I'm older now

You told me you loved me tonight


I cried

I'm older now
I held him and kissed him goodnight

I'm older now
I went to a restaurant and my mother handed me a glass of wine

I'm older now
Kept quiet in the face of violence

I'm older now
Helped make breakfast

I'm older now
I'm the age they thought appropriate for me to love fiercely

The age they thought okay for you to want me

The age we always talked about like some distant memory

The one we used in all our arguments
All our reasons

Now

I am here

And I don't know what to do with it.

Almost scared to want it

Almost.

I loved all my presents
But they weren't what I really wanted
Despite asking for them

What I want
I am scared to want
What I wanted
Once,





Was you.

I am depressed again.

I'm not mad at myself for it.

I realized because things that don't usually bother me
Are starting to eat away at me like invisible cancer
That doesn't show up on the scans
But I can feel it in my chest
An illness only I can see

I am diseased
Mentally

My brain has been infected with bugs lately
Everyone of them attempting to convince me I am not worth the work or the money or the hurt
That maybe none of this matters
That maybe I miss them

That maybe
It still makes me sad
To wonder about.  

I started staying up late again
Feeling sad and alone into the early hours of the morning

Depression is so frustrating because everyone around you has no idea what's happening so you just stand there talking nonsense trying not to let them peek but some part of you wants them to understand so badly

But how could they?
After all

Depression lusts after lonely
Depression sweeps isolation up in his arms and twirls her
Romantically
Depression loves that I love how I write when he's here
Depression doesn't have a name
But when he visits me I am split between angry and nostalgia

Because I know sad
Well
It is familiar
It is like family
It visits me
And I cannot decide how long it will stay
But I can brave conversations

I cannot run away.

Some girls get personally offended that I don't wear thongs to hip-hop class
Girls
girls
Girlworld

I live in a small town with even smaller minded people
Where the women never blossom into swans
Just fairly racist chickens
And the men stick around long enough to wean their boys on alcohol and guns and then they leave with the son's respect for women
And their daughters hope for men

I want to paint my room
Yellow, or gray, or blue
Anything but this purple
I want to paint over the galaxy I wrote for you

I wear boxer shorts to bed
They're stolen from the first time I laid my hand on a woman
The first time I tasted alcohol
She was wearing them when I tasted her
I took them to remind myself
These things actually happen
That I am allowed to feel
That my wild side need not be confined

When I was young I fought so hard to be living
At least, I thought I did
But I didn't really
It's impossible to fight smoke
Or cigar ash
Or shoelaces
Or the rainbow liquid dripping out of the bottom of the blue suburban

The truth is
And has always been
I'm not sure of what I am supposed to be fighting
Is it the girls?
The money?
The standards?
The lonely?
There is only one thing I will ever be sure of about life

And that is that now,

I enjoy it.

I watched a movie
That comedically displayed
Suicide
And *******
Did I try to be offended
The whole time
But I feel like
For me at least
When you've been suicidal before
And you watch a movie
Like that
And everyone laughs
You learn to laugh along too.

And maybe
Some people
Could take offense
But that movie is a masterpiece

I learned somewhere along the way
(Maybe when I lost all faith in humanity)
That some things
You just gotta laugh at

The kids who make the most jokes about suicide and depression
Have often lived it
Dark humor
Is more or less,
Earned

And I think I've payed my dues.