“did you wish you
would have successfully
committed suicide?”

you can’t ask me that
because it is one
hell of a loaded question
and i’ll spend all this time
agonizing over what answer
will make you worry the least
because and ****** anyhow
i just don’t know

it’s just one thing in
a long laundry list of
maybe’s that i took
from therapist to therapist
and psych ward to psych ward
trying to find a definitive answer
on why i was depressed
why i was afraid to sleep at night
why i couldn’t just be happy
why i wanted to die
just why why why

and i don’t know
because my whole life
felt like preparations in order
to die younger than i should have
but that stubborn cursor just
kept on blinking away
saying that my story wasn’t over

but the thing is
that depression has no face
because there were good days
where i wasn’t miserable
but then the nights were hell
and i could never cut deep enough
to find the infection
that made me this way

because even now
almost 20 and terrified
over a life that still
sometimes feels like it should
have ended four years ago
i am still depressed

under the genuine smiling
and laughing where i don’t care
if my crooked teeth show
my mental illness is still there

and i am riddled
with anxiety
and guilt
and regret
though i still cannot
say for certain if that guilt
extends to the fact that i
failed to take my own life
because i just do not know

it’s a long list of maybes
more than the scars littering
my left arm
or the days that i spent
bruising my wrist on
any sharp corner i could
because i can’t say “yes”
and i can’t say “no”
without it feeling like a lie

“did you wish you
would have successfully
committed suicide?”
i don’t know
yes
no
maybe
maybe
maybe

i was a ******
12 or 13 year old lesbian
coming out to my friends at lunch
almost choking on my juice
when they said that they already knew
and their immediate acceptance made
me so relieved that i forgot
to chastise them for not
having told me sooner

and i loved my
first girlfriend
like how just seeing her would
let loose a stream of butterflies
into my stomach and i adored every
single one of them

and i loved my
girlfriend even when our
first kiss made the inside of
my bottom lip bleed
but she held my hand
and that made everything alright

but i was a
****** teenage lesbian
because i still felt things
for boys

boys taller than me
and the same height
with their blue
and brown and green eyes
and short hair that i wanted
both on my head
and on my face

and and and i
didn’t know if i wanted
to be with the boys
or be the boys

but my girlfriend with
her soft hands and softer lips
imploring me to crawl into
bed with her on those
early mornings when we
were both a little less than half awake
even she couldn’t make that ache
of wrongness go away

and i was a
****** and angry and
even more confused than before
teenage lesbian girl
but i was just so bad at it
because the part of me
that rationalized i must have been
a queer woman
got so much smaller
that i felt like an imposter
in my own ****** identity

and and and i
longed to be a boy
with a strong jawline
and hair on my face
and a flat chest
and and and i
just didn’t want to be me anymore
because the real me
he wasn’t a girl

and and and the
real me that he
inside of me
for so many years
is able to love boys and girls
and not feel guilty for it
because love is love is love
and i am still alive
to enjoy it

get through the day
just one day at a time
and if that seems like too much
too all at once
all loud and in your face
go by seconds
and then minutes
and then hours
make the in and out of
air in your lungs
a manageable thing

but there is no
clear map when it comes
to survival
because that looks different
for everybody
and a numbered list
could fill all the blank pages
but won’t you think of the trees

and when my depression
grabbed me by the throat
my feet left the ground
as the blueprints left my hands
the plan that i had planned
all neat and laid out
but an addled mind does not
care about that
because it is too busy screaming
and smacking itself against the floor

and sometimes survival looks
like staying up until it is
almost morning again
so you can rock back and forth
in a nest of your blankets
soaked in tears and sweat
sobbing till the line between
heaving breaths and puking
becomes more than blurred
because how do you tell
your family and friends
that you want to die
because it all hurts so much

and sometimes survival looks
like eyes sunken and glazed
shaking hands around a mug
of tea or coffee
with alcohol optional
but not much can mask the
acidic taste of panic
that comes with your heart
continuing to hammer against
your ribs

and sometimes survival
is all smiles
and laughing until you cry
and sloppy kisses
and laying in the middle of a road
on a dead end street with
the person you love most
and your hands are almost
touching and they are so
beautiful and you are alive
and it feels so good
and you are alive
and you are alive
and you are alive
and you are past the survival
and you are LIVING

----
1. no beauty

was it beautiful?
like sitting at a desk
riddled with indents from
keeping the scissors away from skin
rocking back and forth
with only one thing circling
through an addled mind
the overwhelming urge to die
feeling ready to write that final
chapter on a life barely lived

was it beautiful?
forty pills that seemed like
enough at the time
choked down with soda water
and so many built up tears
feeling the rot of depression
absorbing the medicine that was
supposed to make things better
*******

was it beautiful?
regretting waking up hours later
younger sibling in the next room
noticing the stumble
the swearing that came from
feeling organs clench and shatter
but nothing coming up

was it beautiful?
admitting to taking so many pills
tongue feeling shredded by the words
being asked to stay awake
but only feeling so much anger
at having failed
at waking up again
at still being alive

was it beautiful?
three psych wards
every time a voluntary check in
unable to stay safe
healing scars
bashing limbs against every hard surface
ripping open old wounds
both inside and out
there is nothing beautiful
in self destruction

2. no romance

was it romantic?
hospital beds and an iv
in the back of a shaking hand
monitored bathroom breaks
too many to count while a body
too young to feel so old
purged itself of so many toxins

was it romantic?
fingernails chewed down to nothing
ragged cuticles
raw and ****** knuckles
because those hurt just a little bit less
than constantly pulling open
scabbed over splits in
gnawed on lips

was it romantic?
looking for love to give to others
not leaving enough behind to keep
not caring about that
too busy wanting to go home
please fix this
make the hurt go away
make everything shiny and new again

was it romantic?
unable to find respite
from the mental onslaught
in the unmarred arms of another
because illness and depression
do not care about
kissing scars to heal them
or boxes of chocolate
or roses
or whispered “i love you”s
because life is not a
teen romance novel

was it romantic?
wanting to die
even while sitting next to
that person that made things
not hurt so bad
and feeling guilty about fresh cuts
fresh bruises
burn marks that could be explained
away as accidents

was it romantic?
mass media certainly seems to think so
here’s looking at you
john green and jay asher
because why should people have
struggles if they can’t be candy-coated
and wrapped up in neat little bows
with complementary
packets of tissues on the side

was it romantic?
smelling of blood
and sweat from so many nightmares and terrors
trembling and shaking
racked by guilt and anxiety
waiting for an ulcer
waiting for something to happen
to make it seem worthwhile
because in mental illness and trauma
there is no prince
no princess
no damsel in distress
no disney movie happy ending
there is no romance
in wanting
to constantly die

dear mustache,
i used to hate you
because of how dark and prominent
you were against the almost pallor
of my skin

people would
make fun of me for you
in middle school especially
but kids are mean
and i stood out in more
ways than my mustache
that would have been more fitting
on a prepubescent teenage boy
than an angry lesbian

i was
shamed into waxing you away
which hurt so much the first time
that i almost cried
but what hurt more than the hot wax
was my father
whose genes gifted me with
darker and coarser hair
always encouraging me to
bleach you away into an acceptable
shade of invisible

and then
when a switch was thrown
inside my body that had
been crying out from the still
tender age of seven that my being
called a girl was
wrong wrong wrong

you were
there still having always
come back after the wax and bleach

but that
fine line of hairs above
my upper lip
you made me feel more masculine
you made me hate myself less

you make me feel more masculine
you make me hate myself less

that was gonna be me
ya know?
well it almost was
but sometimes
i feel like it really should have been
if only i had tried hard enough

but wouldn’t you know
trazodone is actually really
hard to overdose on
so it seems safe to conclude
that when the paramedic told me
i was lucky i had woken up
he was lying

the bottom line is though
that i thought i was ready
to be that person who so
many others knew
went to school with
grew up with
but then they all would have
continued to age
while i became part of the earth again

and while i was certainly
gone for those few hours
before i woke up
soaked in sweat
tangled in my sheets and
the realization that i had failed
my heart was still beating
and when i was pulled under again
fear gripped me tighter than
my depression and
suicidal urges ever did

because i didn’t want to die
i was only sixteen years old
my sister was in the room
right next to mine
and i wondered what that would
have done to her
if she had found me
and that makes me hate myself
just that much more

but failing that
being an almost statistic
waking up
and voluntarily being admitted
into the psychiatric ward
it made me a survivor
it meant that i wanted to live
and i do
i really do

but there are so many
other scars besides the one
on my skin and possibly some
internal organs
that run like deep grooves
inside of my psyche
and i sometimes wonder
why people that want to die
that do **** themselves
are treated like they did not
want to live
when they wanted to live
the most of all

why does wanting to
have the pain stop
make them bad people?

“to love another
you must first love yourself
fore if you do not love yourself
you can not truly love
anyone else”
what a bunch of crap

the list of things
that i hate about myself
it is far bigger than the things
that i like about myself

i hate my hands
with the chewed-down fingernails
and the chronic tremors from anxiety
and so many different cocktails of medication
that has grown too big to
swallow dry anymore

i hate my mental illness
the auditory and visual hallucinations
that used to plague me constantly
and the depression
the anxiety
the insomnia
the ****** PTSD

i hate that i cut myself
for six years
and the urges still overwhelm
me more than is probably healthy

sometimes i hate that i failed
when trying to **** myself
four years ago

i am a freak in every
sense of the word
but that doesn’t bother me as much
as it used to
because all of my heroes are freaks too
and i still have so much love to give

because i grew up hating myself
raised between two abusive households
where it was made obvious that i
was not wanted by either parent
so i took that love that i was unable
to feel for myself and threw
it out into the world
for those that needed it more than me

i have so much love to give
because that is a terrible thing
to let go to waste
and i have more than enough
to go around

and i hate myself more days
than i love myself
but by giving that gift to others
before myself i think
and i know
that i am slowly learning how to
love myself again
and forgetting what it has felt like
to hate myself since i was
seven years old

so don’t you dare tell me
that i can’t love others until
i love myself
because that isn’t enough of
a reason to keep moving forward
and loving others first is how i
pick up the jagged edges
and smooth them down into something
that is soft once again