult to move on. It breaks you down in ways you never expected to be broken before. But when this happens, do not fear the rebuilding. Do not lament the pieces of yourself that you have lost, the pieces of yourself that were left over. Instead, splay them across the kitchen floor. Look at each and every one of them. Look at the memories, look at the sacrifices. Look at it all from a place of healing, and choose to create yourself again. Shape your spine, stronger this time. Shape your heart, bigger this time. Shape your eyes, capable of seeing more than you ever imagined. Shape your mouth; give it the capacity to say all of the words you never allowed yourself to say. Begin again.

Your body is more than just a graveyard for those who could not love it. Your heart is more than just a cemetery for those who disappeared.

I am not impressed by beauty anymore. It is not difficult or extraordinary to turn someone on. However, if you have the ability to inspire me, if you have the ability to stimulate my mind and stir my thoughtswell, that makes you magic .

You are the one
who built your walls.

Dont ever doubt for a second
that you have the capacity
to tear them down.

Goodbye is hard sometimes because the action of leaving is so permanent, and yet that person still occupies so much of the space within your chest. Goodbye isnt final, it isnt a finish line you have to step over in order to forget. See, you cant unlove someone. You cant get their scent out of your pillowcases, cant unlearn their name and forget what it felt like to be immersed in the hope and beauty of another human being. People never stay gone. They show up in street corners, they show up in familiar laughs and the booth at that one restaurant where you first held their hand. Goodbye isnt as simple as many make it seem; goodbye isnt really goodbye, not for someone who still cares. Not for the person left in the aftermath of a hurricane they once loved.

You do not always have to be fire,

do not always have to burn

those who come too close.

Remember

you are seventy percent water;

you have it within you to be soft.

From time to time, trace the scars life has left you. It will remind you that at one point, you fought for something. You believed.

The moment you truly start to believe that you are deserving of happiness, of love, of something bigger than what you have been settling for, your heart weeps a littleas if it is the first time in years it has been able to lay down its arms; as if it is the first time in years it has been able to rest.

Life has taught me

that the people who often love the hardest

are the ones who have been hurt the most.

It took me a long time to realize that not everything in life is meant to be a beautiful story. Not every person we feel something deep and moving with is meant to make a home within us, is meant to be a forever. Sometimes, people come into our lives to teach us how to love; and sometimes, people come into our lives to teach us how not to love. How not to settle, how not to shrink ourselves ever again. Yes, sometimes people leavebut thats okay, because their lessons always stay, and that is what matters. That is what remains.

Please, whatever you dojust feel what you are feeling right now. Do not reach into yourself and pull out what life has planted within you. Instead, reach into yourself and cradle it. Give it a home within you. Let is stay for as long as it needs. Do not rush it out the door. Just be with it. Whatever it iswhether it is a name, or a memory, or an ache that you cannot seem to part with. Do not harden yourself to what has affected you so deeply in life. This is the important part. Be thankful for it. Be thankful for the songs you hear that make your soul bubble over with nostalgia. Be thankful for the morning light and how it hits that one spot on your bed that holds the ghosted memory of someone who was once your favorite thing. Be thankful for your heart and how at one point, you could feel it beating against your rib cage for ten days straight because your bones were blushing at the thought of someones hand within yours. Let these moments seek refuge in your soul. Let them wash over you. Let them remind you that at one point, you embraced what it meant to love without abandon. Let them remind you that at one point, you tried for something.

I will know my work is done

when they ask:

Do you like yourself

and with ruthless confidence,

with a certainty that comes

from every tender part of who I am,

I answer,

yes.

T hey didnt leave you because they didnt love you. They left because when they were fourteen they had their best friend come to them with a heart that never healed. At fourteen they held a human being, trembling and broken in their paper arms, and they feared the day they would mourn a last goodbye, a last embrace. They left because they saw how a cold flame could create a house fire in the hollow bones of someone who gave every inch of themselves and still came up short.

No, they didnt leave you because they didnt love you. They left because when they were seventeen they finally noticed the distance between their parents at the dinner table. At seventeen they had to tell their younger brother, sister, that sometimes things get tough, that sometimes mistakes hang heavy in a rib cage and it causes people to run away. They left because at a tender age they were taught that I love you doesnt always mean, Ill stay.

They didnt leave you because they didnt love you. They left because at twenty-one they read an article about a dating app that mentioned how 42% of its users already had partners. At twenty-one they read that plan Bs and second options were always on the forefront, always in the back pocket of someone who was holding the hand of a man, a woman, who slept soundly beside them at night. They left because they convinced themselves that there would always be another, someone better suited, someone better looking, someone more successful; it would only ever be a matter of time.

See, they didnt leave you because they didnt love you. They left because at twenty-five they watched their grandfather empty out the oceans within him at the grave of his high-school sweetheart. At twenty-five they watched how he slowly deteriorated, how loss crept into his heart like a bleak December frost; how the doctor said that her demise killed him before old age ever had the chance. They left because they finally understood how cruel it truly was to love something that death could touch.