drowning.

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The past few years of my life have been hell, I can promise you that. But what I can also promise you is that I have learned so much more than I ever did in school. I've learned to admire the sunsets, because they last longer than people do. I've also learned that the human heart can break so many more ways than just in half. I've learned that sometimes scarring your wrists over and over again can make you feel so much better than a therapist patting your back and telling you it's going to be okay and that sometimes you sink because you're swimming someplace new. But I learned what the therapist doesn't tell you, is perhaps you're just god damn drowning.

The first time I thought I was drowning was when I was thirteen. I felt hopeless. I couldn't see myself in the next week and eventually that became the next day and then the next hour. I simply felt like I didn't know where I was supposed to go next. Like nothing mattered. I would lay in my bed for weeks at a time because nothing mattered. I would not get up to go to the bathroom because that's how much care I had left for myself. There was nothing left for me. So one day, I decided I was done. It was not a week long decision, it was an instantaneous decision. It ended in my lifeless body on the bathroom floor as I heard my mother screaming 'please don't leave me' in the back of my mind. After it happened she didn't rush me to the hospital once the bleeding was controlled. I think she was afraid she was going to lose me and she didn't want to spend her last minutes with me driving to a hospital that may not be able to help me.

You think about your death so often. And you think you're ready for it. You think about who would miss you, if you'd have a funeral. But when it comes, it's nothing like you thought. When I survived my suicide attempt people didn't ask about me. The school didn't talk. Everyone continued living their lives without me. And that's the fear. That you're replaceable; that you don't matter as much as you thought you did. It's the sad reality. The world kept spinning without me and the hardest part of surviving was seeing how little I mattered to this world. So, I had to learn to want to live for myself because no one else was going to ask me to stay.

I found myself again the morning after the attempt when I opened the window and smelled the fresh daisies growing in my backyard. I ran outside and danced under the sunshine. Nothing had felt that warm in a long time. I hadn't seen the sun in weeks or felt the rays on my skin and the grass beneath my feet. Nothing had been this normal in so long. I found myself feeling like someone in the novels I read; so carefree. It was beautiful when I saw the sun rise that day. I found myself wanting to see the sunlight and instead of shutting my curtains I opened them up and welcomed the natural light. I made myself some hot vanilla tea and thought to myself "I'm going to be okay." I became so free after coming so close to losing everything. I started doing things to live my life like pacing down the cold streets at midnight. I laughed with friends under the stars and I remembered that the world is so much bigger than what I thought and that there is so much more for me to discover than what I already have. I realized how nïeve of me it was to think that there was nothing left for me because there's a whole other world I've left untouched. I found myself while tracing footprints left in the sand and falling asleep to the sound of the crashing waves. I somehow found my way to the warmth of living after all the tragic and feeling the coldness of death. I found the person I was before everything. Before the pain, before the tears, before the fear engulfed me. I found her. I found the person who still believes that life is good and has hope that everything will be okay even when there isn't a shard of proof that it will.











(this was an extension of my previous poem, "learning")

you promised forever // poetryWhere stories live. Discover now