Poems by a Stressed Out Teenager

8

It starts when you get a 62 on your history test that you stayed up until 3 a.m. studying for. You brush it off but deep down inside, it disappoints you and you're angry at yourself. Then you start eating lunch with your biology teacher instead of the seven people at your lunch table. They ask why you don't sit with them anymore and you say, "oh, I have a lot of work to catch up on!" when in reality you are completely caught up. Your friends ask less and less about where you are and they avoid making eye contact with you in the lunch line. Then getting out of bed and doing a simple task like brushing your teeth is a chore. It takes so much time to force yourself to do the simple things a five year old can do. Then you start skipping breakfast, eating only an apple for lunch, and forcing down pieces of bread for dinner if you're lucky. Your appetite has suddenly vanished. Your favorite food on the dinner table makes you sick. Then you start to think that you're fat, useless, stupid, and a failure. Your hours of sleeping go from 7 to 10 and you feel like you can sleep all day.
You lie on your bed as soon as you get home from school and stare at the paint chipping off your ceiling for hours before your mom walks in on you. She yells at you to stop being so lazy and to do your homework that you haven't been doing for the past few months. You drag that sharp metal razor across your skin and dark red seeps through that thin line you just created. You feel in control and this physical pain on the outside overcomes your emotional pain on the inside. You're afraid of death but think about dying - drowning, jumping off buildings, carbon monoxide, and overdosing on your mom's meds. And eventually, the thought of death no longer scares you.