Mood stabilizers, they call them, but in some ways, they're more like painkillers for your heart. They numb the feelings so that you don't have the extreme moods you are accustomed to.

When you have a mood disorder, everything you feel is so much more intense, and so much more certainly snowballs out of control. That's most of the problem; the complete lack of control you have over your chaotic emotions.

But then you go to a doctor, and they give you happy little pills called stabilizers to do just as they're told to. Stabilize you. Normalize you.

Funny thing is, even with the little heart painkillers, you'll never be normal. Even if you keep up a fantastically ordinary facade, you will never be ordinary. You will always have those little pills in your pocket telling you that you are not good enough the way you are, that you must change.

Its a double-edged sword, these pills. Because some days you wonder why you can't just be you, why do you need these drugs in your veins, but then you remember the cuts on your arms and the painful nights where you drowned in your own tears and you remember why even you don't think the person you are is acceptable. Get better, Grace, be better, Grace. The words pound in your ears until you forget who you used to be and you are always striving to be something more, something better. You strive until it kills you.

You are stronger, you can beat it, they say.

What if I don't want to beat it, though, just want to have control of it? I never want to feel less than everything, I never want to feel so dull and numb that it kills me more than the pain ever did, I never want to beat myself, I simply want to be me but controllable.

Because right now I'm uncontrollable and that's terrifying.

Painkillers for your heart, numbing you until you can't feel anymore. But sometimes I wonder if I really want to feel numb.

Do I want to be me, or who everyone wants me to be?

One is safer than the other, but which one is really living?

Because all I want is to feel alive, but I don't know whether surviving will entail that.

Painkillers or killer pain.

That is my decision, one I'm not ready to make. Maybe tomorrow, when mania is not so close to my throat.

Maybe tomorrow, because I am far too afraid of today.

My green eyes stare into the crowd of my memories, pinpointing all the moments in which I realized I wasn't good enough. I look at others' pasts and want their, want their histories to be my own, so the pain can be expelled from my memories and only happiness remain, but I am not bandit of time, I cannot take what isn't mine. I can only accept what is left behind.

Her red hair, my red heart, the red wrath I feel in my soul at the clarity I feel knowing that all these moments, these flaring flames in my life-fire, have led me to believe the one thing no young woman should never believe; I will never be good enough.

Broken glass in a broken pane, I lay shattered by each fist pounded into my face. I spent years reflecting others, putting their image before mine, only to get smashed and bashed and banished to the planes of Asphodel, left to die in my own misery. Left to my own devices and own lax, to give up and to give out never to receive again, and let myself fall into the darkness.

Yet I fought, in the worst way I could. Smiles lie and words hide, as the demon below lay his puppet hands on my heart, and even when my soul screamed for freedom with tears most needed, I let my pride champion over my sanity. Bottle up the pirate ship, Grace, it'll look so pretty on your shelf, and look out of place in your heart. Remember, you're no thief.

I hoarded the good times and the love in my heart like Smaug, the great and terrible, solidifying my body as a Lonely Mountain with a maddening crystal at its core. Maybe its only fitting I am short in stature, for I have dragon madness upon my heart, set like a promise to myself that the bottle on the shelf? it will never open, and I will never let the stone walls of my smile fall. This mountain was my domain, and no one was going to destroy it.

Until they did. I was a glutton and I ate and ate the hearts of others until it came back upon me, like a righteous knight set on showing me the error of my monstrous ways. They cut me down, and broke through my glass and forced open that bottle until I could hide no more. The dragon with the stoic walls and pretty smile was revealed, and it drove people away.

Desperate for love, affection was sought in the worst way possible. Body sold for attention and affection, the defeated dragon, the broken glass, the faulted whatever I was was left open and unable to find solace. The window into the mountain was burst open and there was no going back. Fear, pity, worry emanated from those left in my life. But I was reckless, and I no longer cared for this vessel that held m demon soul. I simply wanted the pain to go away.

Then someone dared enter my keep, and hear my whispers, the weak ones, the only ones my heart dare still speak, and they whispered back, "You are always good enough'.

And that was when everything changed.

Its happening, all over again.

Nothing is wrong, nothing has happened, there just feels like there is a gaping hole in my heart and nothing can repair it, like there is a part of me missing and I have no clue what it is and where to go searching.

I used to think the missing part was friends, or family, or anything I loved. But as time goes on, it seems to hit me that the exact problem is not that its anything I am able to find; no. There is simply just a part of me missing and there is nothing I can do about it.

It breaks my heart. I sit here at my desk crying, uncertain what to do, because it appears there is nothing i can do. Its just a section of my heart is missing, always will be, and nothing can ever fix that.

The words do not come, I have not much to say, except my heart is missing and I know it won't come back today. Or any day for that matter.

I sat on the swings
and stared at the sea,
dragging my toes in the sand.
Where has life gone?
It seems to have passed me by.
The ocean sways
and life goes on
forever perpetual
by the sea.

I never had a good friend family member,
I was a neglected child as I remember.
Never had the right hug, the word or the kiss,
Childhood is a time I will never miss.

When all the love and hope
Was soaked out of me
I was blown away by the wind
Like an autumn dry leaf.

It began in the hallway
Lips gingerly moving to the tastes of bottles.

It started light.
You had those same Atlantic eyes that would rage hurricanes in my memories


I could do this for centuries.

Had to polish my old boots today
Because I gifted my last dollars away
Ah the novelty of poverty,
Short lived I'm sure