You… you’ve got a lot going for you
You’re famous, you’re smart, and you’re powerful
but you are ugly.
You think we can’t see the evil under that gaudy, outdated sweater
but we can.
You think that fancy perfume you wear hides the scent of terror
but it doesn’t.
You think the makeup you put on daily covers the pure pain written on your face
but you are dead wrong
bipolar, you are hideous.
Sometimes, though, that’s easy to forget
when it feels like I can do anything
the world is my oyster. When I feel that ungodly fake happiness
that masquerades as wellness, when I’m with you
and I don’t want to leave.
That’s when you have me. Then you take the opportunity
to torment me.
The façade is gone, and it all comes rolling through the gates.
You scream a thousand voices into my head
you bind my body and I can feel your merciless crushing grasp
you convince me that everything is good, it’s not bad,
it’s bad, it’s not good,
this is good, that is bad, I need to say it over and over and over again
you take over, and I don’t stand a chance.
My peace of mind is gone, and my humanity is soon to follow
How did I let this happen to me? I’ll never know
but I’ve learned this:
You do take no for an answer
and I have a lot more control than I thought.
If I ask you to stay away, you’ll ask me why, and I’ll tell you
because I want to be better
and as long as I let you anywhere near me, I will always
be stuck here
on this nightmare of a rollercoaster.
So you accept that, thank God
thank you, bipolar, for setting me free,
at least once in a while.
I feel less alone without you because
I can love more fully, for longer, forever.
I can accept my imperfections rather
than suffer in the desire to be rid of them. to be rid of you.
I can be still and know
that it is ok.
I’m ok, you’re ok. and I intermittently have my **** together.
I’m sorry things are not working out between you and me,
bipolar disorder.
but I’m not sorry that without you,
my life is ******* beautiful.

Welcome to my prison cell.
Here there is only darkness. It is cold, it is harsh, it is my everything. I am alone here, because no one else holds themselves captive the way I do, no one else is held by their own shackles in the depths of their own loneliness, no one else has committed a crime so terrible that they deserve to go to this prison, it’s just me. Alone. All the time.
The bars are not made of the rusty metal that most are made of, no, the bars are people. They are the friends who have told me to stick around, the family who have told me to hang in there, the therapists who have told me to have a little faith. They are God and Christ. They are the hundreds of people I have yet to meet, have yet to save from the fate I am facing, have yet to pour my love to. The love I refuse to give myself, let myself taste just one time. They hold me back, despite how hard I grab them and shake them, they are unbreakable.
On the other side of the humanoid bars there is a light, a warmth. There is a never-ending summer in heaven that promises to free me from my chains should I break free from the cell, should I make that choice. Freedom. That is all I crave, all I need. It is all on the other side, right in front of me, beckoning.
But I know that I am stuck in the cell.
Every ******* day the warden comes to me and gives me these pills to make it a little warmer and brighter, you see this chemical reaction has gone awry, too much of this, not enough of that, too much manipulation, not enough love, too much heartbreak, not enough hope. The antidepressants burst on the scene like superheroes but these are not their kind of bad guys, this is not about the glitches in the wiring of my brain, this is about the demons that live in my soul, deeper than the blood that runs through my veins, carrying these peacemakers in vain to the neurons that are still at war.
My cell is decorated with the ugliest ******* wallpaper I have ever seen. Sometimes I get to tear it off, piece by piece. Sometimes it comes off in chunks and I make the greatest self-discoveries I could never have imagined. Sometimes it comes off in little shreds and leaves behind a chunky adhesive and I have gotten nowhere, I am stuck again.
I remember the time I almost broke free. When I fell from the ropes I had ******* in my little dorm room and I heard a knock at my door. I failed. Just like I fail at everything else, I failed to die. But I remember the beauty of that moment, when I sat next to my friend and all he could do was smile. In that moment, he was not just another bar holding me in my prison, he was a single window on the wall through which I could see everything that was good and true and beautiful. The reminder that I was not an undeserved burden to the world, but that the world wants me, and I need to want it back.
Every day, I am faced with a choice between two muses. One of them invites me to live another day, it tells me that there is something worth living for- another sunset, another chai tea, another hug from someone who saw that I really needed one. It opens its arms and opens the doors to the rest of my life and the dreams that lie beyond the threshold. The other hands me the key to my cell so I can unlock it anytime and run into the light that is not of this world. But I put it down. I choose life. I make a home in this cell and one day, I hope it becomes something beautiful.

My friends, old and new, dear and distant, I just want to say one thing to you today, and that is that I’m sorry.
I’m sorry for all the times I scared the ever-living **** out of you by dancing on ice or sitting on the edge of a cliff. Without you there to hold me up, I know I would have fallen. But when I took your hand, I could feel it shaking, your whole body tense, your face full of fear, and it was all because of me. I should have thought things through, I should have listened to you, but I couldn’t hear your warnings in the cacophony of my disaster. I apologize for the fear I instilled in you.
I’m sorry for all the times I broke your heart by speaking of death with such longing in my voice, as if I loved the idea of leaving more than I loved you. I wish I had not been so absorbed in my own darkness that I could not see your light. I wish I had realized sooner that I had to put up a fight. I wish I had taken up your offers to call you in the middle of the night, but I stayed silent. I married you all the moment we met, and yet I was lured into this scandalous affair with sadness. She wasn’t even that attractive, but she took me away from you, and I apologize for the heartbreak I caused.
I’m sorry for all the times I tried to thank you but utterly failed. How do you thank someone for keeping you alive? For holding you when you cry? For having faith when yours has run dry? You can’t. You just hope that your friends are getting something out of all of this and maybe it will be enough and maybe it won’t but by the way you all love me the way I never deserved it, it looks like it’s good enough for you. I just wish you knew that you are miracles to me. I apologize for the weakness of my gratitude.
I’m sorry for all the times when I broke, no, shattered, and you had to pick up the pieces.
I’m sorry for all the times I ****** thousand-pound weights into your arms without prior notice.
I’m sorry for apologizing.
But I have to, because depression never did.

Tuesdays are the worst.
I ******* hate Tuesdays.
Tuesdays make me want to demolish a building with my bare hands,
see, on Tuesday, I walked around with my bare feet.
I do that to feel better, but only when I feel like nothing will ever be good again.
I've been running towards recovery all summer, but I have fallen down on the Yellow Brick Road. The other me broke free from its cage, turned around, and started running towards the ruins.
When you collapse to the floor of your one-room apartment, and don't give a **** that screaming intermittently is socially unacceptable, and it feels like you are on a roller coaster that just won't stop, all the life force leaves your body, all the hope leaves your heart.
That's the one time you look at yourself and understand why they all see you as less than human.
A mess, a freak, irredeemable.
It's the reason why you haven't felt the warmth of another person's body in weeks. You've been keeping yourself sane with a checklist of expectations to meet. A calendar with no blank spaces. A radio that never turns off.
So when I walked around on Tuesday evening, unable to hold back all the tears, I left my flip-flops at home.
I came back to my roots and felt the grass between my toes. Let the concrete absorb the sadness, and I didn't feel so sick anymore. The earth reminds me that I belong here, and that even when I hit rock bottom again, at least I'll be walking on solid ground.

Make room.
Make room for the kids who seek your shelter, those who have nowhere to go but upwards, the kids whose voices were silenced by the words spoken from the godforsaken altar.
Make room, and do not let the men with tall hats and cross necklaces tell you you can't because they are not God, and quite frankly they look ridiculous.
Make room in the pews and lift your hands to the sky, lift the names of the kids who know your struggle. They do not need your apologies or your so called remedies, they need something so simple it is contained in four letters, love.
Don't say I'll pray for you unless it's a prayer for mercy. Because here under this steeple there is anything but. Acceptance and tolerance are overrated as ****, love is the cat's meow now.
Make room because this religion is ******* claustrophobic. Make room in your heart for the rain and room on your skin for the rainbow. Wear your colors with so much pride it hurts because God makes no mistakes he only makes miracles.
Make room because when you do, you will be remembered not for your rebellion but for your true religion. You honor the spiritual connection, you are not quite perfection but ****** when you look into their eyes and tell them you are loved, you get **** close.

I am overwhelmed by the beauty of your spirit,
your voice,
your emotion.
When I hear you sing as though no one else is around, I need
to catch my breath.
When your hands touch the keys of your little electric piano, I feel
more emotion than I thought was possible.
You are so beautiful
so close
yet so far away.
I know, that's cliche,
but how can I come up with the right words when my mind is
full of nonsense.
Because I am overwhelmed
by you.

The first time we met, I was a ******* wreck. I wore lounge pants, a tie-dye shirt, and an old hoodie. I might have had tears in my eyes because I was so **** tired of carrying the weight of the world in every part of my being and letting it control me. That is why I came to you- so that you could be my sort of savior, you could lighten my load with the wisdom of your words, the strength of your soul, the kindness of your heart. You wore a pink shirt, and I thought you looked a bit fierce. But the moment your voice carried your name to my ears, I could feel the gentleness that hid beneath the surface.
That was the beginning of the hurricane that is my unending love for you.
For you this would be a learning experience, the practicum needed to get those three prestigious letters after your name. For me, this would be my only hope of recovery, a life-raft thrown into the dark and murky waters that were drowning me. I put all my faith in you, and for that I was foolish, but what else can you do when it feels like the rest of the world has turned its back on you, and yet here in this little office, I had your full attention. Daily, your thoughtful green eyes would fix upon me, though I had the hardest time meeting them with mine. I’m awkward like that, I told you once.
There were a few things that you would say time and time again…
“I appreciate that honesty.”
“I’m worried about you.”
and of course the cliché, “how does that make you feel?”
But there was another word, a mysterious one that you always said. “Beautiful”. To you, everything was beautiful. I told you my views about divinity and you said “that’s a beautiful way to look at it.” I wrote three pages worth of final words to you and you said “that’s a beautiful letter.” I asked you what you thought about me and you said “you have a beautiful soul.”
Every Friday at three o’clock, I could tell you without a doubt that our souls did a little dance together.
When I was with you, I could not help smiling. I would talk about the most painful things of my life, and my voice would rasp and break. But on my face there was always this smile as if you had cast a spell on me. You wanted me to show some emotion, but for you, I had built a wall. Like everyone else in my life, I had to protect you from myself.
The last time we had our little soul-dance was the first time you saw me cry. It was right after you confirmed to me that that was indeed the last time. It was right before I lost my mind and almost lost everything else. it was when I asked you for your hand, despite the red tape that forbade such a request to be granted. It was when the air in the room was thicker than bricks with pain and regret and above all, loss. It was a moment I wanted so badly to end, but one of many moments with you that I will remember forever.
The whole ten weeks I fell as hard as a meteor for you. The whole ten weeks, I was in the most ridiculous denial. As soon as I was able to say to myself, “****, I love him,” my life was never the same.
I have never been so in love with someone as I am with you. But I have never been so angry with someone as I am with you. I think about it now, and I realize; we went on a journey for months- an emotional, difficult, and intimate journey. And now I feel like I have come to the end of our path and the only thing I have left is a broken heart. The whole time, you were getting too close. You and your ******* beautiful green eyes- oh and that word. Beautiful. I wonder why you said that to me so much. Were you trying to tell me something? Was it a slip of the mind? You told me once that you struggled with the boundaries. When I asked you why we were terminating you did one of those “and… yeah” things. The whole time, you kept talking about our relationship, but was it really the therapeutic alliance you were referring to? You twisted me through your fingers like play-dough and now I am here, a *** of a bunch of colors that don’t go together and it’s all because of you. How can I blame myself for this?
In the research, they call it “****** transference”. But is it fair to say that? Should we really just boil it all down to a science and just brush it off as a technicality? No. It’s not that simple, but it’s not that complex either- you have my heart, it is in pieces, and it will be that way for the rest of my life.

She is not your ordinary girl, eighteen years and seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. She’ll be flipping her rose-colored hair with every laugh and smile you give her. Every moment that makes the world what it is, she’ll be a co-creator.
There is nothing richer than the happiness she feels when you come to her. Nothing more sincere than her pride in you for reaching to her. Unlike the rest, she expects nothing, and sees the beauty in everything, no matter how small.
She’ll be with you when the walls fall down. The room is fragile, and when it starts to crumble, people run. It’s empty, as it should be. You can’t leave. She chooses not to. She stands there and holds you when the roof caves in. She keeps you warm when there’s nothing left.
She’s not here to rebuild anything, nor prevent the next catastrophe. She doesn’t move from beside you, despite everything inside you, she is your angel, with invisible wings and a halo of flowers.

We live in an ocean of agonizing existence
Some have found a boat and would take it for refuge, who wants to get one’s feet wet when emotion is too deep and cold? Some can manage the treading, their hearts light enough to float, and hands free to take in the water and the air at once. But yet there are some in the waters less calm, where the breeze turns to raspy tempest and the dance of the waves is no waltz. They sink constantly lower into an ocean as bottomless as their heart within, where nothing can touch the surface.
what hurts more than a heart that cannot feel? When the floaters and sailors take of you and your joys and tragedies and you cannot even tell them it hurts because you understand emotion too much to fall in love with it again. I was in love with a world that had lost all sight of me.
and so I ran.
For in the rush of a run in its humble exhilaration, there is new life.
When the ice in the air in the winter in the lungs is melted and evaporates. When the muscle in the leg in the body of the you is commanded, is tight, but defies and works and relaxes.
You have nowhere to go but you are going. and it is miraculous wonderful.
And stop. I spotted a playground, deserted for the frost had taken it captive, and a swing invited me in. I looked around… and the world stopped.
Silence. White cold and precious silence and nobody there to break it. Beauty. The one true, undeniable beauty of nature and serenity and life.
Now that was the moment.
I realized that there would be an infinity of these moments of wholeness and totality of love that would fall into my life and I will be a fool to give it up.
And I felt again.
The first emotion to come back to me was revelry.
It was dark at the bottom of the ocean and night’s about to fall on the surface as well but I cannot grasp the prospect of anyone ever being ****** down by that whirlpool again.
So I ask you my darling if you would get off your boat and take someone’s hand and squeeze it like you squeeze the sour sting from a lemon. And there will be sweetness. There will be a waltz, there will be windows in the sky and we will make an island of humanity. I don’t know what crazy song is singing to me now but there is hope that it will be righteous.
And for the first time, I can feel it.