there is no proper way to tell someone they are diagnosed with five mental disorders. its not like i needed to be told, it was more of a defining, a reassurance. i always knew there was something ticking incorrectly in my head, i mean i had been living with it. but can i even call it living? if i am breathing i am living. but what if i'm not breathing, what if i'm gasping through corrupted lungs and trying to inhale through water filled nostrils as i am pushed under wave after wave, pounding down on my chest but i am not even at the beach, i carry the ocean with me. and every hurricane that touches down in my chest and rips me apart, screams i will never be loved. it is imprinted into my blood vessels that pour out week after week from civil wars with myself. there is no winning to this battle when there has to be a loser and i am fighting on both sides. there is no one who will live with a girl that can't even live with herself. there is no love for the girl who cannot love herself. there is nothing beautiful about a girl unconscious on a cold bathroom floor. flowers do not bloom out of the roots that she carved into her wrists. there is no sunrise in her eyes; that is her twisted mind deceiving you into believing that they are not the sunsets that they are, setting down right before you on the crashing waves of her irises. the crashing waves that she is drowning in, but she knows how to swim. it is herself that is pulling her down. she is the suspect and the victim; there is no devil or angel on her shoulders telling her right from wrong because they crept in her ears and made a home in her brain where they fight all hours of the night, keeping her from ever resting her eyes let alone sleeping, or dreaming of a better life. this familiar unstable environment that she can only recall as her childhood. she was built on the foundation of love yourself. please. before you love anyone else, before you spill into the corners of another being who is not ready to hold you. you want to be held, so you bruised your arms as you tried to hold yourself in the absence of anyone who could ever love you. no band aids or peroxide could heal the intangible hurt that aches all over. you have to fight to be your own medicine. when you are asked what do you love, you can easily say i love my mother, i love my father, i love my sister, i love my brother, my cat, my dog, reading, poetry.. but how long, how long does it take before you come to say: i love myself. so go and look into that mirror and say i may be sinking, but i am also the oceans that i drown in and i am ***** beautiful.