Dear crippling sadness that makes it so tragically difficult to get out of bed in the morning, You’ve been the imaginary friend i just can’t seem to outgrow the people who use to stare at me and get paid to tell me “oh that’s normal you’ll be okay that man will never find you again….you were after all only five” they told me that i had to take this tiny white happy pill because you….you are the chemical imbalance i suffer from daily. Instead of taking a prescription or therapy i take my thoughts bundle them up like a bouquet and pray to a god i can’t seem to believe in that today i’ll be okay. Dear monster that lives inside my brain that i can only see, when will enough be enough? The people who matter most to me are starting to realize i’m a project that can never be finished…..but was i really even started to begin with? You are that failing grade that is sinking my ship that use to be heading for graduation. Dear Depression, you see you and i play so well together, you say jump i ask how high. You teach me that this low i feel can get lower and deeper until i’m six feet deep with a tombstone to decorate how my life has been lived. Everyone will wear black, but my life was so colorful it does not need to be represented by the ugliness of you but merely how creatively i lived. While others were super outgoing and ready for the day i liked to play a little game of “drink some coffee and remember that today is just another play im starring in”. Others were talking about how dances and parties were coming up i learned to play “dressup” i could dress up a wound, i could dress up my look so you would not leak through the bandages of an already forgotten night. Dear ‘I want to care but it’s not in me today to even care to try’, Having anxiety and depression is like not caring about anything but caring way too much about everything, to the point i get a new assignment and start crying. Depression, the summer before my ninth grade year you taught me the trick of how to disappear, coffee in the morning, salad at dinner there was no room in my stomach to eat more than that. My therapist stared at me and told me our little friend ana was on her way to take over me completely and out the door into the coffin i would go. They said my body will cave in on itself as if my ribs were too fragile to carry this weight i had left on me. So it began to eat away the bad. I’d lay in bed at night and the gnawing feeling at the pit of my stomach was each award i was given for every rib they could see. Dear mom and dad, You told me to just be happy. So that day i took all of my antidepressants i was just doing what you told me to do. Who knew it’d be labeled under an overdose.