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.
