Mental Health Poetry

Hi, Lovelies.

It’s been a rough day. But as I began to wrap up my day, I realized that I haven’t posted anything this week on the blog. However, this week I was looking at some old writings of mine. Some poetry that I had written when I was depressed. As someone who struggles with mental health, I have days where I’m just down for no reason. And sometimes, they’re just days, sometimes they’re weeks or months. I am so thankful that I’ve gotten to a spot where most days are happy and I’m not depressed. 

But on the days that I am sad, I just let myself be sad. I read Pinterest pins about mental health. I congratulate myself for making it through the day. Sometimes, I cry. Most times, I find a good book or movie, and get lost inside them. 

I want to share some poetry I wrote at a low moment. I hope they help you as much as they help me.

Slice by Slice

Pain is a sly thing with an unsheathed knife.
Slice by Slice.
It whittles away your pieces.

Your Joy falls off,
A bloody carcass of what was.
You bleed out anger.
You leak sadness.

Energy pools out of you,
Spilling to the ground,
Sliding away from you.

You grasp at the pieces,
Trying to fit them back in,
But,
They don’t fit,
Not anymore.

Pain is a sly thing with an unsheathed knife.
Slice by Slice.
It whittles away your pieces.
Until it hits the core of who you are.

And you realize,
You
Are
Just
A walking ball of pain.

Empty

People think that numb and empty are the same thing.
They’re wrong.
Numb is when you don’t feel anything.

Empty is
So
Much
WORSE.

Empty.
You can feel it.
It radiates through every pore of your being.

There’s this hole inside you.
Huge- Deep- Endless-
It’s a chasm,
Swallowing you whole.

You fall.
Down
Deeper
Grasping for something.
But there is nothing.

You are,
Incomplete.
Empty.

F for Failure

“I’m a failure,”
I whisper as I work harder.

“I’m a failure,”
I tell myself
Tears in my eyes.

“I’m a failure,”
I say,
Because nothing I do,
Is ever enough.
There’s always more.

It’s funny.
Ironic, even.
The lowest grade you can get is an
F.

That big fat
F.
Circled in red pen,
Bold on the paper handed back to you.

The F.
That stands for,
Failure.

You failed.

And why does it matter,
You ask.

It matters because
Then,
They were right.

My birth parents
Who abandoned me on the street.

My Mom,
Who shipped me off.

The World,
That tells me I don’t belong.
That I’m too female.
That I’m too Asian.
That I should just have died when my birth parents left.

I feel like a failure.
I know I’m not.
But feelings and facts don’t always agree.

Fragile and Tough

Some say Hope is a fragile thing,
Others say that Hope is tough.

And it is,

Hope is fragile.
Delicate like a flower.
We hold it in our hands,
Scared that the slightest breeze will blow it away.

But Hope is tough, also.
It spits blood out its mouth,
Grinning as it gets back up,
Coming back for another round.

Nothing can be tough,
Until it first learns how fragile it is.

Hope is fragile
And it’s tough.
It’s allowed to be both.

It’s a contradiction within itself.
It’s a paradox.
But aren’t we all.

━━━━━━ ◦ ❖ ◦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━ ◦ ❖ ◦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━ ◦ ❖ ◦ ━━━━━━

I hope that helps you guys. And if it doesn’t, I hope you take comfort in knowing that you aren’t alone.

“None of us are really alone as long as we’re lonely.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, All the Crooked Saints