i am mentally ill.

i have been since i was born,
or at least, that’s what i’ve been told.
although perhaps
i never knew it, perhaps
the symptoms
were triggered by trauma, perhaps
it was something that never really seemed
like an illness to me until i knew
what was considered normal. but
i am mentally ill, or mentally disordered, or mentally whatever.

and i ******* hate it.

i hate it
because i cannot think logically most of the time.
i hate it
because whatever chemical imbalances
are inside of me
make me want to scream
and bleed
and punch the walls of my home
until there are more holes than stable ground. i hate it
because me having to speak in front of
my ******* friends is cause enough to
cry for three days, because
my friends don’t understand why
i am ecstatic
around them one day when sadness
crushes my skull the next, because
my friends don’t see logic in a matter of feeling
that doesn’t make sense to them let alone me.

i hate it because
i cannot give a logical reason for this.
i hate it because
i don’t understand why i am the way i am
or what i did to deserve this.
i hate it because
i don’t understand my illness,
i don’t understand how people can
just go out into the world and be happy,
i don’t understand what it’s like to
have something go wrong in life
and react in a way considered to be “healthy”.

i hate it
because my younger brother sits
in class and suffers from his own depression
but refuses to speak up
because he believes his depression
is absolutely nothing
compared to mine,
when to me
it is everything.
i hate it because
he might be cutting himself open
every night
or at least wanting to

and

i hate it because
when i texted all of my friends
as i sat sobbing on my front porch
at ten pm
on a school night
with a bottle of pills
nestled safely in my jacket pocket,
several of them thought it was a suicide note
but none of them cared enough to push further
in my answer of “i’m fine don’t worry about me goodnight”.
i hate it because
the only person who noticed it thoroughly enough
was my ex-boyfriend,
who i scared half to death
when i told him “i’m sorry”
and “i loved you a lot before we broke up”
and “you’ll understand”
and he replied with “oh my god
please don’t
please don’t
please don’t”.

i hate it because
i ignored him.
i hate it because
i wanted out.

i hate it because
the sky fell through the earth’s floor
like shattered glass and the blood-orange
sunset bled towards the grass; i hate it because
i lay softly on the earth of my front yard
and allowed the blades of grass to soothe me
towards the afterlife; i hate it because
the world spun and spun and spun and
my vision blurred and
my heart threatened to beat so far out of my chest
and i could not stop my breathing
but i kept on taking more pills like a child eating candy.

i hate it because
when i realised i wasn’t dead,
i cried.
i hate it because
i had thirty two new notifications
from my ex and the people he had contacted
to see if i was dead
but most of them were from him,
all missed calls and texts and
heavy breathing on the other side of the phone
once he saw me calling. i hate it because
his hands were shaking
and i was talking
and sobbing
with an ex love
on my front porch as the sun and moon switched places
with half a bottle of pills in my system
and the taste of blood in my mouth
instead of talking to my friends
and family
and people
who were supposed to care about me.

i hate it because
the next day i had a pulsing headache
and a suicidal mindset
and all of my friends were cracking jokes
about how they believed i was going to **** myself
when they had no idea
how hard i’d been attempting to do so.
i hate it because
i smiled and lied through gritted teeth
and cried in the bathrooms
when a teacher pulled me aside to say -
he thought something was
“off” with me. i hate it because
i still wanted to die.

i hate it because
i can’t think straight most days.
i hate it because
sometimes everything is okay
and fine
and i can breathe without the alien invasion of
“panic attacks from the planet post-traumatic stress disorder”
and cinnamon doesn’t trigger memories
i would like to forget.
i hate it because
people don’t take mental health seriously
enough to understand why
i leave classrooms in the middle of the day
or why some kids miss school for
two weeks without explanation or why sometimes teachers
with dead eyes are more dead inside
than the human skeletons dancing in the science classrooms.
i hate it because
teenagers make suicide jokes
near people who are dying.
i hate it because
i don’t know if i got out of bed
last tuesday or how long it’s been since i last showered
or if i still love writing as much as
i used to
or if it’s just habit now.

i hate it
because my illness makes me hate myself.

i hate it because
my illness
does not define me
but it sure feels like it does.
i hate it because i cannot explain my illness myself.
i hate it because i hate my illness
and every part of it that creates me, shapes me, moves me
like a ******* puppet.

but ******* it all
if i am going to let it ****** who
i am supposed to be any longer.

(i miss you so much, i wonder where you are.)

i miss you the way someone misses a step on the stairway, a sharp jolt of realization, followed by a falling and crash.
i miss you the way birds miss winter, when they migrate to a perpetual spring.
i miss you like hot fudge sundaes in summer, sugar and sweet and all gone.

(i miss you so much, i wonder if you're happy)

i miss you like a favorite library book that has to be returned.
i miss you like a forgotten holiday.
i miss you like a lost love letter that never got sent.

(i miss you so much, i wonder what you're doing)

i miss the way your strong callused hands would wrap around mine, giving me strength. i miss your forest eyes. i miss the smell of aftershave clinging to my clothes. I miss the smell of us clinging to my sheets. i miss the way i once  kissed you gently, but you grabbed my face, hey, and made me kiss you more thoroughly, that's more like it, with a smug look on your face. i miss the feeling of your hands on my waist while you held me as if i was a tiny doll to your large frame. i miss the intimacy of our faces pressed close together and you tasting my smile as you touched my lips to yours. i miss your **** smirk. i miss your tattoos and tracing the indent of your spine as you let me explore you closer. i miss taking pictures with my old ipod and you'd kiss me with your eyes open and i would open mine and all the sensations that came with being around you.

and all of this is a stupid run on sentence and i am a stupid pining fool and you're somewhere, but i've been nowhere
ever since i started
missing
you.

Beware of them
As a lover or a friend
As a family or a foe
As a passerby or a neighbor

Because they hide as they stand on the stage
They put you on a mind-boggling maze
They set you on an endless chase
With no one else but with your own tail

Because they shout in silence
They scream using pen
Using only pseudonyms
They want you to both understand and not understand what they mean

Because they conceal as they express
Behind figure of speeches
They'll have you take a guess
When you do, you're already checkmate in chess

Beware of them
Because they are contrasting beings
Living in a world of what-ifs
Living between reality and dreams

Dreams for family, rage for a foe
Feelings for lovers, concern for a friend
Observation in a passerby, rumors from a neighbor
They turn it into words, rhyming at the end

Because they are but they are not
Because they do but they don't
Because they are cowards but they have guts
Because they will but they won't

Because they are two-faced people
Because they are at different places at the same time
Because they push and they pull
Because they have truths and they have lies

Oh beware of them
Because they're simply complicated
Because they're famous yet anonymous
Because they'll always have you choose

all i ever do is ache. there are places where the color in my cheek blotches and it is in those spots that resides a quiet desperate yearning for the touch of your lips--

tears leave just as many wayward streaks as dripping paint on canvas, only i'm not art.

how can I miss the hands that I never even got to hold?
i'm pretty sure palm readers know more intimacies than any soul on earth. i have yet to discern a single line of yours. or our lines. where do we begin? lines are infinite but existence is but a piece. does that make our love a line fragment? or are we more substantial than that?

how do i miss old places that i've never been to? i can't remember if color value was the same as valuing us. One can only make shapes when there is light and shadow but i'm not sure how to shade us from impending erasure on this page. how can i reminisce about the touch of your skin when all I got was a brief glance off your arm? i swear it made a mark on me but i never once could find it. my bruises still linger though. darling, is it possible to love without letting go?

these are the things that consume me.

I thought it was cliché, when people talk about love
How "the moon shines brighter when you smile"
And "I see heaven in your eyes"
How thousands of songs were written
In the name of love

Then you came around
And I realized how everything was true
I saw the moon, shining in your smile
My heaven, is in the way you look at me
And thousands of stars collided in my bones
The moment you said I love you

I would spend eternity
Thinking about your hands
The way they touch
And your lips
The way you whisper
And I would die, over and over
If I would to die, in your arms

Love is not like the movies
It’s not like books, or songs
It’s not like anything I've heard
Or seen
It crashes sometimes, it hurts mostly
But it will always be worth it
Because love, is the way you bite your lips
It’s the way you hold your steering wheel
It’s the way you kiss my hand
Love is you.

everyone i've written about
has left me.
so you must understand
why i will not immortalize you
with my words,
why i won't turn you
into a poem.

maybe this way
you'll stay.