Mental illness, put simply, is not knowing how to explain what it feels like, and feeling like it wouldn’t even matter, even if you did know

Mental illness, put simply, is not,
It isn’t simple,
I watched my best friends hurt themselves to feel things because their bodies did magic tricks to make them feel like everything felt like nothing,
Like everything, should feel like nothing,
Like nothing, is what everything feels like

Last week I talked to my mother about her anxiety, and the god she prays to for it hasn’t emailed her back, yet she keeps refreshing her inbox,
I wonder if that’s how you explain it

As a suicidal teenager, I used to sneak out of my bedroom window at night and take walks around my neighborhood, telling myself that maybe if I looked hard enough into the moon, God would meet me halfway,
This isn’t a poem about losing faith, but man, where’s the faith store and who can help me find some? I’m broke, don’t get me wrong, but that’s how faith works, right?

A few weeks ago, a mutual friend of mine dove head first back into drugs, claiming that her goal was to just simply, feel something, after taking such a long time to finally feel nothing

Breathe slow, take it easy, it’s gonna be a long ride,
Crack the window, you’ll be fine,
Set yourself on fire, just so you can say you’ve finally put yourself out,
Strap in if you want to, but only if you want to

A) I’ve met people who take it neck deep, feet first, fast, and relentlessly,
B) I’ve met people who keep the bandages on,
C) I’ve met people who don’t have any bandages, constantly drowning in the mess they think they’ve created,
D) I’ve met people who think that they would rather be dead,
E) I’ve met people who don’t want to think about it anymore

Hello, nice to meet you, I’m F) all of the above,
And I want to talk to you about the months and months I’ve spent in a row, wide awake in pools of sweat, shivering in my blankets, knowing that nothing could possibly be as ugly as this poem, but **** man, nothing is much prettier, everything is ugly, so nothing is pretty

Hello, nice to meet you, I’m nothing, none of us are everything,

We are all nothing,

Aren’t we all so pretty?