I remember Mondays in Coach Mac's class. How I loathed yet loved this occurrence. During the period of poetry, each student was asked to write one of their own and read them aloud in class. To write your feelings, your thoughts, onto lined paper and stand in class constructed spot light, asked to peel the skin off of your body to display.

Others mastered the art of avoidance. Of detachment. They often wrote about how fall was coming or an ode to another classmate. But I was never good at running. So I wrote. Not of happiness because he is a stranger to me. I wrote of what I've known for the past five years of my life.

They told me I had talent. And each Monday they anticipated the moment that I would stand up and read.

They wanted to hear my words. They wanted to know the hopelessness of depression and the consuming sadness that I have only known. They hung on to every syllable of my heartbreak and every stroke of ink of my depression. They wanted to know. They wanted to hear. They held on because I wrote words that discomforts, subjects tucked under the rug. I wrote about the raw experiences they themselves could not verbalize. Yet they were familiar.

They wanted the words from someone else's mouth.

They fell in love with my depression but they never wanted to help.