I love you
You're mine
I have needs
It's your fault
Don't tell anyone
I'll **** you if you tell
You're my special girl
I'll go to prison if you tell
Nobody loves you like I do
You shouldn't dress like that
Doesn't it make you feel special?
Please come play the game with me
This is because you were so good today
Don't do this with any boy or I'll **** him
All the grown-ups know you are a bad kid

An open letter to those who have dealt or tried or whichever with me during my depression and/or anxiety.

I wish I could stop. I hear that a lot. "Just stop." As if it were a switch I can turn on and off at my own will. If I could, I would've disabled that switch the minute I learned what the on was designed to do. If only I could stop if only I could

"Think positive" I hear that the most. I didn't think of that, nor did the twenty something people before you. As if I haven't dived into the deep end of positive affirmations for the riptide of negativity to pull me 20 times under. For every positive thought, my brain's defense brings up 20 reasons that the positivity isn't real or won't last, or my favorite, why do you even deserve to be positive.

I don't forget all the times you've said "people have it so much worse." I am so ungrateful for the roof over my head and the food I get to eat or the daily drinks I use to muffle the voices inside. I hate the privilege of having my friends and loved ones look at me through foggy lenses and lend me their advice. It comes from the bottom of your heart but it doesn't come from experience.

Oh and how can I forget how I'm acting like this out of attention. I promise if I wanted the attention, I would get it in a manner much more humorous instead of a pitiful pit stop of a parade I feel some of you think I am. I am not trying to guilt you or appeal to your pathos. I much prefer to evoke your happiness with jokes that mask the constant desire to not even exist.

Then it comes down to the people I've bared my mascara streamed, tear soaked, bare souled self to. I'm talking to you. The one who I know won't understand but I at least expect to be there. Because I know that when you only deal with it once a month it isn't a problem, take some asprin and put a ****** in and it's over before you know it. God forbid this curse drowns me for a week or two or three. I'm sorry to put a damper on your life. The one where you chant the positives and get on with it. You have the choice to leave. I don't.

I don't surrender to this illness. "I'm not a vicitm" I repeat constantly. I'm not trying to make up excuses as to why it's okay to act like this. I fight every day for a little breathing space, and sometimes I am consistently losing battles in this civil war for my own mind. I apologize that you bear the burdens of being on the front row sidelines of this imax screening of my life.

You see, when the anxiety is over, and the food I haven't eaten for a week is molded now, depression takes stage. Right on cue. A constant back to back showing for boys and girls, it's fun for the whole family. But even like the longest movies of our life, there are intermissions. I sometimes get to step outside the theatre and am reminded that it's still sunny outside, that there is a fresh breeze. I can hear my own thoughts for a moment and they aren't trying to **** me. I am reminded that I have people I love and who love me, despite every reason I have that they don't. I hold onto that feeling and submerge myself so when the next riptide pulls me under, I can somehow find myself at the surface.

Sometimes I resurface with new or stronger allies, and sometimes I lose them in the battle. Casualties of war. Those hurt the worst. The people I love the most, leaving me to find the surface alone. It's enough reason to start the next showing. Like that, I return to my stage, my battlefield, my diving board until the next intermission.

“Overdose” - July 11, 2017

She lay on the cold concrete,
Dress lifted, head held down.
Her insides have gone numb
As innocence bleeds into the ground.

After it had been done,
He told her she better keep her mouth shut.
Told her it was “all her fault,”
Said she shouldn’t have dressed like a ****.

Then, she goes home,
Suffering all alone.
No one to listen, no one to care,
Nothing but the imprint of his menacing glare.

When will it end?
When will it end?

He stays awake at night,
Listening in on his father’s two o’clock rage.
Didn’t bother to wonder what it was this time,
Just another one of Daddy’s alcoholic haze.

In their brokenness,
The shadows don’t even come out anymore.
The walls surrounding are slowly crumbling
But it doesn’t surprise him anymore.

Love knows nothing but black eyes and bleeding hearts,
At least that’s what he’s come to know living in the dark.
The whispers say, “Escape while you still have the chance.”
If he did that, his mother’s blood would be on his hands.

When will it end?
When will it end?

In their brokenness,
The tears flow faster than they ever have before.
Something to take away the pain,
Something to end the internal war.

The flag of surrender sits on the table,
They’ll walk through the walls they built so high.
Maybe there’s a better home awaiting
In the wounded sky.

When will it end?
When will it end?

Every day, people suffer in silence
And we just watch them wither away.
We read their scars like words on paper
But never ask them what caused them pain.

Our fellow humans would rather die
Than “bother” us with what’s on their mind.
They would rather take away their life
Because we have closed our hearts to the outside.

So, I have a question for you, my friends.
This stigma that we haven’t yet changed,
*When will it end?

What goes on in my head?
The words start playing with themselves and I try
to make sense of the nonsense occupying what little space there is left.
It is so hard to explain what goes on, in, under, above, across
when all I want is a projectile through this skull.
Some nights, I'm as scared as you are.
The noise louder than panicking sirens as I cower
hoping it all stops
before it's too late,
before the worst
yet most relieving end.

But sometimes I grow as numb
as the people who think they know
a ******* thing
when they don't.
THEY DON'T.

3 AM is for studying ways to make death look like an accident
so I don't hurt anyone else after the process.
I cry my nonexistent heart and soul out
like I never do in broad daylight
while using neon highlighters
to mark exes on my throat, my wrists, my chest,
then put both blades out of reach.
I try to memorize the places where I shouldn't hurt myself.
But I am already bleeding everywhere.

I don't want to hurt anyone else.

No one wants scars around their hearts because the hurt doesn't count
unless you're dressed up for death in a hospital gown
so that everyone sees it,
so that everyone ******* believes it.

I'm not stupid
just sick.
But, if life is a lesson
I quit.

I feel like fading ink
gushing dry on my pile of unread books.
And maybe all those
record stores, libraries, museums, cafés, lighthouses
and sunsets waiting for me
won't wait any longer when I'm gone.

I don't want to hurt anyone else.

It's 3 AM again,
one day
I really am going to lose it.
But for the meantime,

I am tired.

I don't know how
long I could
keep fighting
this.

I don't want to hurt anyone else.

It's 3 AM again,
and again
and again
I'm sinking.

It's 3 AM again,
let the ghosts back in.

so he had my number because we met for tutoring on Wednesdays after class but he would text me really late at night asking me the weirdest stuff i would politely say this is incredibly inappropriate and i would not like to talk like this with you but still around two am he would text me lewd stuff again and again then asking if i would go on a date i said dude i am old enough to be your mother imagine if
a guy
          received texts
          like that
                    from a girl
                                  insisting to do ****** stuff BUT
he
would
have
liked
it.

I can't look at glossy things
The Sun is the purest star
Triste

Twisted
The Sun is blazing

Dazing and Gazing upon the lack of man
Oh, how I love the lack of man

I am a kaleidoscope, ever-changing
My mood goes from blue to red, blue to red
I flicker constantly among the only constant
Triste

Dazing and Fazing upon the lack of man,
Oh, how I miss the abundance of man

Music pours across the room,
Vibrating off the walls
I have a caged body, I long for something great, to make my life
a poetry book across wild and mild pages

Will this ever be?
When my kaleidoscope changes and flickers with each drop of rain
The black dog running after me,
I am half happiness, half a *****
Triste

Don't let it break your heart/Let it break your heart.

Giving up is the hardest part.

After long dark,
you can find me in my mind;
taming serpents; kissing girls.
You may not understand
why I've been the way I am.
You're under-educated
and that's only half your fault.

Sometimes I am imprisoned
within the waves of an ocean
that always misbehaves --
but it's not my fault; just the
way the god rolls: making halves
and making wholes.

After the short syrup of light,
you can find me hiding, true;
pulling off ticks; kissing boys.
You may not comprehend
the way I'm fumbled together.
You're under-educated
and that's only half your fault.

Always I am imprisoned
within the crash of culture;
my thoughts treated like worms;
my illnesses considered contrived.
But it's not my fault; just the
way you guys roll: ignoring halves
for conventional wholes.

don't you dare tell me about my pain
when you have never lived inside of my brain