My eyes are watering but I’m going to blame it on the fridged air. I know it’s cold out but I won’t put on a jacket. My hands are stinging but I refuse to put them in my pockets. I want this numbness more than I want sleep. It sounds stupid but I want the cold to crawl through my skin and freeze my chest from the inside out. I want frost to build over the flowers there so they cease to grow. I want to hollow my chest and open it up like the bleeding sky. The world moves even when my desires attempt and stop it. Removing any significance that my body had been given, my heart had been given, my life had been given. There is no end in sight for what seems like an inescapable void. I decide to lay in the grass and watch as the sky moves above me. My limbs slowly disappearing into the earth beneath me. Becoming unaware myself and everything I am. Letting my world go before I come crashing back down. Spiraling into reality and all of its painful inconveniences.
depression
Going Back
There is this hole in my chest. I think it is where the happiness used to be, but its gone and I am being drowned with the overwhelming power of my own emotions. I can feel that little pull in my stomach again. I feel the urges that I haven’t felt in quite a sometime and my vision has gone white. Relapsing, I am finding, hurts much more than where you were when you stopped. It may be because after all that time in the darkness I had found some light. I could finally smile without carving it into my face. It was a real smile that could remind my body that everything was good, was happy, but the light inside drained. It drained like I had been punctured all over and it was beyond ready to move on to it’s next subject. My mind has currupted all of the rays of light and it’s all becoming darkness again. Now my body is filled with nothingness. This time, it is not just mentally that I feel hurt and exhausted but physically. Every move I make and my body feels like it hasn’t been fed in weeks. It is as if all of my muscles know not what there fuction is and cannot manage to keep me upright. I am falling faster than ever before and I don’t think my body is going to have the strength to pull me out of the hole this time. My mind is running in circles. Constant thoughts of him suffocate me and they are keeping me up at night. I wish I could make them stop. It hurts so badly to think, to remember all of these painful memories. My skin is itching. I hate this feeling. I have never felt so desperate for a release. Old habits hit hard and I begin to vomit up all of the flowers that he has planted in my stomach, but they don’t come back the flowers they started as. They are poisoned and dying. They leave such a terrible taste in my mouth and I attempt to throw back the devil’s juice but all it leaves is the bitter taste of him on my lips.
After Effects
You’ve left a hole in my chest. Much to big for the silence to fill. I am trying to fill in with empty words, empty smiles, empty love but it soaks into the surroundings like water soaks into the sand. There is a space in my head that is only filled with you. The smallest bank of words swelling to occupy the rest of my mind. I knew where this was going far before it began, and I let myself fall into this darkness. The only eyes I see are yours. Every face I look at, all I see is you. You have released me from your burden but I am holding on so tight for I am afraid that if I let go, I will fall to the ever growing depths of my not so solid ground. I have carved you into the wounds on my skin. The only thing that gave me relief from you now pollutes my blood with the remembrance of what could have been. Why am I like this? I put too much of my heart into things when I leave my head behind. I remind myself that is all temporary but once it fades I continue to break anyways. You held the entirety of my soul without even knowing it and now you have left it lying on the ground. I have found myself worthless without you to give me a purpose in this world. Your smile moves mountains inside of me but it is no longer reserved for me. I dug myself another hole and I don’t think I have the energy to pull myself out this time.
My Calamitous Gardener
Your words turn into flowers in my chest. Vines that crawl through my throat into my head blinding me from everything I should be seeing. I feel my lungs expand with every new blossom and my chest tightens for they fill me much too fast. But when you leave, the flowers turn into the deadliest of creatures. Crawling through my throat. Escaping into the air. These attrocities prevent me from breathing. Make me question whether they could have ever been the beauty that escaped your lips. They whisper to me not the words they had once been but what my mind had changed them into. Only the most vulgar forms of speech are sent through every vertbrae in my spine. I have become afraid of you and everything it means for me when I hear your voice. Your hands around my waist become the vines who’s thorns rip into my skin and allow my demons to breathe in that which makes them stronger. I do not blame you for any of this. None of this is becasue of you. It is because of my own inability to differentiate between what is good and what is true. My mind clings to the darkness it has been taught and it polluts the rest of my body with unkind waters. This is not your fault but you are not beneficial to the continuation of my life. You plant flowers inside of me that cannot stay alive without your attention becasue I can do nothing but kill the most beautiful things in life. You have made my stomach a cage of butterflies but the acid kills them within moments of their arrival. You are everything that is beautiful and I am everything that will destroy that.
Entangled in you
I am so worried about you. All the god damn time. Then I go from being worried about you to convincing myself that you are better off without me. That your life is better without me in it. I can’t choose and I can’t decide which one I would rather. I think I may be projecting what I feel onto your body. I do not see what is really you. I see that I am hurting being away from you and hoping you feel the same way. I am missing you like crazy. You probably don’t think about it at all in your day, but you are always on my mind. I am happy right now. I don’t want you to think that I’m not. I really am enjoying myself. I just think about you a lot. I think about you every time I dance and I wish you were behind me with your hands on my waste. I think about you every time I lay in bed and wish your legs were tangled in mine. I think about you when its quiet and wish the silence was filled with your voice. It is like my pillow is made of you and as soon as my head hits it you enter my dreams. Every time I close my eyes, I see you. No matter how much I enjoy myself, you are always there. In the back of my mind. Reminding me of what I am missing. As much as I wish you felt the same way, I hope you aren’t hurting like me. I hope your heart doesn’t ache every time you think about our last night together. As much as I want to be the one, I hope you find someone to fill you heart with joy and love and that reminds you every day how much your worth. You deserve so much and I hope, even if it isn’t me, that you find that.
The Other Side
I don’t think I am supposed to feel this, but, as much as I wish I could, I can’t turn my feelings off. There is no clearly labeled switch. As much as it hurts, I want to tell you. I want you to tell me everything you know I want to hear. Wrap your arms around me like you did when you said goodbye, but let’s stay that way for a while. Your arms are the only place where my body doesn’t feel like shattering. Where my heart doesn’t feel empty. I don’t talk a lot about happy things, but, with you, there is nothing else. You are the only thing that makes me smile when I feel like breaking down. You are the only light I can see when the world is being overcome by darkness. You are so open with your emotions. You know everything you’re feeling. You may not always feel good but you understand your sadness. I envy that so much. I may not understand all of what I am feeling but I know the only good part is you. I want you to know all of my jumbled emotions and I want to know yours. I want you to tell me all of them. I want to hold your hands as you reveal the most vulnerable parts of your self. I want to kiss your palms as if to kiss away the pain of the open wounds. I want to take your pain away. I would take it all if that is what it would take for you to smile, because, God, I love that smile. That smile could make the world forget their problems. Pain could go on as far as the eye can see but just one of your smiles could make it all okay. It makes all of my demons scatter and for a moment I can be truly, undeniably happy. Over the years I have taught myself how to be okay. I don’t have to be happy. I just have to make it through. I have learned to be okay with myself, but you have taught me how to be so much more than that. I don’t know if you know you did that and I don’t know if you feel any of these things, but I want you to know that someone cares. Someone cares a whole lot about you and I hope that’s okay.
Cleanse
It’s time. For a long time depression kept you held tightly in its grasp but now you are holding onto it. I guess I understand. It is familiar. It is comfortable. You only know what life is like with depression as your best friend. You have gotten so used to third wheeling with depression and anxiety that you started to bring along self harm so you weren’t the one walking in the grass because there wasn’t enough sidewalk. It is time to make your own path now. These friends are not good ones to hold onto. You know that one girl in elemetary school. When middle school happend you just kinda stoped talking. It wasn’t a bad thing, you just grew apart and you will remember the things you went through together. You are the you that is standing here today becasue of that friend, but it is time to let go. Life has a different path for you now. You are no longer stuck in the darkness. You have to let the sunlight in and stop pulling the blankets over your head. Put the long sleave shirts away. It is time your skin felt the sunlight again. Your depression isn’t holding onto you anymore. You are holding onto it like a kindergartener when their mom drops them off the first day of school. Stop waiting for someone to come pull you into the light. No one is coming because no one can see you. You have to walk out of your room on your own. With your own feet. By your own will. You have to go and see life for what it is. You can be happy, but you have to choose to be. You have to stop choosing to be sad, to be stuck. For so long it controlled your life, but you have the controls now and you have to run before it comes back, before you run out of time becasue God knows you don’t have much time before you lose control again. You have lingered in the shadows for far too long. They have contaminated your eyes, your lungs, your heart, but a little light can bleach all of that away, but it can only do that with your consent. Life gave you the the key to the chains around your wrists and you are the only one that knows how to use it. The light cannot cleanse a soul that does not want to be touched. Open yourself to happiness because it is time you smiled again.
Giving Yourself
Have you ever held something in your life so important that you could never think about losing it? Something that feels so perfect that you could never imagine it breaking? Me too. It built me. It carried me when I couldn’t walk. I held it closer to my heart than any part of my own self, but now I can barely hold it in my hands without it crumbling to pieces. I think I might have held it too tightly. I didn’t mean to, but it is turning to dust. Or is that ashes? Did it burn? Am I the one that burned it. I tried. I tried really hard to take good care of it, but it has turned into something not even I recognize. Something I held so dear has turned into something so toxic for me. The soot from the fire is clouding my eyes and I can no longer see the destruction it is causing in my life. It is burning my lungs and is coating the walls in darkness. I think it is trying to destroy me. This thing that I loved so dearly is becoming my most painful memory, but I cannot let it go. My arms are chained to its foundation. Detaching yourself from emotions, they say, is bad for you, but if I am about to be demolished I do not want to feel anything for this thing that caused it. I do not want any love left for this thing that has torn my soul to pieces. I loved it. I didn’t leave it on a shelf. I carried it in my pocket and showed everyone how beautiful it was. I was so proud of it and now everyone will watch it ruin me. It is turning me inside out and allowing the world to see the most vulnerable parts of me before consuming them into the darkness of its grasp. There is no leaving and there is no going back. I am learning that love can only be toxic. There is no version of love, for me, that is not there to destroy. I give my whole self to love and when it succumbs to the darkness there is nothing left for me. Nothing left in this lifeless human shell. I willingly gave myself to it and I must suffer the consequences.
Soul Searching
I just had a very…existential moment.For a moment my life vanished. All of my memory was gone and all I could think was…well I am not really sure. I am terribly confused because I am not sure what I am feeling. I know my stomach is turning and I feel as though I may be sick, but I cannot tell you what this sensation is. I feel like I am breathing fresh air. Like I am being given a clean start. Even though it is close to freezing outside, I feel as though it is one of those spring days when the whole world feels right. Like clean sheets hanging on a clothesline being dried by a pleasant breeze. Like that one song I had on repeat the summer that I was 12. Like Easter when Mom would open all of the windows in the house while she was cleaning. Like those late nights in the summer when we were in elementary school. I am so terribly confused because these are all of the best feelings that could ever come to mind, but I feel so unsteady. Tears are steadily streaming down my face and they have no intention of stopping. This isn’t one of those reminiscing moments. I have had those. I know what those feel like. This is not that. I feel like my soul is somewhere else. I do not feel like me. I do not know where I have gone. The worst part of having these feelings at 3 am is that there is no one to talk to about them. I am on my own. It is so hard to write what I am feeling when I don’t even know. All I know is that tonight my hip isn’t going to be enough.
The Polluted Waters
I have spent a very long time trying to pull myself out of that dark corner of my mind. Years of dipping my feet into the water as the shadows entangle themselves around my ankles barely able to resist the temptation to pull me in. And sometimes there was no resistance. Some days I was pulled into the deep end with no strength to fight back. But as the tide began to lower, I found the ability to pull myself out of the shallow. for a little while, the dark pool had dried up. there was no more lake of tainted water. Just the stains left on the empty pit. It was gone and my mind was left peaceful. Today, It overflowed. the pool filled back up faster and darker than ever. This time I didn’t have to go to the water, it came to me. Its hunger reached for me and yanked me to the bottom. My arms and legs flailing. My lungs pounding, begging for someone to pull me out, but no one can see. No one can see the chains clasped around my ankles, the ropes around my wrists, causing them to bleed. No one can see the blood-soaked sleeves of my shirt, the water pouring into my lungs. They don’t see anything because the shadow forces my smile. My smile is a cloak hiding my pain from the outer world. I have tried everything I have ever know to escape from this hell, but its hold is stronger than it has ever been. I can no longer breath. My lungs are being flooded with the darkness from that corner of my mind. I am slowly, painfully drowning in my own thoughts, my own fear. I was a fool to think I could ever escape this. I was a fool to think the shadows wouldn’t someday take over my entire mind, my entire body. My blood is polluted with the corrupt emotions my mind is feeding me. My blood is begging to be spilled. Begging to be released from my body. I am begging to be released. I am afraid where this might end.
Secrets Kept 