now i wake up at five a.m. insuring i've sufficient time to paint my face on kind enough
my hands smell like coffee i taste blood from blisters breaking down and around my smallest joints
(in control stay in control i have to stay in control)
smile until my face aches in a kind of competitive way because my pain will bring no gain if i can't seem nicer than the next girl
(i keep saying that i'm dead inside but the irony of the joke is that i'm actually too alive to want these thoughts)
and i'm sure if i told anyone that anxiety keeps me wide awake and depression keeps me asleep they just might not believe it
(i don't think it sounds reasonable to say i've got a physical and chronic pain in my head from the pressure of my darkest most brutal thoughts)
when i was thirteen i told myself never ever to use my mental illness as an excuse
so i plunged forward through depression deserts anxiety avalanches forests of fear tired old towns migraine mountains warped wastelands and suicide swamps
and just last week i realized my downfall in not letting my pain tell me when to slow down
when what i would not allow to be my excuse became my disability.