How does a person retrain themselves to be the image they wish would have stayed captured? There is no longer beauty in the blemishes; these have come to portray bruises into whom you are now. There is no simplistic way of escaping the identity of the creature you have adopted without some sort of explanation. You cannot merely co-exist with who you are and who you desire to be again. You must choose. The choice is anything but easy because once it's made, the absence of your greatest endeavors will loosen from your hold, inevitably. Those memories will burn like a cigarette hitting the cold concrete, burning in solidarity as other people drive right over it, without notice of its existence.

So, how?

How do you make the decision to alter your life to the point of creating yourself or accepting yourself and how do you differentiate between the two in the meantime? How can you sweep yourself off of your own dirty feet that have been engraved into the black top they've been recklessly enslaved to for time that was enough. Enough for people to leave. Regardless of the circumstances they left. You were left no choice but to burn up in your self rejection to find your own anti-biotic. They were once the doctors that built you into stability and now they are anything but sensible. You thought they'd be the one next to you but instead they are the ones that turn around whenever they see you from a distance just to avoid confrontation.

So how, how did we get here exactly?

How do you cope, embrace life, accept what this life offers, when people that were meant to stay always depart?

Do you follow your own lonely voice by discovering exactly where your identity lies or will you be constrained by the limitations they have left buried in what used to be a safe zone between the two of you?

In the end, when it's just you, you become good at faking your way through the tragedy, I propose, and suck it up as you've been conditioned to do so.

But who is to say we can't be the director of our own screwed up game? Just because our friendships have become part of this domino effect doesn't mean as a person we are dismantled. People change, people outgrow interests and people leave. You don't have to breathe in the lie that you must formulate yourself into the equation in which others want to see; you have to explore indefinitely whom you are and be absolutely, contently in love with yourself that way.

Don't wait to morph into who the world longs for you to be, just be the exact opposite; be who they never saw coming their way. Strut your sweet self in front of those selfish people who let you go and strive towards the betterment of yourself and don't you dare let a single soul stop you from loving the skin that you live in, the mind you ponder with, and that incomprehensible strength you hold onto.