0:00
I fly through the front doors
racing upstairs like hunted prey
praying she didn't see me

1:00
I tear open the make remover
and feverishly rip off
the overpowering
jet black eyeliner

2:00
I steal a glance in the bedroom mirror
and throw on a hoodie over my black shirt
quickly swapping out the black pants for jeans
in a crude attempt to look normal

3:00
I hear her steps ringing off the stairs as my heart beats
sounding together like a drum kit
I pull off my spiked black bracelets
and trinkets
hands shaking palms sweating
as I hide them away

4:00
I feel the door opening before it does and
hope i covered up the look, the spikes hidden
the eyeliner gone
i glance in the mirror and see a pale
empty girl looking back
terrified of being caught

5:00
she asks how my day was while casually looking around the room
her ever seeing eyes falling on my undoing
my small black spiked gothic bracelet
hanging off the desk
sticking out like a sore thumb

6:00
she asks what it is
and looks at me questioningly
talking about how she deposes the style
hates the look
as I fumble for an excuse
of the unusual possession

7:00
I lie, its easy now i do it all the time.
But this was different. I tell her
that its a stupid birthday gift
a throwaway I keep because
friends like to see me wear what they bought
but as I utter the words
I feel like Im stabbing my soul
twisting a knife
calling a part of my identity garbage
telling myself that part of myself is simply a throw away
and despite the fact that I use a fake knife
The sting still feels real
because I know that part of what I say is true

Depression is a feeling
an emptiness
a loneliness
an extreme sadness

It is an emotion
filled with dread
a sense of living dead
not an illness in your head

When a child comes home crying
sad eyes with tears
do you offer them pills and cures
teaching them that sadness is a mental disability?

No, you welcome them
you wipe away the tears
and wrap them in a warm hug
telling them to let it out
that its okay to cry

Why must we treat depression so different
Depression is a feeling
a thousand times more intense than sadness
so we need the cure a thousand times over

People need hope and happiness
hugs and warm kisses
jokes and support
family and friends

We need to stop theaching people
that it is wrong to feel
that emotions that strong are frowned upon
something you must drown
in drugs and supperess to be
accepted by society

because depression is not a mental illness
depression is a feeling
an emotion
that needs human support and happiness
not synthetic chemicals
and the segregation
that comes with being "disabled"

when someone is happy, we see them as happy
as laugh and smile along
when someone is sad we see them as sad
and try to cheer them up
when someone is depressed
we cast them aside, title them as broken
ask them to take pills to be happy
and lose the reminder of what really matters
throwing the people
further into societies forbidden emotion

I feel like you're slipping through my open fingers, our relationship falling like a handful of sand and no matter how fast or hard I clench my fist you find the little cracks to fall through

They say that when kids reach late teens, they fight, and grow distant, they grow to resent their parents and relationships fail, but I feel like I'm something new, our relationship isn't disappearing, you aren't fading into the distance, instead you are transforming into something new and I'm no longer your little girl.

Early today we went to the mall, and as we sat and ate lunch you said the strangest thing. You started talking about your job and about your feelings, treating me like an adult at last. The way I had always wanted you to talk to me my whole life. Like I was a friend and you could confide in me, because I still can't talk to you about the devastation I've encountered, but you finally understand that though I am still small my eyes hold wisdom and the gibberish you think I hear, comes like a melody in comprehensible packages. The codes you have come untangled to my ears, because I too have experienced your codes.

As a little girl I waited begging into my pillow that you would treat me this way, that you would talk to me like a friend. But the other day you did, and something was missing. I missed the way that you used to talk to me with your eyes shining carefully watching your words. The way that you would censer your topics as if I didn't understand the truth.

And now that you do this, that you talk to me like a new found friend you met at work, I miss being your little girl. I see the shinning eyes as your talk to my younger brother, and I miss the days you looked at me with that little kid look. Because now you see me with eyes of an equal, because I'm not your little girl anymore, because our mother daughter relationship has slipped through my fingers and the love you showed like chocolate kissing placed on the pillow of your every action, have been given to another and now my mother is slipping away.

The venom in your snake bite glare ties my pain in knots, Knots

don’t come undone

Every time you yell I smell smoke

You’re burning us, you know

You’re burning us.

And I’m drowning in the fire.

You’ve got your magnifying glass in hand like a detective,

And I know you’re searching for something better

I know you’re searching for clues that we could make it better,
between us

But you always look in the same place, you always look through these
piles and stacks of Anger that we’ve been collecting and you haven’t
looked anywhere else, you know, no matter how magnified that
Anger is, it won’t change what it is.

You’ve been standing in that same spot searching for too long, and that
magnifying glass is burning us

And it’s not that I don’t still think you’re made of stars, because I do

I still do

I still need you, mom

I need you to breathe,

I do.

You’re my oxygen, you always have been but

This Oxygen is suffocating me.

Do you remember that story I told you so many times? About that day
in kindergarten when the craft table got new materials? When there
was nice

Purple

Shiny heart shaped box and I wanted it

So did everyone else, but I got to it first

So it was mine

I had it in my hands

I had it

But then the other little girl spent all morning talking to me about how
she wanted it

She wanted the pretty, shiny, heart-shaped chocolate box so that she
could make a pretty gift for her mommy and I didn’t want to give it
up, but I finally gave in to the guilt and gave up that box to her

Do you know why?

Because I thought about how I had the best mommy in the whole wide
world and I wanted to give that pretty box to you because I loved you
so much and I thought maybe that little girl loved her mommy the
same way I loved you, and I understood why she would want to give
her mommy a pretty thing and to this day, that time in kindergarten
when I gave up my pretty box that I wanted to give to you is one of my
deepest regrets, because I loved you so much and I wanted to give you
that pretty gift.

I still do, you know

I still see you as the duct tape to fix what I broke and the hands that tie
the back of my dress in a bow for me on Easter Sunday, sure I still see
you as the lullaby I fall asleep to because I used to replay that
recording of your choir solo you downloaded on my very first IPod for
me every night before I went to bed one year when I was in elementary
so that in case I died before I woke up, the last voice I ever heard
would have been yours. Or in case you died at least I heard your voice
last. I always romanticized death back then, but now I can see how icy
the frosty fingers of death really are when the death of our old bond is
staring me right in the face, Mom!

Do you remember that one month I spent making absolute sure the last
thing I said to you before you shut my door and left after saying
goodnight was: I love you so that the last thing I ever said to you
was “I love you”? Same logic, mom. In case you died before the next
time I saw you, at least that was the last thing I ever said to you I never
wanted you to forget, and yes mom, I still see you as the stiches in my
torn up nylons but I don’t see you as my blanket on a cold day,
anymore.

I can trust you to save me, I can trust you to love me overall, in the end

But I can’t trust you to comfort me and you tell me to call you when
I’m sad, but you wouldn’t get it.

I can give you ten reasons why you and I need you to stop chasing me
into pain’s open arms and all ten are on my hands, balled up in fists
that are bruised from fighting, I’m done fighting with you mom, I can’t
anymore.

I’m too tired.

You start every knitting project and never finish it before you start a
new one, and I don’t want to become just another unfinished project of
yours, the daughter who left home and never sent more than 10 emails,
one for each finger after that because it’s not that I don’t love you, it’s
just that we’re growing so distant now that when we fight, the “I love
you” is no longer implied and when you get angry, you’re scary

You call me worthless, you swear at me, you say some awful things
mom, and so do I, I know,

But then you demand in irritation why I consider myself worthless as
if I’m seeking attention or something when I admit to you how
worthless I feel, well if you would quit calling me useless and
worthless and I quote “The stupidest human being alive” maybe I
WOULDN’T FEEL LIKE THAT MOM!

Maybe your mom, who is supposed to be the over-sized, comfy hoodie
you can come home to when life is getting too complicated is
constricting you with her harmful words it’s hard to find any good in
myself anymore maybe I’m just really hurt that you would say that to
me.

My sisters came along and they STOLE you, I’m sorry if that sounds
like a selfish, angry six year old but I need to say it because I don’t care
how unbiased you think you are, you never show me the underlying
kindness you show them because mom, I don’t want money every time
we go to the movies, I don’t want two pairs of Lululemon leggings or
expensive boots I just want the Love I feel like you’ve lost for me when
you didn’t have enough to give to all three of your children I just want
you to Love me, mom. I’m scared that you don’t anymore, and God it
would be so much easier if I could hate you but I can’t bring myself to.
I wish I could say I hate you, but I don’t. Every time I cross the line and
scream something unforgivable at you, when you cry, I can hear every
teardrop that falls from your eyes crash to the floor and shatter, but I
feel like you can’t hear me even when I’m screaming, even when liquid
pain is pouring down my face mom I love you, but you can’t hear my
tears and I feel like you’ve lost the Love you used to have for me.

I wish you would come back to me, I wish you would spend just ONE
night without insulting me, or yelling at me because I’m not
exaggerating when I say you haven’t.

Mom, I’m asking you to help me fix this.

We are not going to find the answer to the Cold between us in this pile
of angry, so please lower your voice and lower your magnifying glass,
just stop burning us and help me rebuild our old bond, okay?

The venom in your snake bite glare ties my pain in knots, but knots

Can come undone

Untie this pain with me?

I feel like an old worn toy
Destroyed beyond repair
Yet a father tried for his boy
To piece me back tare by tare

How ever, they threw away
One vital piece of the construction.
Instructions they wouldn't use today
Turning my rebuilding into gentle destruction

He pieced me back as best he could
The ourside looks the same
But now I'm made of hollow wood
Missing pieces that never came

I'm not broken or in pain
I'm having a lack of feeling
Like a hollow toy on a chain
Dangling empty from the ceiling

They put me together made me whole
Yet something's different after all
He must have missed a ***** or hole
When they fixed me from the fall

A fire is burning
Deep inside
One to set me a blaze
That you fuel with hate

It's tounges of heat
Only add strenghth to my frozen heart
It's firey passion
Ready to shoot you will a storm
Of icicles

I have cried my frozen tears over you
And felt my blood boil in pain
But now that pain becomes a gate
To freedom

Too long have you governed over me
Too long have to called me ugly and fat
Too long have you laughed at my ideas
Too long have you talked behind my back

Though I can not leave in form
For now I'm gone in spirit
Smiling in front of you, laughing at your jokes

While my fire sparks inside
And my heart cools with malice
No longer will I feel you shots
Because if you shoot at an inferno
The bullets are lost in the blaze