#MightyPoets

I been in a weird space lately…
the kind of space where silence is loud.
Where my voice
my Black woman voice
starts to feel like a risk

In a world where race is “controversial,”
my body still remembers
It’s been carrying the weight of oppression
long before my mind
could name the pain

See, I’ve got a lot to say
I been trying to speak
but my thoughts are engulfed
in other people’s comfort,
making silence feel safer
than vulnerability

I feel the risk
The cost of being an unemployed Black woman
with the inevitable truth
that I have something to lose
a career before I even step foot
on the professional scene

“Be wise. Be careful.”
As if caution ever kept a Black woman safe
As if shrinking ever saved us

There’s a tug-of-war inside me
my soul pulling toward purpose,
my fear clinging to survival

My support divided:
half saying, “Play it safe.”
the other half saying,
“Burn it all down.”

God…
You said I could walk through fire
and not get scorched
But this
this heat,
this waiting,
this silence
this right here
feels like hell!!
#MightyPoets #Depression #MentalHealth #Anxiety #Journaling #Grief

Writing ruined me.

It personifies failure

And wasted my life.

#Depression #Suicide #PTSD #Trauma #MentalHealth #Disability #MightyPoets

How wild is it that I carried you under my skin, heartbeat synced to heartbeat, and now I can’t even string the right words together to reach you? I built you cell by cell, bone and breath, and here we are strangers in the same bloodline.

The cruelest ache isn’t anger. It’s loving someone so hard it rattles your ribs, while biting it back because you’re terrified you’ll get it wrong, terrify them, push them further. Loving from the sidelines like some ghost parent. Screaming silently: I love you. Please hear it. Please believe me.

And somehow that love louder than any storm, still feels locked in my chest.

I get it. You weren’t raised by me. You didn’t grow up experiencing my bipolar morning rituals and phases of “I need coffee first” and the “I’m not a coffee drinker”, you don’t know that I just have a natural “resting bitch face” or that sarcasm is how I cope, you’ve never got to see just how bubbly I really can be. How is it that not even one percent of you seems to carry any of my traits? None of my quirks, my stubborn grin, my quick-fire humor. Just an empty mirror when I look at you, hunting for myself.

I’ll never tell you this, but I am terrified of you. I walk on eggshells around my own child, trying not to say the thing that lights the fuse. Most days I pull back, skip the texts, dodge the moment, because I don’t want to step up and “parent” you and risk the explosion. Even asking you to pick up after yourself feels like lighting a match in a dry field.

It’s shameful to admit I avoid my own kid because of fear. The silence between us is heavy, like there’s a glass wall I can’t break without cutting both of us to ribbons. I don’t know if this is what redemption is supposed to feel like. Watching you drift farther while my chest caves in with love I can’t safely hand you.

I pray so hard that the anger and hurt you carry loosens its grip on you. Even for just a breath, a heartbeat. The anger you carry is louder, heavier, more expressive than anything I’ve ever known, and it scares me. I look at you and see a spark in your eyes that tells me, without hesitation, you could hurt me. That some part of you even wants to. I never dreamed the person I’d fear most in my life would be a human I once carried inside of me.

I keep wondering if you’ll ever see how much I’ve fought for sobriety, for stability, for a life I can hand you with open palms. I wonder if the years I wasn’t there carved out a canyon too deep to cross.

All I know is that I still love you messy, terrified, clumsy love that refuses to die, even when I’m too scared to reach for your hand.

I’m waiting in a cold sweat as the bell begins to ring.

Fighting to stave off panic, for I understand not a thing.

‘Cause at nine o’clock, an exam will deal me a mighty blow

Reminding me once again that my IQ is mighty low

Mighty low, yeah

When I try to read the questions they leap up off the page

Raining down in random letters a blackened blinding haze

It would take five hours to understand what is being asked

My test is mostly blank when the examination hour has passed

The teachers tsk and shake their heads at their dimmest student yet

“How stupidly will he die? Teachers, place your bets!”

Sadly I am not my dimmest inside a school room

Whenever a girl smiles at me, I swear I fairly swoon

I asked the checkout girl to marry me as she returned my change

Her boyfriend pummeled me half to death and made me eat the wedding ring

When the ring got stuck, Youtube said I could do my own bowel resection

The paramedics said “For those this stupid, surely Hippocrates made an exception?”

As the EMT’s reluctantly wheeled me into the ambulance

The homeless bum I bought my surgical instruments from cried, “God be nice!”

Nice try, homeless guy, but a broken bottle cannot slice

It perforates the bowel more, and I know this from experience

And though my end is near I am not sorry; my soul cannot fly away.

It cannot tell where, if there is window glass there, and you surely know the rest.

It hasn’t been easy to stop from screaming

Waking every morning into a degrading dream

The words escaped me when I tried to explain

No one would have understood them anyway.

Tears fall, I am finally crying

Finally at peace, the gift of dying.

Hollow be my brain.

#Depression #Suicide #Trauma #PTSD #MentalHealth #MightyPoets #Disability

When you're talkin' to everyone

And they look through you

As if you aren't there

The shame burns, feeling like a fool

You should have known

That this place is a loaded gun

Blasting your issues into your brain

You know that you are better off shunned

Ancient wounds have me old before my time

But I'm too young to harden my heart

Young at heart as I turn to stone

Must keep my mind from flying apart

I don't know what you want from me

Or why you attack my thoughts and dreams

I stand before you all, my throat bared

This place compels me to share everything

Because my mind is bleeding

I wish I could keep it inside

Wish that no one was ever annoyed

By the words that wash an endless infection

From the hopes of a long gone little boy

Still talkin' to everyone

And I'm an echo or a ghost

I know what you want from me

Order to my thoughts and dreams

To stand before you all, my throat scarred

From abuse enforcing conformity

But sunshine doesn't bleed from me

I think of all the reasons

That I do not belong

Why do I stand here, neck deep in my own wounds?

What curse lies upon this place?

Maybe it had the scent of a safe glade

Where I could shed my skin.

Beneath my hide the monster hid

The scent was threatening, carnage in the air

The trap sprung as I spewed words unsafe, @everyone beware

The mods surrounded me with sharpened words

"This place is safe for us, not you, you who bears this curse."

I failed to fit

Too many times to ever return

Every try sees another bridge burn

I fled in the tatters of my skin

Bearing the weight of a grievous sin

I made others feel uncomfortable

While their attacks on me the mods ignored

The double standard a punishment I deserve

The wounded cannot be welcomed anywhere

When the lights are strange in haunted eyes

And the blood stains pages upon pages until we know why

I wander, on and on

Searching for a place beyond

The grind

The pitiless grind

Of people

I knew that I would not belong

Was it foolish to even try?

All I've ever known is rejection

As my hopes have slowly died.

Based on "Estranged," by Guns 'n' Roses. It describes my experiences at a Discord server.

#Depression #Suicide #Trauma #PTSD #MentalHealth #Disability #MightyPoets

I was lucky that

My ambitions never soared

I fell five stories

With each rejection

And shattered my patchwork bones

Jagged edged, impaled

My body, bleeding

A bone-sludge I drag screaming

The ladder, so far

The voices giggle

"You will make it, keep trying

One more time, what harm?"

I can't grip the rung

My hand slips in the red mud

Iron tinged vomit

The blood dries enough

A post it note grip, I'm up

Delirium borne

Staring down below

The fall didn't break me, you know.

My bones broke against

Hope.

I have no expectation that anyone is going to understand what I experience when my work is rejected. Maybe this poem will shed some light on this as I work my issues out in a broader sense.

#Depression #Suicide #PTSD #Trauma #MentalHealth #Disability #MightyPoets