ten. it ****** the life from your mother, who wouldn't go to work or quit her opioid addiction or do any of the things she probably should have.

twelve. and it was in you too, in the quiet moments of perpetual anxiety and childhood trauma that had not quite identified itself yet. it moved right in, and it decided it likes the view.

fourteen. it exploded in your world. it's in the girl who had it all and in the teacher with a tan line where her wedding ring used to be.

sixteen. absolutely by now, you had met it too. a sort of absent numb. swallowing darkness. a blackness. but it wasn't you, it couldn't be. just a voice, perpetually angry and tired. your bodyweight you're too tired to carry.

mental illness does not have a face. it takes over in small, sly ways that only those who have lived it know the colors.

it wears the bodies of the girl dancing, the skin of the girl that sits at home with battle wounds (sometimes, this is the same girl). it inhabits the man always frowning, the boys always making others laugh. in the chests of poets, artists, musicians. it's clever. it camouflages well.

it may be in you. it is in me.