The following is a poem written 4 days ago while in the psychiatric ward. I checked myself into the psychiatric ward due to a cripplingshatteredmental health. I took the time to step back and reflect. To change my medications to better manage my diagnosis. To fully accept my diagnosis. I was letting my illness take the place of my God. I took a (very difficult) inventory of who I've been and what I want to be.

I'm not okay right now, and I might not be for a little while. But that's okay. It's okay to not be okay. My sky is still a cloudy gray, but I know the blue the blue sky is there somewhere.

This is a poignant look into my heart and the nakedness that is felt when you are in a place like the psychiatric ward where you can truly feel all of the feelings that you push down. I was already broken. I was not afraid to break more, I had the safety of the hospital around me to catch me if the feelings became too much. It is truly beautiful and tragic to feel everything so fully, but the pain captured here is a pain that demanded to be felt.

I can't say if these words will come as a shock to you or if they will affect you or not and truly i don't care. these words were not written for you.

However not sharing this would be a disservice to those truly trying to understand. this is my attempt at showing the fragility and fear that surrounds mental illness recovery.

///

The lowly caterpillar spins itself into a cocoon and freezes to death

Its blood stops flowing

Its lungs harden into ice,

Its heart comes slowly to a halt.

The heart is always the last to go.

///

I lost my soul,

My heart

MY LIFE to this diagnosis

I let these chains entangle me

///

Silencing my voice barely able to choke out “help me”

Instead, I just look to you this pained gaze

this beast distinguished my light.

I was expected to do great things

///

In the homeland that existed

I would always tell myself that I wanted to kill myself

But it was never the right time

There was always music to perform, things to draw

Great things to achieve

///

I didn’t think there would be another bad day

To write this

Because I didn’t think that there would be

A day,

///

I had found the right time.

The great thing would become a great exit.

But there is this day so I call the bad days the dark days

I'm not afraid of the dark though

Maybe that’s part of the problem.

///

This is what rock bottom must feel like.

///

because you see,Suicide is the house that I’ve been building

A final resting spot for the body

That’s turned into a gun.

///

Its backyard a graveyard of the dreams I once had.

Each tombstone representing a different expectation to do great things.

I was supposed to create a future worthy of writing on a tombstone

But creating a future without killing myself

Is terrifying.

///

I think the genes for being an artist and mentally ill

aren’t just related.

ITS

THE

SAME

Gene.

///

I used to look at a razor as the doorway to the house that I was creating.

Intricately carving each and every piece of the wood

The lines that stare at you like the welcome mat saying

“COME IN OR RUN BECAUSE MY MIND IS FUCKED UP.”

These scars are souvenirs I will never lose.

///

My depression is a shape-shifter

somedays it's as small as a fly in the palm of a bear

the next

it’s the bear.

///

The bear that scratches my skin

Making me unrecognizable.

But not killing me… yet

///

Am I afraid of Dying?

NO. that’s the problem

I am afraid of living.

This pain demands to be felt.

Hating myself is a waste of passion.

///

at the cross, I know that despair has been removed.

It drowns beneath the crushing weight of hope found in You.

Destruction

Became

Salvation.

a passionate love formed A resurrected truth.

///

Faith is NOT waiting for the sun to come.

Because sometimes the sun won’t come.

but there's still a blue sky somewhere behind the darkness of the gray clouds.

So we can still rise.

///

I used to think I lost the fighter that I once was.

Feeling unwhole

And lost.

I'd give up the fight.

But I can rise.

///

b'cuz STILL A WHOLE PERSON.

I'm still a person.

Everyday fought is another

Day won.

And suicide lost.

And so I rise.

///

I am SO LUCKY

To be living through

WHO I WAS

TO FEEL WHO I AM NOW

AND FIND OUT WHO I WILL BE ONE DAY.

I'm so lucky.

so I rise.

///

Because I was once stranded at sea.

The waves of psychosis and borderline entangling me

Depression drowning me.

I was trying to find my way back.

Back to the same shore that was my homeland.

///

Eventually, I did find a shore.

///

But it was not the

Same.

Shore.

;

It was not my homeland.

I am forced to make home in this new circumstance.

I am not the same person I once was

but I am still a person

///

Things are different now the ice around my heart that is borderline

Is slowly ever so slowly melting and chipping away into spring.

The depression that froze my lungs is letting me breathe again.

The psychosis that blocked the sun is letting me feel again

///

Ice thaws from its ventricles and just as lowly as I died

The lowly caterpillar

Awakens.

And comes back to life.

Rising

A butterfly.

***Now that I have been home for a few days and read this, I must give accreditation to Asia Samson, Niel Hilborn, and Sabrina Benaim, all wonderful souls who have helped me through my process of recovery with their words and each have influenced my writing and ideas heavily.