I can’t put into words,
the simply incomparable beliefs I heard
every ******* day until I didn’t have to
hear them anymore, and I learned to be paralyzed
from the mind to the fingers to the feet I can’t stand.

I didn’t understand how I grieved for myself
until I shoved everything down before I left for
the hospital one Friday night. I curled up in the blue nightgown,
staring at the cream walls, unable to feel anything at all.

Apathy is equal to unbearable emotion, two sides of a coin flipping
through the lightning cracked air. Waking up, finding the energy to
walk to the nine am class I skipped once a week, the skies did not breath.
Neither did I.

Navy sweat stained mats cover the wrestling room floor. The humid and
old swells without circulation. In the last thirty minutes of the MMA
I love and fear, everything slams into me. The fall I should not have had,
A heel stuck out to kick and I rise into suffocation.

I do not think I failed. I know I failed. Scrambling to the wall, because my legs
could no longer hold me, a piece of my body no longer mine to control. Tears
surge as a tsunami to the coast of Indonesia, cross legged on the floor, I try to joke, to hide.

I see the text my best friend sent me.
A theater kid drove off a bridge.
I swallow.
Grasping for breath. For control.

The coin lands on its edge, wobbling. I totter
off pillars thinned by rotten rain, into ruined fires.

I can no longer grieve. I don’t remember what I once was.
There is much I learned about myself in my psychology class.
Did you know I have an avoidant attachment style? It leaves
me unable to miss people, to trust any answer. What if they’re lying?
What if I’m lying?

See, I sour myself. Broken isn’t the word to encompass all that is,
shattered pieces across the carpet, slivers buried in the door, here
I am, scrapped off the pavement, dandelions bruising the cracks between squares.

I write to you, not for myself, not for you either. Dear depression,
Dear anxiety, I hope you stay. I don’t know who I’d be without you. Exhaustion without sleep,
beating to the minutes and the hours, laying in fear of falling asleep and never falling asleep. Recovery is terrifying. And so are you.
Love, me.