“This is not meant to be a sob story. This is a poem to make you understand. In the past year alone, I have attempted suicide 4 times. In the past year, the police have come to my house 2 times. In the past year I ran out of resources and had to check myself into a treatment center. In the treatment center, there was a girl who had welts on her arm deeper than mine. It looked like she had punched her fist through a glass window the way life had punched the life out of her. In the treatment center there was a girl who had hallucinations about a man standing in the corner that terrified her so much that she couldn’t stand still. In the year before the last one, I had two suicide attempts. I was checked into an ER for my overdose then a psychiatric hospital. This is a poem about all the people who have been bounced back to a hospital every time they thought they got their life back together only to let their mental illness catch them off guard again. This is a poem for all the people who are so weak that they cannot stand on their own. This is a poem for the people whose eating disorders are so strong that they will refuse food even when they weigh 70 pounds and are forced by hospital staff to be fed by a tube. This is a poem for the people who have more hospital bracelets than they do friends. This is a poem about how I have to take 8 pills a day to function somewhat normally. This is a poem about how I had to drop out of public school because my mental illness has interfered with my eating, my breathing, my sleeping, and my ability to live. This is a poem about how I cannot count the number of people who have told me they wanted to die on two hands. This is a poem about the 400,000 emergency room visits for self inflicted injury in 2001. This is a poem for the 30,622 people who committed suicide in 2001. This is a poem for everybody with a mental illness who is more scared of being judged than they are of death. This is a poem for everybody who has wanted to bleed away their pain. This is a poem for everyone that wanted to disappear, hoping that if they shot themselves, if they crashed their car, that if they jumped off the roof of a building, that they might shatter. This is a poem for everyone who has tried to choke the pain out of their life. This is a poem for everyone who hoped that an overdose would be a peaceful death. This is a fuck you to every hallucination, every manic episode, every depressive episode, every flashback, every panic attack, every nightmare, every suicide attempt, every hospital visit, every purge, every laxative, every crash diet, every single doctor that told you you were doing it for attention, every single bully that didn’t know what they were driving you to, every family member that ever looked at you like you were a freak, everybody that ever told you to “get over it”, everybody who told you that you were faking it. Everybody who ever told you that it wasn’t a big deal. Would you still be saying the same thing at our funerals? Do us all a favor and tell us how beautiful we “were” while we’re still alive. How beautiful we are . This is a poem for everyone who ever thought the world would be better off without them. This is poem for everyone who ever needed somebody to just listen without judging. This is a poem for everyone who just needs someone to care or believe in them. This is not meant to be a sad poem. This is not a poem about overexaggeration. It is a poem about reality. It is a poem to finally make you understand. We are more than statistics. We are stories.”
— This Is Not A Sad Poem
