dear mother,
my mental health is not a spectator sport.

you do not get to tell me "you need to go to school to learn to be a decent person" when i am too depressed to get out of bed and then brag about my ACT score.
it is not your score. it is mine.

dear mother,
you do not get to tell me that you are sending me to a psychologist to "learn how to treat other people" and then ask me if i am okay. i am not okay.

dear mother,
you do not get to watch me hyperventilate under a bed on a school morning and get angry and then brag to your friends about my GPA. it is not your GPA. it is mine.

dear mother,
you do not get to scream at me for "upsetting your household" and order me to take easier classes and then brag to your friends that your daughter took 5 AP classes. yes, that is hard, but you made it harder.

dear mother,
you do not get to scold me when, yes, i stayed up all night but didn't finish my work but then brag to your friends about my success. it is not your success. it is mine.

dear mother,
you do not get to push me down and then comment on how wonderfully i got back up.

you do not get to cheer me in success and boo me in defeat. i am not a sports team, i am your daughter

dear mother,
you are not my mother. you are my fair-weather fan, and yes i am doing well now but i do not have time for autographs.

dear mother,
goodbye.

to you these are just shapes on a page, sounds in the air
but when i tell you "i loved him,"
i can him smiling in a thousand different places and when i say "that was a good day," i can feel the butterflies in my chest and my light heart and the sunshine on my face and when i say "it was nice to have someone," i can feel his hand on the small of my back and his soft voice asking "are you okay?"
i can say "i really ******* loved him," and maybe you can hear the pain in my voice but you'll never experience the agony of being naked in his bed and saying "you don't love me,"
you'll never know what it's like to **** yourself daily to try to hold on to something that isn't even there. yes i can show you a picture but you'll never know how beautiful he was to me

i can say that it hurts, that his absence ravages my insides, that meeting him was like drowning and finally being pulled to the surface, like living in darkness and someone finally turning on the light,
and maybe you can imagine what it is like, but i cannot make you feel my pain.

"How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it's just words."
-David Foster Wallace

i know i told everyone i hated you, but oh, baby
alcohol will not fill the hole i left.
you can pour as much ***** down your throat as you want but if it tasted like my name after two shots, it will still taste like my name after twelve.

oh, baby
alcohol, contrary to popular belief, is not a truth serum.
it will not cure your compulsive lying, it will not provide you with a newfound empathy for others.
liquor is not a cure, it does not make you better, it makes you worse.

oh, baby
alcohol does not make you forget.
four days after i found out about you and her and all the lies, you sent me 80 drunk texts begging me to return to your abusive relationship. do not tell me that alcohol makes you forget.

i've never drunk texted you but it only takes my drunk self 15 minutes at a party to find a boy to fill your role for the night. seven shots later and i'm holding this boys hand and he's holding me up - i did not forget that he was not you, i merely remembered that i was alone.
alcohol does not make you forget.

oh, baby
alcohol will not help your grades.
i heard that your new study partner is named smirnoff, i know textbooks don't have blonde hair and soft lips but i promise they would make a better replacement than that bottle.

oh, baby
alcohol will not make you nicer.
drunk texting me that this is all my fault for being so jealous is not endearing. calling her a ***** is not endearing. falling over is not endearing.
baby, alcohol will not make people like you more.

oh, baby
i know that you are carrying some baggage but alcohol will not make them lighter, alcohol will not make them more colorful, alcohol will not make them more valuable.
it will not help, it is not appealing, ***** breath is not a cool accessory.

i am never coming back, but the boy i fell in love with is inside of you somewhere and he does not deserve to be treated like this.

today i thought about how i'm better off without you.

lights shine brightest in the dark, mountains appear greatest among plains, bulls are most frightening by themselves, and i gleam clearer without **** on my surface.

i'm so much happier now.

i am tired
of asking people
to love me

flowers do not
beg honey bees
to land

shores do not
beg ocean tides
to return

if my sweet scent
does not lure you
nor does the moon guide you to me,
i do not want you,
if anything less than gravity pulls you
to me

some days i was proud of myself for not swallowing a bottle of pills; some days i refused to be proud of my six A's and one B. you try and try and try to love yourself but some days all you can give yourself is existence.

some days i had to force myself to eat because my stomach was too full of anxiety to have room for an apple. some days all you can give yourself is breakfast.

some days all you can give yourself is food and water and air and that is okay. but you are not allowed to deprive yourself of your existence. you are not allowed to deprive the world of your beauty.

some days it was really ******* hard, but every night i tried to tuck myself in, every morning i tried to do something positive, and every day i tried so ******* hard not to swallow that bottle of pills. my grandmother does not deserve for her only granddaughter to die at the age of 17.

and here i am. i'm okay. i'm telling myself that i'm okay. right now i'm in a dark valley and i can't see the sun over the horizon but i still know that the sun eventually will rise. there are brighter days ahead of me, and there are brighter days ahead of you.
the only way to feel the warmth on your skin is to wait for the sun to rise.
wait for the sun to rise.

i am aggressive.
aggressively happy, aggressively sad.

i will be the sun that crashes through
your window and warms your living room with my laughter, i will melt your candles and burn your eyes with my smile. i will furnish your home with my voice and hang memories of us on the walls of your heart. i will scorch you by surprise like a seat belt in july, i will scald your cupid's bow with my cherry lips and you will never get my taste out of your mouth. i will set your house on fire.

but on the hard days, i will not.

i will drain the color from your life. my tears will wash the pigment from the walls and pull the curtains shut. you won't remember what sunshine feels like. my shivering shoulders will **** the warmth out of our shared home, establishing a winter not with crystalline ice but with a bone-chilling cold whose frost bites at anything exposed - your heart, your fingers, your nose - don't let me get too close.

i will be your sunshine, and then i will leave you out in the rain.
i wish i could be a calm, pleasant day, but i can only be fire, i can only be ice.
i'm sorry, but i've never known gray - i've never done anything halfway.