Fabricating Tragic Beauty: A series of poems

Over the past decade or two, people have made a lot of progress in de-stigmatizing poor mental health, but it’s had the unfortunate consequence of sensationalizing mental illness, particularly depression. Now, depression is often portrayed as tragically beautiful, as a personality trait, or even as trendy. This can lead people to think that they need a mental illness to become special, or that they don’t need to seek help because it is “just who they are.”

There’s a difference between raising awareness and making illness seem anything less tragic than an illness. There’s a difference between watching Rue suffer and alienate everyone around her in Euphoria and watching Hannah suffer and make everyone around her somehow wiser in Thirteen Reasons Why, transforming Hannah’s suffering into a “greater good” and placing an emphasis on Hannah’s suicide rather than Hannah. There’s a difference between a black and white image of self-harm with a sensationalized quote over it and the actual harsh reality of self-harm.

Poetry might be a controversial medium to use to address romanticization, but it’s a very emotive form of literature, which makes it more relatable and more easily digested.

I wanted the poetry to be real, to cut through the bs, to address misconceptions surrounding mental illness and I ended it with hope. If you feel so inclined, find beauty in the poetry, not the pain.

Vincent

They say beauty came from his pain. But no,

his pain isn’t the source of what he attains.

His pain brought him nothing but pain.

He may have learned something through the chains,

but that requires strength.

The strength to learn something from a self-cut wavelength

is his beauty.

Hitting rock bottom

Hitting rock bottom isn’t like a spring; 

you don’t touch down and then 

spring back up to the top. 

Hitting rock bottom isn’t worth it 

for the “perspective” it might bring you.

You’ll never know how long you’ll stay there.

Hitting rock bottom isn’t an imperative path

to creativity or to infinite wisdom. 

You simply can’t drain everything to become full.

Hitting rock bottom isn’t a lesson.

Permeating that misconception

is pure destruction.

I miss —

I miss —

The thought ends on a nib

My mind blinks

as it wonders at the slip

A missing word

A missing phrase

A thought unheard 

My head cocks 

and my eyes wander

until it pinpoints the paradox

I miss myself

Identity

If this void 

stays ingrained within me,

will I ever return to who I was?

But if this void

leaves me forever,

who will I become?

All in one or two words

You attempt to universally define

the indescribable

“Profound sadness”

It’s more profound than sadness

How can you define the emptiness 

the sense of missing yourself

of forgetting who you are

of forgetting who you were

of relying on other people’s perceptions of you

            to fill in the blanks

How can you define laying in the shower at 3 am

doing nothing but staring at the shower curtain

letting scorching hot water beat down on you

that makes your skin hue red as if it were sunburned

Eventually you stand to go through the motions

How do you explain quitting work to focus on your mental health

only to hit rock bottom

so much worse

than your last “rock bottom”

Eventually you realize you’re not eating, barely sleeping

How can you fathom blinking and suddenly it’s 4 am

It’s not a sense of time flying by

but of time disappearing,

only a vague inkling of the past 5 hours

Eventually you realize you’re losing years to nothingness

How can you rationalize someone telling you

“You pursue depression”

and that being the worst thing

anyone has ever said to you

Eventually you wonder if it’s true

How can you define going weeks without opening your mouth

to talk to anyone

except for on the closing shift

where you relish in the self-destruction 

that comes with lack of sleep

because laying there means being alone with condemning thoughts

that make you isolate yourself because

you’re so ashamed of who you’ve become

              a deterioration of the self-awareness you were so proud of

How can you define all of that 

All in one or two words

When? Maybe.

She asked me when

When she’ll stop living for others 

And for herself start living 

When she’ll stop surviving

and start winning

When she’ll stop floating

and start swimming

I answered with maybe

Maybe it will always be a struggle

but maybe that struggle will become a little lighter

Maybe the all-consuming pain

will cease to consume every fiber

Maybe a dark hour will become a dark minute

and then maybe it’ll become a mere second striker

Maybe that second will be a moment before

you meet the eyes of your person

and see the good

Maybe it’s the moment before

you see that person smile a smile

impossibly gentle with no falsehood

Maybe that second of darkness

will become a surprising light when you appreciate

the smallest things with such an intensity

Maybe you’ll find room to be grateful

not only for who you’ve become, but who you were

and the unbelievable strength that carried you so protectively.