This pen,
is the only thing that can truly understand,
in detail,
What I am feeling. 
For this pen is like a therapist,
it comforts me on my bad days,
and cheers me on in my tomes of victory.
It knows my lover and my friends,
My old crushes,
My painful childhood. 
It knows me fully.
It's the only thing that knows what terrorizes me,
and what makes me feel like I'm flying.
Sure my lover knows all these things,
But this pen,
This pen knows more.
For it has written miles upon miles of odes to my lovers and to my trauma.
This pen,
is one of the only things that knows me,
Inside and out.
For this pen,
is like my therapist. 

What if we've been getting it
Wrong this whole time.
What if all the science we think 
We know,
Has given us a false hypothesis of how we function.
What if our brains don't make the
Truly Important decisions,
But rather the heart.
What if the heart makes the decisions that can change lives while the brain takes the back seat.
What if we have gotten the pumping and pulsing mess of muscle all wrong.
What if there is a part of the heart 
That has the ability to make the hardest choices in life.
Suppose the brain only makes the decisions that don't matter 
All that much. 
 

To all the people out there who have never suffered from a mental illness.
You are so fucking lucky.
You are so lucky that you don't have to experience the feeling of waking up,
After weeks of freedom,
to feel like you can't pull yourself out of bed.
To be prisoner to yourself once again.
To feel like everything is 
Void of meaning.
To be numb,
Even when you are in love.
To feel physical pain,
Because yes,
A simple chemical imbalance
Can cause body pain.
To have things you love,
Become lack-luster. 
To feel as though the brightest of colors,
Are dull.
To be drained of energy,
Even after sleeping or 14 hours.
To be in a haze.
To think that just as you are making progress,
For it to resurface.
To have an episode on a good day. 
To have the bad days out number the good days,
For weeks.
To be brought to your knees by a deficiency in serotonin.

Depression is like climbing a rock wall.
Just when you are almost at the top,
You lose your footing.
And you fall.
All the way back down to the bottom. 

But you dust yourself off 
And try again. 
Gripping the rocks,
And pulling yourself to the top.

To only be swept to the bottom again.

And sooner or later, 
You will get tired of being knocked down. 
You will be left exhausted,
Due to attempt after attempt. 

You will begin to ache all over. 
You will start to lose motivation.
You will start to think that this is all pointless. 
Putting in all that effort,
Only to be knocked down,
Again and again. 

You won't want to continue.
You will lay at the bottom of the wall,
Looking up at it.
Until someone comes along,
And offers to climb it with you. 

You are addictive,
A drug I can't quit.
You give me a high 
that I keep chasing.

You make it stop.
All the bad things.
Gone.

Every little voice whispering mean things in my ear,
Gagged and secured away. 
Every insecurity is forgotten,
If only for a short time. 

You make the numbness go away.
When I'm with you,
I feel.

You make me feel emotion again.
And it's scary.
Numbness is what I've grown to know.
But though feeling is scary,
It is exhilarating.

The way your words make me feel,
Is something that I've never had before. 
Your compliments,
Make the butterflies who were peacefully sleeping,
Rise in a frenzy.

Your voice sends shivers down my spine 
When I hear you call for me.
Your hands,
Are the best things in the world.
The way they push and pull.
Makes pleasure run through my veins. 

You are one of the best things that has ever happened to me. 
You are the only one who's ever believed in me like this,
Stayed with me this long,
Whose ever loved me back. 

I've never felt this before.
This kind of connection,
This kind of love.
But I can tell you,
It's what wakes me up in the morning.
It's what keeps my heart beating.
It's what keeps my lungs sucking in oxygen.
It's what keeps my eyes blinking.
It's what keeps me coming back for more. 

When I'm with you,
Every worry and stress melts away,
Like how a raindrop rolls down a window. 
You make everything better. 

When you touch me it feels like electricity is shooting from your fingertips
And trailing its way down every inch of my body.  

When you play with my hair,
Everything freezes.
Every cold breeze and odd sound,
Stops.
And I am filled with warmth

I write love poetry because it's easier to confess my love for you through anonymous descriptions,
Hoping that you'll never read it, 
And hoping that if you do read it,
You won't know it's about you.
But also hoping you know it's about you
Because I want you.  

I write love poetry because it's easier than cutting open my stomach and letting my guts spill onto the floor between us.
Hoping that you'll pick them up and 
Feed them back into me,
Stitching my stomach closed while whispering in my ear that it's all going to be okay. 

I write love poetry because I'm a hopeless romantic
Who wants to run her hands through your hair and feel how soft it is. 

I write love poetry because I'll never admit it to you that
I want to count and memorize every freckle that graces its way across your face. 

I write love poetry because I want to get lost in your eyes. 

It is a life and death limbo.
Your brain knew what it's like to be dead.
As you lay,
Muscles relaxed,
Eyes seeing nothing but the backs of your lids.
Ears not hearing the crying of family members mourning a half-dead body.
Not hearing the beeps of machines that keep your body alive. 
This limbo of life and death is unfair.
You are standing at the edge of oblivion, 
But you can't swan dive, head first into the void like you want to. 
No.
You must slowly slip at the hands of others.
You almost knew what it's like to be dead.
Unable to send signals to your motor nerves to make you move.
To open your eyes.
To blink.
To chew.
To open your mouth on your own.
To breathe without the aid of a tube haphazardly shoved down your throat.
Unable to flick your tongue against your teeth to tell someone that you love them on last time. 
You almost knew what it was like to be dead.

This is my thank you.
I don't know if you'll ever read this,
But I still want to say it.

You opened my eyes to a world full of wonder.

I was a lost kid,
With no hope.
Suffering from my own demons

I needed someone to guide me,
And you came forward and 
Took me by the hand and
Introduced me to a world of art.

You pushed me to take steps outside my comfort zone.
You encouraged me to show my art to others.
I entered competitions because you said I'd be good at it.

You gave me feedback and built me up.
And I did everything in my power to try and make you proud.

I wanted to show you that I was worth all the time you spent investing in me.

I wanted to prove to you that I wasn't a mistake
But also to myself.

Throughout you helping me with my art,
You also built my Confidence.
Even if you didn't know it.

Without you,

Sadness is like the skipping stones thrown into ponds 
by little kids searching to steal happiness.

They plummet to the bottom so quickly,
They are so out of place here,
But also so at home.

And they stay there until something is done about them.
Until the Earth swallows them whole again.

You see,
I am like the Earth in this sense,
I swallow the stones whole again.
Unexpectedly.

And it hurts.

And it ends in me crying,

Asking why these little kids
threw their stones
into my pond
searching to steal
my happiness.