turning lonely into angry and angry into occupied was a coping mechanism for so long for me. I mean, what else was I supposed to do with all this empty space inside me, hollowed from the inside out by my own mind? I tried to lobotomise myself, tried to extract all the bad like a field doctor without supplies on the battlefield: improvising, desperate, bloody- willing to do anything to just make it stop.
What is the word for a building that is on fire and that building is ruined and gone and everyone else can feel the effects of the smoke and the heat and that building is not a building but a person and that person is the i in my poetry, except it’s my real body that aches. The depression was physical just as much as it was mental.
All that destruction, pain, all the hollowness my illness brought. The “I can’t sleep but I’m so fucking tired”, “I can’t come into school today because the world scares me and I haven’t showered in weeks” and “I’m so sad and so numb” and “im sorry I have to cancel on you but I just can’t face the day”. I felt like I hurt people more than I hurt myself.
It’s hard to forget that part of my life, sometimes it feels like all the darkness never left. It still creeps on me, on days where I’m too tired or haven’t eaten. And I still write about it in the present tense. It’s still here. still here.