You have taken the first hit
Gotten your first high
Leaving you wanting more when life beats you
You want more, but can’t get any
You wish that when people asked you about their lives
You knew how to help
Life just seems to keep you down
Shattering you

Someone sees through our mask
And so we reveal everything to them
Only with them are you yourself
Only with them do you let them see underneath
But once they see, they leave
Until another takes their place
Rinse and repeat

We know who we are
We have a filter around family
Cutting out the curses and the ***** jokes
We have facades for our different groups
We put it on like a costume
Covering our feelings
Covering our emotions
Changing who we are
We only realize we had it on when we take it off
By then it’s too late
It’s become us

We have grown
We develop tastes and opinions
We have an imagination that can get us into trouble
We still don’t need a filter though
We don’t know why we would

We say what comes to mind
No filter for our thoughts
But we don’t need one
We haven’t yet discovered who we are
We discover our feet
Our hands
Our mouth
Our tongue
We discover how to walk
To talk
To ride a bike
We have no sense of urgency
The hardest pain may be when we fall
May be when someone leaves
May be when someone dies
But we always got back up
We always filled the gap the person left
We always recovered

We met under the pretense it would be you and me
I walk up, and there’s someone with you
“Atticus, this is Jamie”
I’m sorry, I didn’t know that you meant two
You and your girlfriend
I know you wanted me to meet her
But still you could have told me
That way I would know and it wouldn’t be as rude to go away
When she reached down
Giving you a ******* ******* under the table
But there I am
Awkwardly sitting
Watching everything but the two of you
As you try to connect us
Join another into our inside jokes
I wanted to get up and ask
“Is there a table for third wheels?”

Step 1: Get out of bed
Step 2: Look in the mirror
Step 3: Practice your smile
Step 4: Eyedrops to hide the red eyes
Step 5: Conceal the dark circles
Step 6: Breathe
The curtains are almost up
Step 7: Lock down the pain
Step 8: Ignore the weight on your chest
Step 9: Silence the screams inside of your mind
Step 10: Choke down the sobs
Step 11: Ignore the stinging in your eyes
Step 12: Swallow past the tightness in your throat
You’ve put on this show a million times
Step 13: Don’t let them see
Times up. Curtains up. Camera rolling