It just feels like no matter how much ground I gain or far I run, it’s still always there, right at my back, this extra gravity. And I know I’m supposed to be okay with that and accept it, because this...thing... is just a passenger in my life now, and it's not going anywhere. But **** if doesn’t still knock me down.

And every time I find a home without it, it seems to eventually find its back to remind me just how tired I am.

At best it is white noise, always chattering in the background. At worse...well you know it goes; it deafens and it cripples.

I think we all just want to know, "how far do I have to run, how long do I have fight...to be normal again?"

Somehow, knowing that question doesn't have an answer doesn't make it go away.

You were a sold out music hall
And I was just a record on your wall

And I'd turn and turn and hope that you would sing along
While you played symphonies for us all

Soft padded sheets with a chalk-white fade
Contours from repeated pressure illustrating a familiar shape

Indented rivets in the overused cushion where you tried to hide
Red-turned-brown spots dried, markers of where you failed to keep it inside
Timid stains of salty moisture once fallen from your eyes
Now just a faded gravestone to the bliss simplicity brought before your fight died

Deaf ears and the pleas that pass through their shallow halls
But the sound changes octaves as it bounces off the thin beige walls
And so it echoes unheard as it falls
One too many close calls to accept the sound that emulates from it all

Trembling bones under heavy skin clutching the bed-frame with an iron grip
Second only to the pressure your upper teeth have on your lower lip

Revolving doors unhinged, flooding your thoughts as they race
Tired eyes stay bolted open, not recognizing the shape of your own face
in the jagged glass that now lays fractured and stained from the image you tried to replace
But it still didn't go away
“This is it,” you say

Cavernous holes,
Once whole,
Now just hollow shells you used to call home
Empty of all heart and all hope

And you brace for the hit, the moment where it finally all goes black
And the silence will finally answer back,
telling you you've ****** it up, it's all rotted through, you didn't fight hard enough and now you're done

And every single time you're still surprised when that moment never comes
And despite the tremors and daggers, your stubborn heart carries on

So find the narrow sliver of air where reality and your mind meet
And take in all the oxygen like it isn’t always free
There isn’t much too it,
You just put your head down and breathe

Because if there’s only one thing of which you can be sure
It's that these souls were designed to endure

And "this too shall pass" will become true once more

Let your heart and its resting pace made amends
Once the shaking stops you can finally stand
And wear that smile until courage finds you again

Somewhere inside you always knew this isn’t how it ends.

White sheets, won’t you dry?
Stuck to wire outside
You shake in the wind, trying to fly

Truth comes with a lie
You only hear the parts that you like
Know that the view ain’t from the height
And know that your truth ain’t the same as mine

Black boots, won’t you slow?
Picking up mud as you go
Dragging my feet further from home

Time makes ghosts of us all
Stuck in these pictures we haunt
We measure what’s real by what we’ve lost

These hands were never worth much
Always shaking and cold to the touch
Hollow bones ache looking for love
They bend and they break but it's not enough

But I’ve seen your grey skin
The way you stretch it, trying to fit it all in
I know that your colors all lie within

I know that your colors all lie within

This moment was never mine
But somehow I found the arrogance to hold onto it
To fear it, to fight it, to somehow decide if it was wrong or if it was right
or if I was even alive inside it, and if I would survive it
To see the next one roll around and drown whatever fragile solace I found.

But before the answer finds me, the next moment and I meet.
And this one isn’t too keen to let me believe it’d be okay to just breathe
Without thinking about the million little reasons I'm too scared to leave

So I’ll stay
And I’ll huff and I'll puff
But no amount of breath will ever be enough
To satisfy the divide between my lungs and my mind

Whatever moment is next to be, but I guess it’s not meant to be
Because I never find the next moment, it always finds me

But there doesn’t seem to be any peace in this fresh start
Only faster thumps from my restless heart
Telling my fingers and knees to shake so violently,
The pillars of sand beneath my feet dissolve back into the sea
And leave me bobbing for air like it isn’t free

And then a new moment hangs its noose around me
and tightens an iron grip around my throat
taunting “think fast kid, dead bodies don’t float”
But I can’t let go, so I just sit there and watch myself choke

And just when the oxygen no longer comes
A new moment claws its way down to the pit of my lungs
Digging up an old ladder with a new set of rungs

I’m still alive, right?
The wires are crossed, but they’re still clicking, the gears are still spinning, clock hands still ticking,
So why am I so incapable of winning?

Which moment am I living in?
Or maybe there’s not much difference between now and then

But before my mind and I can make amends
A new moment interrupts and begins it all again

Send help, dear friend.