A few months ago,
I met a man, but not just any ordinary man.
A colourfully, depressed man;
Who has beautiful designs on his body.
A main key to unlocking the door that hold his demons.
Now I only have a visual and auditory idea of what's going inside his mind.
From what he told me, but I know he leaves out so much more.

The tattooed man is exhausted,
Depression holds him hostage;
A mistress of misery
He found a comfort in her grasps,
He sleeps in her palms, tossing and turning for hours on end,
Restless coma.
He was always so sleepy.
Her lips whispering venomous yet addictive words into his ear.
Planting seeds of doubt and harmful flowers,
He adores his damaging garden, with objects scattered there and here.

The tattooed man is so very tired of breathing,
I can hear it within his stern voice
I can reminisce his fatigue glance, inside his dark brown orbs;
Suicide tempts him.
Every minute of the day,
every breath he takes
Suicide tempts him like a hunter baiting it's prey

Clawing and searching desperately for an exit.

The tattooed man told me, he why he covers himself in tattoos.
The irritating sting of the needle is way better than satisfying the desire to guide a knife across his skin.
Colors and designs imprinted everywhere on his body,
His face, arms, legs, hands and neck.
And let me tell you, he is beautiful to me.

He told me he’s always scared,
During the twilight of the night, on the drive home from our 2 day road trip.
And I’ve never heard so much serenity inside his voice before.
His eyes lower, but they almost seem to shine
in the moons illuminating glimpse
“I hate making new friends,” he said,
“Because that means I’ll have more ties and bonds to this life.
If the relationship is there, I can’t die.”
And dying is something he really wants to achieve.
Just as much as Olympians want their gold medals.

The tattoo man grew a liking to I, and he is very precious to me.
(Vice versa)
I grew very fond of him, like two gnarled trees entwining together.
And now i’ve become very selfish
And I don’t want let him give in to suicide.

I used to take baths every few hours
Just so time would pass through my fingers like water
Uncontainable like the power my brain held over what remained of me
Fragile has my back hit the bottom
A thin layer of flesh couldn't protect
All I could fathom was metal against bone
Not the comfort I'd once know
But still the warmest I'd been since I'd taken off my clothes
The slightest cold found easy passage to my bones
Wasting time waiting for my body clock to run down
So I could taste the sweet taste of what my body needed
what I forcefully took away from myself
Punishment was all i gifted
Has it hit twelve
For some reason I believed it was fine to eat again
But I could never compete with the two thousand needed to maintain or a score greater to gain.

i am not the kind of sick
that leaves the body flushed
at 104 degrees
in the middle of the winter.

                                                               ­                  i am not the kind of sick
                                                            ­                         that causes every breath
                                                          ­          to force
                                                           ­         its way

                                                               ­    back up

                                                             yo­ur throat
                                                          ­             while dragging razor blades
along the inside of your neck.

                       i am not even the kind of sick
                       that comes with a vaccination
                                  or an antibiotic
                            that will chase it away.
no.
                                                                ­                          i am the kind of sick
that leaves you locked in
the bathroom during class
because you can't seem to stop the
             flow of tears
                       running
                               down
                                     your face.

i am the kind of sick
that leaves your hands
sweating
and your voice
shaking
when it's your turn to order dinner
at the diner you've been to
a thousand times.
                                            
                                             i am the kind of sick
                                         that leaves you feeling

l o n e l y
                                              in a crowded room
                                           filled with the people you've
                                           known your whole life.

i am the kind of sick                                                                  ­                                that nobody sees
                                        because it's all in my head
                                      and cannot be cured.

I miss the me I was at the peak of my eating disorder. She was worse than me, but more distracted. She had purpose. Talent. Control. She knew how to get through a day and she knew how to stay small. She loved the way her body was changing. Now she is small. Pushed back to the furthest corners of my mind, until I look in a mirror. Then she is quickly hushed. I miss her ideas and her thoughts. But mostly I miss how much I don't remember from being her.

Once upon a time
When you were out drinking away,
Minutes of your life;
I was up in the horizon
In the skies where all hate disperses,
Dreaming of paradise
In the soft glow of candles,
Blown on a birthday.
Celebrated by one
When everyone is gone,
The cake half it's size
While I am too full and half gone.
I watched a girl
In the mirror,
Singing a birthday song for me.

TRIGGER WARNING!!!

Just because I'm suicidal
Doesn't mean I want to die
I can't imagine myself
Giving the final blow

But **** do I want to be gone
Nothing seems worth it
Nothing was ever worth it
But I don't want to die

Dysphoria is melting my brain
While my eating disorder tells me I'm ugly
My anxiety telling me that picking up a hot pan
Is "just an accident"

I want to let go of all my pain
Of all my disorders
But to do that
I'd have to be dead

All my mental disorders talk to one another
Causing the perfect mixture
The perfect suffering
That makes me think I'm better off dead

The silence is too much
I hear myself think...think...think
About nothing important
But I scour my brain for it
Fight at the little thoughts
Like how much water makes
Your cells over-hydrate and explode?
What if I replaced coffee creamer
With Windex tomorrow morning,
How much time would the ambulance take?
Would I be okay?
Because I don’t really want to die
But yes I do, for just a second
Bring me back to life
Defibrillators against my chest
Don’t shock me as much as
The silence, because it rings
It’s not even silent
So how can it be so invasive
I think about the consequence of
Lighting a candle and leaving
It there by my bedside all night
How quickly would I
Knock it down in my sleep
I’m so afraid of burning to death
And drowning,
Though I guess one solves the other
I mean if you push a burning person into a lake,
Say a witch tied to a stake,
Are you saving them,
Or does that make you a killer,
See she couldn’t swim up,
But at least she isn’t burning,
And am I the witch or the fire in this scenario?
Probably both, though I’m also
A lake because who else
Can put me down better than myself.
And I pushed my own **** self in
Because “I don’t need a hero”
Every feminist bone in my body screams
While I’m tied to the railroad tracks
How did I get here? Wasn’t I just drowning?
I guess I took a crosstown bus.
But I was the only passenger
Because it was completely silent.

For ****'s sake.

How did we end up here again?

The soothing, annoying word flickers on my blue-back lit screen and I am ****** back to the tumultuous moment when once upon a time it yelled bipolar.

And here we go again.

My thoughts flick, flit, floss between teeth made for biting and real meat. They need plaque, collection, to grow and accumulate mass to progress. But there my flicking thoughts go, flossing.

I've always struggled focusing, but I just got excitable, got manic, and it would solve everything. Mania was my monster, my red bull, and now that its sated and off to Wonderland...

I'm left here, face to face, with a twitchy white rabbit wondering why I would ever think to use my pretty little head when its such a good projectile into the sky.

I had always wondered, in those whispering nights, when my hands couldn't stop moving and my head wouldn't shut up, if something was wrong. But it was silly, I had two already, full of worry then full of poles. Couldn't be another, could it?

Of course, a Grace of Wonderland always knows best, and here we are. Another bottle to drink to keep me sane.

I wonder if my fingers will thank the capsules when I might stop biting them? Or my toes? Is this why my toes always twitch and dance, why they stand center-stage in so many of my mild fantasies? After all these years, the divas that my lower digits have become may not appreciate losing their star titles.

I just want to be fine. I want to figure out how to move beyond all the strange misfires in my head. How did I survive so long without a notice? Inflates my ego to know I should have been caught by now.

Guess just like the White Rabbit, despite my widgets and worries, no one can stop me from running when I'm madly, absolutely, refusing to be late.

Graces only knows to fight with fire and fists. Tis the state of my Wonderland, and perhaps now things will only get better.

I used to **** my stomach in,
Till my lungs would ache and split,
Then I learned to pull my muscles up,
And I'd find a better fit.

I learnt from magazines,
and TV shows,
The things that told us,
To always shrink, to never grow.

I learnt from my mother and my sister,
Who would sit and pinch their thighs,
With a sigh and a shriek,
About needing to go down a size.

I became obsessed,
But not with food, wine, or shopping,
My obsession was with the fat under my skin,
Growing fast and never stopping.

I became obsessed with numbers,
Numbers even though I hated math,
People telling me to stop, to eat,
The voices in my head would clash.

I feared that I would grow,
But also I would shrink,
Fingers trailing gaunt on skin,
My madness slipping from the brink.

I feared that I wouldn't wake up,
The next morning, the next week,
But I couldn't stop myself from finding,
The skinny I'd always seek.

I'm not fat, I know I'm not,
And I know weight does not define me,
But I see the bone, I strive to see it more,
Without bone what would I be?