Your unwell she says
With a look of dismay
I'm fine I insist
Tho the slits on my wrist
Suggest otherwise

Your weight is dangerously low
She tells me
I tell her, my weight is fine
As i disagree
And so commonly as we do
We agree to disagree
But to what degree was
I willing to sink
Before I reached the brink
The breaking point
You need to be here she reminds me
I reply quietly
That this place is for the sick
And me, I am fit.
I am the picture of health
I speak
Tho the weakness in my voice
Suggests quite the opposite
So in silence we sit
And wait
And the clock it ticks
As the minutes pass by
It's okay to cry
She reassuringly speaks
And slowly but surely
Those minutes pass into hours, days and weeks.
And I start to open up my eyes a little
Perhaps even start to realise
That maybe she was right and I was wrong
That maybe that self defeating song
I'd played over in my mind
Had started to unwind me from
The real me, from reality.
That maybe I wasn't quite the person I thought I had been
And that maybe those seems I'd sown
To protect myself
Had actually served in destroying my
Physical and emotional health

Dancing with death,
The mamba, the salsa,
Precise precision,
Two moves left.
No room for mistakes.
He places the blame
On a plaque with my name
As he hangs the frame
On my trembling body.

He reminds me,
Seconds are slipping into minutes,
Informs me our dance is unfinished.
Minutes sift into hours,
And they turn into showers,
Cold, bitter showers
And I'm naked and alone.

My hips follow his lead,
As I cry and plead,
Just one more song he says.
As he pulls me closer,
I replay the roller coaster of my life
As it flashes before my eyes.

2011 ©

It must be hard
If you're not depressed
To understand the difficulty
Of just getting dressed
It must be hard
If you don't starve
To imagine winter woollens
Hats, gloves and scarves
In the summer.
It must be hard
If you don't ***** your food
To understand the waste
Once it's been swallowed and chewed
It must be heard
If you don't hear voices
To imagine
Someone else
Dictating your choices
It must be hard
If you don't have compulsions
To understand the urge
The panic and convulsions
Of just saying no.
It must be hard
If you don't have an attachment
To a narcotic or a bottle
To understand how it can
Throttle you, to just one more hit.
It must be hard,
If you don't cut at your wrists
To understand
How someone could do this.
It must be hard
If you don't suffer highs and lows
To understand how quickly
Such a feeling, comes and goes
As it pleases.
It must be hard
If you've never had a chemical imbalance
In your brain
Or a contributing factor, a stressful event
To understand the insane.

It's not like a broken leg,
A sprained wrist, the flu
Where someone can easily
Treat and diagnose you.
It's not something that just goes away
And I'm not trying to say
That everyone doesn't understand
I'm just lending a hand,
To those who struggle
To make sense
Of the dents in our thinking
The depths that we're sinking
The vacant eyes that are blinking
As we're thrown around inside
Our own minds.

2013 ©

This applies to every single one of you. No matter how little you may believe you are worth, I swear to you, you are worth more, way more than you could ever imagine, in your wildest dreams. You are worth the same as those you value most, that girl with the body you aspire yours to be like, those people that you envy for being so naturally beautiful, your closest friends, your family. You are worth every piece of happiness, hope and health. I promise. You are not a diagnosis or a statistic, defined by criteria, percentiles and numerical figures, no. You are so much more. You are more than the inches around your waist, the abs on your stomach, the lbs that creep up and down on the scales, the self defeating thoughts, the highlighting of your insecurities, the constant regrets.
You are the air you breathe, the laughter that slips between your lips, the fight that you said you had ran out of months ago. The love you share and feel, the smiles that sweep across your face, those moments where happiness feels so close that you can almost taste it. You are daylight, the sun, nightlife, clubs and music and drunken confessions. You are a shining star, the scent of your favourite perfume, your most treasured memories crammed into ink and squashed between frames.

Never doubt that you are more.

2013 ©