Depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway,

Blood dripping down your skin and having the sick thought of  “Oh, look how beautiful the red is”

(everyone always says red is my color).

Depression is writing sick poetry on skin and publishing it with scars, cutting on ankles, not wrists because you’re scared you’ll get in trouble but you so desperately need to be seen, and never are.

Depression is accepting ruin in life with this hole in your chest because death is a reward, an escape from this pain you deserve to feel.

It is writing the word “alone” and seeing the word “home”, accepting the torment like a gift because you’ve earned it.

Depression is admitting suicidal thoughts to paper and not to people, and loving the broken things, hoping to tie them together, thinking maybe things will get better, but knowing that’s just wishful thinking because

Depression is tying yourself together with the severed nerves in your heart;

It is rope, it is ribbon, it is thread, it is DNA;

It is hearing your mother call you monster and disgusting through the too-thin walls of your door when she thinks you can’t hear,

And depression is sadness being a privilege you’re too pathetic to have.

It is a hug, a freezing touch, a reminder that
Depression is being birthed a lie.

And it is shutting yourself behind that wooden doorway
And hearing your family laugh like cackling hyenas,
Eating at your self esteem like softened prey
And learning at a young age to love family always but that family isn’t always love because

Depression is family.

It is an unfurnished home,
An empty frame,
A foot when the shoe hasn’t been broken in yet,
you when life hasn't been broken in yet,
Seeing happy people and thinking they all look the same, like the front covers of magazines with grins reaching their eyes while yours can’t, and wishing you could package your smiles into tiny little piles and hand them to people more deserving of them because you know you’re wasting them with half-assed lines of “I’m fine”

Depression is having to view your past as if it wasn’t yours, because to accept it as reality is to accept finality of your life through suicide.

It is the note masked inside of a poem,
Envisioning pills as if they were peace,

Depression is the last stanza,
It is the audience,
It is this microphone,
It is me standing in a room full of strangers
And for the first time finally feeling like I'm being heard.

Depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway that keeps pounding, possessive, ******, but when you open the door out of anger and shout “I’M SCARED” to thin air, your voice comes out as a whisper.

And silently, the figure replies;  
“I know your favorite color.”

We wear X's on our hands
Right below our middle fingers
That tap in sync with the music
Like a pen that bruises paper.

I could blame it on being a ditz…or on it being a new razor…or even that I was belting out that note at the end of for the first time in forever from frozen
But in reality I know it’s just me…wanting to make sure I can still feel something cuz I’m so **** numb again

Everyone talks about depression as if they know it.  

But what they don’t know is that depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway,

it’s feeling the blood dripping down your skin and having the sick thought of  “Oh, look how beautiful the red is” (they always say red is my color).

Depression is lying on your bed for hours on end, salt tracks lining your face like the scars on your ankles, staring at your ceiling tracing patterns in the paint and accepting death in life with this hole in your chest because death is a reward, an escape from this pain you deserve to feel.

Depression is writing sick poetry on skin and publishing it with scars, cutting on ankles, not wrists because you’re scared you’ll get in trouble but you so desperately need to be seen, and never are.

Depression is writing the word “alone” and seeing the word “home”, accepting the pain like a gift because you deserve it.

Depression is admitting suicidal thoughts to paper and not to people, and loving the broken things, hoping to tie them together, thinking maybe things will get better, but knowing that’s just wishful thinking.

Depression is hearing your mother call you monster and disgusting through the too-thin walls of your door when she thinks you can’t hear, and then telling you to your face that you have no right to cry, as if sadness is a privilege and you’re so pathetic that you don’t deserve it.

Depression is shutting yourself up in your room and hearing your family laughing downstairs because you feel like you can’t be a part of them and learning at a young age to love family always but that family isn’t always love

Depression is wanting to take love and your heart and break them into tiny little pieces and throw them into waves, to throw them away

Depression is a foot when the shoe hasn’t been broken in yet, is you when you haven’t broken life in, is seeing happy people and thinking they all look the same, like the front covers of magazines with smiles reaching their eyes when yours can’t.

Depression is wishing you could package your smiles into tiny little piles and hand them to people more deserving of them because you know you’re wasting them with half-assed lines of “I’m fine”

Depression is having to view your past as if it wasn’t yours, because to accept it as reality is to accept finality of your life through suicide.

Depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway and when you close the door out of fear it keeps pounding, possessive, ******, and when you open the door out of anger you shout, “I’M SCARED” to thin air but your voice comes out as a whisper.

I close my eyes and see city lights
Intertwined with vines;
Flowers underscore pavement,
Life in matrimony with death and
All the beauty in between.