This is a song that I wrote when I was just beginning to emerge from a particularly debilitating, months-long depression. For me, this was the first one that lasted this long and was this severe.

Today I looked outside my window

And let the light come streaming in.

I realized that I'd forgotten

How it felt upon my skin.

So I decided to take a walk

To pretend that I was really me.

Like I had never simply checked out,

And now I needed to rejoin society.

The wind was biting on my face

And I realized somehow the seasons had changed.

I didn't know how much time had passed

Or how to explain how it had gone both so slow and so fast.

I made my way back home

I felt so drained just from being in the world.

I picked up my guitar

And for the first time in a while a piece of me unfurled.

#lyrics

I have been asleep for a long time. I’m in a dark place without a light to shine. I’m on a road with broken bones and broken stones. I have scars and bruises I try to hide, trying to protect my pride. I wish the world would eat me whole, and leave me there bear and cold. With all this pain and all this hate, breaking me down until I dissipate.

I am held down by shadows in a sea of faces who are going places. I watch but I do not approach in hopes to never be broke. I walk around trying not to make a single sound. My limbs are weak they have no feeling. I am moving but no longer seeing.

Behind a smile or a laugh is where my pain tries to hide pleading for help from deep inside. There is always rain but no longer pills, I am just trying to get up these hills. I go to church but I never pray. In my mind, I speak what I do not say. Waiting and listening to what God has to say.

From the outside looking in, there is always merriment and tenderness. From the inside looking out, there is a war without a doubt. Thunder and lightning cracks the skies. As the storm rages and the clouds cry there is a sound that cannot wait. Buried deep down inside and long forgotten, there is a door and someone is knocking.

As a glistening light precise the sky a voice rings loud and wide. A voice tried and true one I always knew. Once quiet but always there is now forever loud and clear. The shadows are gone the barriers broken. The flood gates are open and I receive what was once stolen. There will always be pain and hate, but today I choose to awake.

#Poetry

The suffocating breaths. The horror of lives unlived. The waste of talent. The waste of you. Breath in, breath out. Count five things. Ground yourself. Useless advice for the racing mind. How is noticing a plant, a dirty coffee cup, the remote control not put away, a piece of paper, and your children’s shoes throw askew in the corner of the room supposed to change the fact that your life is racing to its final destination? All it reminds you of is your failure to once again clean. Your inability to move and do the most basic of tasks.

No wonder you wasted your life. You can’t even keep a house clean. You can’t get your children to pick up their stuff. You’re a failure at everything you touch. Why would you be a failure at living too?

You tried to die. 38 years has shown you’re a failure at that too. You can’t do a fucking thing right. Only a true fuck up can fuck up that. Hundreds of thousands of people die every day and yet here you sit with a heart racing out of your chest. You fucking coward you don’t deserve anything you’ve been given. You waste everything. The air you turn into carbon dioxide is a waste for everyone except the plants and they probably would do better to feed off the rotten corpse of your body.

And yet you persist like ants in the kitchen. The impossible houseguest. No one wants you around. They try to poison your soul. Drown your spirit and like the ants you carry on your life oblivious to everyone’s attempts to sabotage you. You hold the line and soldier forward. Will they eventually get tired of your sad excuse of a human carcass and call the exterminators? Maybe Hitler was right. Some people just don’t deserve to live and you’re one of them. And yet you persist like the half dead plant on the kitchen table.

@meganrosee

She hides in the light. She dances the dance that is expected of her. She straightens her hair and puts on bright colors. She walks among you. You may even think she is one of you. Her green eyes and pink lips tell you she’s ok. They tell you that she has everything. You find yourself wanting to be her. But out of the light, darkness comes crashing in like a tidal wave. Washing all the color from her. You can see her green eyes rimmed in sadness. Her lips cracked and pained from biting them all day. The girl she shows you is not the girl you see. She walks in darkness shrouded in gray. She will play the part, but she will never be like you. She will wear her mask. She will laugh at all the right places and dance the dance that is expected of her.

Depression is when there's one sheet of toilet paper left

on the roll, and you can't be bothered to change it -

Is it laziness, or depression?

The eternal question.

Depression feels like when your roommate changes the roll,

and you think -

It could all be so simple.

But your brain simply doesn't work that way.

---

And when he said, of his depression -

Today I lost.

I need people to know that this state of being

doesn't feel right,

Even to me.

Today I lost.

I lost the battle against toilet paper. And if that's not depression at its core, I don't know what is. It won. And I lost.

Makes me feel gross, sub-human. There are so many people that use the word for hyperbole, saying it as 'I am depressed' rather than 'I am feeling depressed'. Depression is a constant state of misery. The best I can do as an escape is a distraction.

When I say my emotional truth, people that haven't suffered see it fit to tell me 'Others have it worse, get your shit together'. Obviously, that is how to cure depression. (Please take ntoe of my sarcasm)

Nothing good can come from depression.

It's nothing but

Loving the person

Who

U should not love.

Who

will never love you

It starts when one gives up

Something impossible

Too much

Overwhelmed anger

Irritation

Everything is too much

Then nothing

Angry sparks quickly drowned

A stillness

Life sapped out

Time drags on

Time overlaps

An aimless ship without direction

Helpless despair

repeated cycles difficult to stop

Try and Try and Try

Never enough

A never ending battle

Flimsy equipment

Never choosing where to start

After choosing

Easier to battle

Easier to see

Strengthened heart

Boundaries met

Burning strong like never before

NO longer my identity

A person of my own creation

One battle at a time

The unforeseen, the unheard and the silent killer. It's blindsiding approaches are the pain that’s too much to cope with, too hard to deal with and so misunderstood. You can’t escape it no matter how hard you try, because it follows you around like a black shadow that’s on the inside, eating you alive. It's the enemy without a remedy that always gets the best of me. Accompanied by anxiety, it attacks in spurts and all I can do is cry, because it feels like I'm dying. All I can do is try to breathe until it passes, and eventually it does. Depression & anxiety is real. It's a struggle and the struggle is real.

Is it just me or does love feel so unfamiliar and free, it’s not foreign but it’s written in a language i have to unweave from my heart to my head, it’s written in silent words and hints and feelings that I tangle with in my bed, when I think about you, I think about love, I feel silly, it’s not enough that I’ve fallen, no, I’ve tumbled and tripped and dipped into your arms and your lips enough to lose myself, enough to need help when it’s finally time to rise. I’m a fool, this love thing does terrible things to my reason, I try to resolve for myself, but my first thought is pleasing you, you first, I feel as you do and if you hurt, I got the pain, I have the weight, whatever you hold, I’ll take, without thinking, what is love, is this love, I don’t know if I am strong enough, for all of this chaos