So, I promised you something today. It’s National Poetry Month and this poem holds a whole lot of meaning for me. This one is a bit longer than what I usually write, but it’s long for a reason. You’ll see. I care a lot about mental health and the awareness around it, but I’ve never really talked about mine.

Not only am I breaking that boundary today, but as my readers, I’m letting you in. Because I’ve got a lot to say, and maybe it’s about time I said it.

Without further ado, A Life Obliged. Let me know what you think.

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Sometimes I really love cancelling plans,

it’s not that I cancel them if I have no reason to—

my guilty conscience is far too heavy for that—

but if I have a reason or I find some excuse not to go,

you can be sure as hell my fingers are moving like lightning

when I type out the words, “I can’t tonight…”

Don’t forget the sad face at the end,

wouldn’t want anyone thinking that I truly

didn’t want to go.

Trust me when I say that, the second I send that message,

it’s a relief of a weight I cannot explain.

It’s a diffused time bomb

of hands that do not stop shaking

and a mind that will not stop racing

even when the finish line

was a couple miles

behind me.

Because sometimes, this life feels like a song I’m trying to sing,

and I swear to God that I’m the one who wrote it.

But every time the chords start playing

and the bass bumps blindly through my chest,

I open my mouth to the words I should be saying,

and it turns out that

I forgot the rest.

My entire world is a play I scripted myself;

I filled each and every role with lives of the ones I love.

And I feel that love, I do.

It’s just some days I wish you knew,

the love

and the hope

and the need to keep going,

it isn’t strong enough to make it all the way

to a place

where I might believe it.

That place can be kind of hard to find sometimes,

especially when you don’t see any of the worth

that’s supposed to belong to you.

Instead, I lost two friends in the last year:

two beautiful, incredible, extraordinary people.

The kind that looked at life like it were a challenge

and they were the Barney Stinsons of the world, so

of course, they would accept it—

to see who could live

and love

and laugh

the loudest…

At only nineteen, I think they lived

more

than I ever will.

And it makes me wonder, why this world

would take away two people here,

and leave behind someone like me,

who doesn’t even know how

to live.

Not like this.

I’m the kind of girl who gets up in the morning,

wishing I didn’t, thinking maybe tomorrow

I won’t.

When this world,

it handles me like a play toy.

Yet depression

and anxiety

and OCD

seem to be the only ones

handling the strings.

A tug this way, a thought that way,

and suddenly

I’m doing whatever it wants.

All I can manage is to nod,

let it control me like a marionette

where the strings tie back to my heart,

as even more hold close to my body,  

pulling on me so tightly

that I have not a say,

not a care,

not a want.

Not a breath that I call my own.

Because not a single one

of those damn strings

seem

to belong

to me.

You see, suicide for me is like the ace in my back pocket,

it’s game that I chose not to play

every single day I wake up.

Because it’s not that I want to die,

no, for that would be far too simple…

It’s that I look at who I am, the people I love, the way I live

and I just don’t want to exist

like this

anymore.

I need a reset button for the last time I saved this game of life;

back before I remembered how unfair this world can be

to the people who might not be the majority,

or how easy it is for men in power to get away with taking things

that do not belong to them because the word “no” wasn’t said

loud enough,

maybe it’s how little it takes to lose people we love because

we can’t control that either,

and how hard it can be when every one of us is fighting something

yet, in this society,

not a single one of us feels

like we’re allowed to be.

I just want to know why.

It’s not that I don’t love you,

no it’s not that at all.

It’s that I don’t think

I love me

enough.

Sometimes, I wonder

if the only thing I know about living

is how to spend every day of my life

trying to convince myself

that I don’t want

to die.

If we are so depressed, so beaten down and

broken through and

bummed out

by everything we are turning out to be,

so depressed

and done

and diligently abiding by the rules of an unspoken pact that says

we need to keep going,

that the suicidal thoughts become relief,

or the absence of pain is terrifying…

If we are so ready

to pull a trigger finger,

to pop a cap,

to inhale invisibility…

Then why are we here,

still moving, still going,

trying so damn hard

to live?

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See you Friday.