I don't feel like I can,
What's the use?
They all want me to admit I'm broken,
So I keep refusing.
The few times I believe I'm suffering I can't admit,
Because they'll see it as proving them right,
And I need them to understand they've got it all wrong.
I want them to hurt like they've hurt me by their dismissal.
I don't want to see another psychiatrist I just want them to leave me alone,
It's not like they're ever going to help me.
Then there are times I know I just need to keep pushing,
To keep trying to find someone who will believe me,
Someone who won't just say it's because of my anxiety,
Except then my social anxiety comes back,
Because they keep proving to me that there's no way they'll think I'm not just mental.
And maybe sometimes they actually think they're being nice,
But seriously? Are they blind? They would never put up with that themselves.
They push me to my limit,
If it's evident I'm going insane then they should know,
That it's all because of them!
It would drive any emotionally/mentally stable person close to the edge,
But then by wandering over to it, they're proving themselves right,
And I don't want to help them.
They're not helping me.

I just want someone to hear what I'm saying,
And not immediately see "social anxiety"
After all, their labels of "needing psychiatric help" were never there when I needed them,
And I took it like the deepest stab back then,
And now, instead I can't push them away when I don't need them,
I can't escape the "should probably see a psychiatrist", "would probably benefit from counselling" and "symptoms are dissociative and functional"
I can't run fast enough from it -
God knows I can't even run at all,
But professionals tell me that "I can do it" as if I'm making it up,
Or should just try harder.
Do you really think I don't want to be capable of feeding myself food and drink?
At points I could try a thousand percent a thousand times to pick myself up from the floor again,
Will power doesn't work!
It doesn't get rid of physical barriers that everyone else is telling me are some result of trauma, stress or anxiety.

I feel like I've been beaten down so many times already,
I want to find out the truth but I'm too scared of being laughed at,
But I got over that fear that my social anxiety taught me when I first sought help,
I've tried so many times though,
And each time I've guessed the same negative outcome.
It's as if someone really is planning and plotting against me,
Will they not stop till they've gotten me admitted to somewhere I don't belong right now?
Even my reactions would serve as proof to them,
I must just be insane, completely deranged.
"Not normal"
Come on, I won't pretend to miss the meaning of that,
What they really meant was: that's not a mentally healthy person's reaction. Maybe she really is making it up.
The truth is you can't make stuff like this up!
You can't fake shaking the way I do,
Not even more than enough diazepam would cure it.

I know this doesn't help prove my sanity,
And this doubtfully sounds like anything poetic,
It's just I didn't feel like writing, and when I feel sad I can get angry,
I'm just trying to vent and tell the truth,
Because maybe one day, someone who feels as alone and disheartened as me,
Won't feel as bad as I feel.

It's really not glamorous,
And I don't know where I am finding the strength to share this from,
I need to get it out though,
And if anyone who needs to hear this, like me, to find out they are not really all alone reads this and finally feels a glimpse of safety,
Or even to open the eyes of people who wouldn't otherwise understand,
Then maybe this had a purpose.

And if anyone who ever reads this,
Happens to be a doctor,
Or mental health professional:
Please listen.
Please listen to your patients without judgements,
Without immediately linking physical symptoms that sound out of sorts, or that don't make sense, to what it says in their notes about their mental health.
The thing is a lot of people pick and choose what to listen to and when,
And in my experience it always seems to be the wrong choice at the wrong time.
If you have a patient who tells you they desperately need your help,
Or even the ones who are too afraid to ask but are despairingly trying to make you notice, to make you understand what they put up with day by day,
Please, please help them.
And don't you dare tell them, like one told me, to "throw away your crutches, I don't like you using them"
Because you are killing every shred of dignity that they are trying to cling onto.
All we want is to be taken seriously,
WE are trying to get better,
But are you really trying to help us?
You may think you are but perhaps you're probably not.
Please realise, that you're in such a respectful position that it's important how you handle what you say, your responses.
Please understand how you have the power to break vulnerable genuinely sick people.
Please believe people like me and listen when they say they don't think it's psychological.
Please listen.

Sitting still and doing nothing
is not an option when motion is impending

let each leaf in the forest
be a love story that anybody can walk through when
they feel alone.

let each late night car ride
carry sonnets, starlit whispers and murmurs
in case it feels a little too much.

let each poem in this logbook
be able to reach into your longing heart and empty hands
for whenever you thought you weren't loved.

i am always one poem away from saying "i love you."

This is when i write my best poems

When there is
So much
Inside
Messed
Tangled
Intertwined
Unraveled
Kept aside
Forgotten
Brought back
Rememberd
Ignored
You Decide
Undecide
And then one hundred words fall into a piece of paper like drops of rain hurling from the sky.

You can not expect it
You may not understand it
But you
Feel

Feel the moment
It collides
With your soul
Finds a home
In your ribs
It's a trauma
In disguise.

Who draws strength
from watching the passage of time
after dark
blur against the windows
of a moving train bound
for ends uncertain.

Who walks most balanced
on the beams of empty tracks.

In the shuffle of strangers
at a crosswalk, who finds
direction.

Who sees
clearer through rain.

Who finds their place
in the limbo of airport terminals,
on delayed flights
between chapters,
over open roads that branch
into tales of cities unseen,
in the turn of pages unwritten.

Who can keep track of time
during the improvised chaos of jazz,
catching notes scattered
in the winds of horns.

Who understands
that wind moves
fastest through dark places like tunnels,
during storms in late August.

Who finds their center
hurled in flight,
always coming and going.

After wide-set earthen towers mask
the highway runoff, campers come off lofty
horses, signal boorishness to breeze. Sat alone
where rolling orange will tease
the peace from perfect dark - the hint of dread
forgoing litness to expose a martial bode -

the low-slung limbs of stern bring
trained to-wrist like faithful,
catching glimpses of what common good
afforded us naff hazes like the present
sickle answer, whale-bone grief and prescient
danger. Fix a poultice,
love’s soft landing seldom not
for treasures come.
Revive the brazen lungs

in boasts of rushes, random-lit,
forestalling sodden semblances of wit
from Sunday’s arsenal -
right-matched to cleaner absences
than your limited souls could ever pare.

She’s felt - a fabric after our own hearts,
a loan from common waltzes,
taciturn in downshifts of this archen land -
of course - of hand, a slight
anomaly for watchers to observe.
Each roadblock touches nerve.

They say energy cannot be created or destroyed,
simply poured out into another person.
A shared cycled of movement.

Keep it kinetic,
or it'll never reach its potential.

It is to be ..
Shared wisely -
Never to be graced upon forces darker than your own.
Valued highly -
Gifted upon the likes of a throne.
And held tightly-
Where you can feel it down to your bone.

Energy is a man's life force.
The power behind every thought & action,
bringing forth like energy-
in the law of attraction.

Symphony No. 2
in D major 4th Movement
this is my stomach