When I was a sophomore I was convinced I had ADD
I would sit in Biology and burn holes in the teachers head with my focusing eyes
But inevitably my mind shifted like a car put in neutral
And rolled away
And when I noticed I always tried to shift back but I became so focused on putting my mind back into gear that I always missed what the teacher was trying to tell me
I took these concerns to my doctor who sent me to the woman with the magnifying glass to peer into my brain and discover why it wasn't functioning properly
To give me the right kind of medicine
But She didn't show me the broken gear shift of a person whose mind flits from thought to flower like a butterfly
Instead she showed me the lead jacket that is my depression
The jacket wasn't heavy enough to lift off with a mechanical crane of antidepressants
So this woman promised to teach me to take it off in my own
But my jacket was strong like bungee cords,
And when I thought I took off my jacket
It snapped back to me, pulling itself on my shoulders
And tightening itself on my ribs until it hurt to breathe
And people tried to help me take it off but I was so angry
So irrationally angry because the jackets on their shoulders were more like windbreakers, they were there but they didn’t really seem to affect anything
And  I wouldn't let myself take off the jacket
If they could hold their own
So could I
And so I covered it with a colorful poncho,
I faked happiness
I Pushed my lips up like a bodybuilder benching his maximum weight
with his arms trembling and back arching
I smiled and I did it so well that people didn't notice the sloping of my shoulders or the way I dropped into chairs shaking with effort and crumpling like paper
And what almost killed me
Made me weaker
I was afraid to be by myself
That the pain would be too much and
That since it hurt so much to breathe I might decide to stop breathing all together
there would be days that my legs would hurt too much to stand
so I would have to lay down in the shower letting the
water push away the pain
There would be days when the jacket turned into a blanket in my mind
It was always hardest to be around people those days  
Those days when my skin burned blue
and as much as I caked on makeup to cover it
I wondered why no one cared enough to wipe it away
I let my mind convince me that my acting skills weren’t that good
That no one noticed because no one cared
But that was a lie
I’m still wearing my jacket and it would be foolish to pretend that its
Easy for me to take off,
But with my community around me,
I don’t need a lighter jacket, because I have stronger shoulders