Earbuds in
Head down
****, she asked me a question
Pretend you didn't hear her
Chest tight
Teeth clenched
Good, someone else answered
My secret is still safe
No one knows I have it
The dreaded "a-word"
Anxiety

Invisible eyes follow me everywhere,
staring into my very soul,
judging me for every single move I make,
laughing at me when I embarrass myself,
making me want to break into a million pieces
from fear,
from self-hatred,
from humiliation.

Depression follows me
Like a shadow
Taunting me with its strange appeal
Making me long for sadness

I try to escape it but when I do
It’s right around the next corner
I can’t run away from it no matter how I try
It’s everywhere at once

I might think I’ve outrun it
But it’s still there, lurking in the background
Looming over my every thought
Never leaving me alone

I often get exhausted
Tired of trying to outrun and outthink this entity
But I have to keep mustering up the strength
To try to outrun it

I’m in the world’s longest marathon
And it never ends
There are no rest stops for me
Nor is there a finish line

False happiness
Comes in an orange container
Little white pills
Much more powerful than they look

My mood has taken a 180
My anxiety and depression are nearly gone
I feel like a whole new person
But it’s not really me

My personality is fake
Some people get **** jobs
I’ve gotten a personality job
I don’t know how to feel about that

Society can’t accept who I am
Without my little white pills
So I have to hide my true self away
In order to fit in

Cottony numbness
Envelops my lightning-bolt thoughts
Soothes me, insulates me
I can barely think
But at least I'm not getting
Struck by lightning
On a regular basis
Anymore

Insecurity
plagues me;
makes me feel
like my poems
aren’t good enough.
I keep typing, but why?
I’m just making this poem worse
by continuing on with it.
I’m like the reverse version
of King Midas,
everything I touch,
everything I write,
everything I ever do,
turns to utter garbage.

My anxiety is
the beast within me
living in my brain
using its claws to manipulate my neurons

Its black, furry face
fills with a wide, Grinchy smile
as it causes me to avoid yet another opportunity
that could help me recover

When I start to feel calm and hopeful
It snarls, spittle flying from its mouth
and bares its sharp teeth
determined to make me fail again

I can’t **** this beast
It is me and I am it
So I have to keep it alive
Involuntarily

There was a woman
Who lived in a box
That got smaller and smaller
With each passing year

It was just her and her thoughts
Inside of the box
And as the box got smaller
Her thoughts got darker

She wanted to escape from the box
But her thoughts wouldn’t let her
They convinced her
That she was right where she was supposed to be

Eventually, she became claustrophobic
Her thoughts turned to suicide
But she couldn’t bear to hurt her parents
Who had always loved her

So she stayed a prisoner of the box
Going through the motions each day
Pretending she was okay
So her parents wouldn’t worry

She started to wonder
“What’s the point of my life?”
Yet that was a question
That had no answer

She tried to fill her time
With books, work, and iPod games
But nothing could drive
Her thoughts away

Sometimes it occurred to her
Just how lucky she was
But that thought just made her feel worse
As though she didn’t deserve what she had

She tried reaching out to others at times
Through the Internet
Yet her anger always caused her
To drive people away

The box has become a prison
And the woman doesn’t know how to escape
So she serves her sentence
Wondering what she did to deserve it

The carousel
Goes round and round
And I am trapped upon it
I yell and I scream
But no one can hear
I endlessly ride
Upon my horse
There's no way out
The speed increases
I whip around
Getting dizzy, nauseous
I'm under the control
Of this diabolical
Machine
And there's no way to
Stop it

My room is a prison
Solitary confinement
But I’m not guilty
Though my mind says I am
Sane and insane
The two sides of me
Constantly arguing
Insane usually wins
I don’t know why I can’t be sane
I’ve always been this way, really
Ever since I was young
Self-hatred is second nature to me
I don’t know what it’s like to love myself
I envy those who do

I cry
Alone in my room
Softly and silently

Who will ever want me
Even as a friend?
I push everyone away

Loneliness rips at me
A twisting, aching pain
Ever-present, with no relief

Social anxiety made me this way
I had no choice
I'm just hopelessly awkward for life

At work it's the most difficult
My coworkers ignore me
I feel even more like a freak

I need a way out
To escape the pain
Don't know how much longer I can hold on

Ativan envelops me in a warm hug
The only hug I've had in weeks
Everything feels better in its embrace

Lurking in the shadows is Addiction
Its presence making me feel nervous
Each time I take a dose

"Am I taking it too often?" I wonder.
Addiction always lies and tells me "No,"
its eyes gleaming with charm

So I take dose after dose
On an increasingly regular basis
And try my hardest to trust Addiction

The only alternative is
Letting my anxiety gain control
And wreak havoc over my life

There's something so enchanting
About a summer rain shower
It transports me back to
The days of joyful puddle-jumping
I'd put on my galoshes
And splish, splash, splosh
Giggling gleefully
As water went everywhere
Yes, there's something so enchanting
About a summer rain shower

I’m okay, you’re okay.
That’s the game we play
Pretending, day by day
To not let our demeanors betray
To tamper everything we say
When we daily play
This game of I’m okay, you’re okay.

Meanwhile, when we’re alone
We can feel free to bemoan
And groan (but not loudly)
Everything we haven’t shown
To each other but is known to us
But when we’re together, that’s verboten
It’s just “I’m okay, you’re okay.”

What is peace, really?
Is it an absence of war?
Is it a state in which everyone agrees on everything,
As though brainwashed?
Or is it just yet another impossible concept
Thought up by fallible human beings
In a quest to try to solve the world's problems?

Privilege is the American social caste system
But let’s just pretend the “American Dream” is
still alive and well, hmm?
Cis white men get all the opportunities
While all us minorities
Are stuck in the dregs of society
“Stop whining,” they say,
“pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”
I just wish that I could tell them to shut their big yaps.
I’m trying as hard as I can
Running a race I can’t win
While they line their pockets
With more and more green.
Then they vote in
the Oompa-Loompa in Chief
Who just gives us more grief
With his cronies and their hateful motifs
No matter how much we protest
Their privilege cannot be contested
They’re in power and we are not
And their power can only be bought
Anyone got a spare billion bucks?
I want to buy off these chucklefucks
We could start this country over, us minorities
And turn it into the real-life “land of the free.”
Who’s with me?