I've been through a lot of shit

But that's made me stronger

I'm nearly brand new

The healthier live longer

I have siblings

They mean the world to me

I live for them

To my heart

They have the key

I've broken so many times

But my mom has helped me

So have the rhymes

Like the ones you see

It's not for my friends

Since I don't have any

They come and go

Because they're rich

And I barely have a penny

I live to one day prove

I have a brain

To the country I'll move

And I won't take money in vain

So that's why

I keep living

I didn't have the stomach for a hanging.

I don't own a gun and I don't like mess.

A flick of the wheel would likely cause unacceptable collateral damage.

And while on the subject on innocents, "What would they think?"

How many generations would suffer a confusing curse of unanswered questions?

And then there is still so much yet to do.

So I smiled at my kitbag and packed up my troubles and said,

"There may well come a time you get the better of me -

but not today!"

idiotic at least

but sad at best

i live because of her

every moment the knife creeps out of hiding, i think of her and can't bring myself to do it

i'm the guy who falls in love and sees a new world

i'm the guy with no sense of self

i depend on others to keep me going

and i fear i hurt them

so when she leaves

it might not matter what i said now

and #IKeptLiving will be an irrelevant phrase

I'd like to say 

it's because I am strong

I never grew out 

of playing warrior

But I don't have

a special power

I may be made

of titanium

but I bend

I am above ground

because I am exactly 

like everyone else

I get back up

when the earth shakes

There was no reason to continue, my entire life was a wreck. I'd lost my child, my heart, and my mind. I had absolutely nothing left. I considered on the long drive into town to take my car and smash into the vehicle that was going southbound. I thought about taking all of the medicine I was given to help me function, strip my self down and go for a swim. I thought about slicing my wrists to the bone, and then I considered leaving my mother all alone. 

It wasn't because I knew

that things would get better.

It wasn't because I thought

that anyone would need me,

much less, miss me.

But it was because I 

had something to prove,

things to do.

I knew death would come soon enough,

why beckon it towards me?

Temptation leads me away,

to nightmares I am yet to escape.

I hear pleas for mercy,

ringing in my head.

Thoughts that I fight every day.

Still, no one understands

the wars I have fought

and the scars they have caused.

Reality throws stones at me,

but I still stand.

The will to live

has pulled me through.

But how far, I wonder,

until even that fails?

Death it seems is peace alone

Life's only assured thing 

The sweetest answer yet to ring

While I stand in darkness, all alone

Yet Depravity cannot but hide

Truth in all its glory!

Life and death combined in one 

I hasten not the story

For what is death without life 

Never more true a riddle 

Death a sweet, mourner's song

And life, a lively fiddle 

Which is more worthy? 

I shall never know 

How might I keep one

And leave the other go? 

So choose I not between the two 

But pursue with all my might 

The one in which I find myself 

A true and noble fight 

I don't want to bore you.

I don't want to be another entry you skim over.

I want to tell you that even at your lowest point, there is hope.

Two years ago, I tried to escape into the sky and leave this world behind; however, it did not work.

Since then, I tried to escape in other ways. In harm, alcohol, smoke.

That seems to be the truth among us as people: we are always trying to plan our escape.

Yet it was in my escapes that I found a reason to hold on.

I found love.

I tossed the crumpled up piece of paper on the floor where it joined the others. There must have been fifty of them. I sighed and leaned back in my chair. I knew that no matter how I wrote it, they wouldn't understand.

A shout came from downstairs, my younger brother calling everyone down for dinner. I ran my hands through my hair, and stared for a moment at the knife I'd bought earlier that day. I shoved it hurriedly under my bed and went downstairs.

"...could have shouted. I wanted you to go and get them," my mom was telling my brother. An unbidden smile tugged at the corners of my mouth; mom had said the exact same thing to me on a few occasions.

After dinner I went back to my room. The pain was still there, weighing down on my soul and threatening to consume me. Loneliness, despair, guilt, shame, hopelessness, all were vying for my attention while a little voice told me that I didn't have to feel those things anymore. All I had to do was get the knife from under the bed and...

But I couldn't. Because they wouldn't understand. My family didn't know what I felt, they didn't understand my pain. They would blame themselves, no matter what my note said.

I picked up the nearest piece of paper and uncrumpled it. I scoffed at the clumsy words that stubbornly refused to tell my family why I'd done what I'd done.

"You have to carry on," said something inside me. "You have to fight the pain."

"I can't, it's too much." I don't remember grabbing the knife, but it was in my hand; it's blade promised relief, an end to the pain.

"You can fight it."

"There's nothing left for me. No reason to go on."

"Then don't do it for you. Do it for them." And I thought about my dad, smiling through dinner. And about my mom, asking each of us how our day went. My youngest sister telling us about something exciting she learned in school, and my brother bragging about his first place science project.

And I knew they loved me, even when I didn't love myself. Maybe they didn't understand my pain, but they had their own pain. And I couldn't add to it by going away.

The little voice wasn't as insistent as the emotions, and it wasn't as loud as the voice that told me I deserved to die. But it was right: I had to carry on. For them.

I used to ask myself that question before. Why live when you can die today and suffer no more? Why live when death and life appear to be the same thing? Then I figured out that they just look like so but are entirely different. I was given life so I can live for others and not for myself. I suffer for the people I care for, I breathe for them and I can die for them.

The greatest shame there could be for a person is to die for no reason at all. So, as long as I can, I'll live for a reason and die for that reason.