The words never come out.

How can they from the lips of a swollen mouth?

The swollen sores that make me retreat from the outside world.

Waiting to scream, but too timid to hurt. Wanting to yell and get the thing that has been festering inside for all of these years. Time compounded on every. single. line. They said.

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#poetry #lifeofabipolarwriter #dayinthelifeofawriter #mentalhealthjourney

The words never come out.

How can they from the lips of a swollen mouth?

The swollen sores that make me retreat from the outside world.

Waiting to scream, but too timid to hurt. Wanting to yell and get the thing that has been festering inside for all of these years. Time compounded on every. single. line. They said.

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#poetry #lifeofabipolarwriter #dayinthelifeofawriter #mentalhealthjourney

today.

today is the kind of twisting tango.

not the twisted.

I feel good.

I feel fine.

I like this feeling, feeling more than alright.

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#poetry #onepoemaday #poems #mentalhealth

Today is jolting.

My brain.

The neurons firing

The capacity is endless, the signals teeming, brimming with potential.

My body.

it's fast. but it's slow in comparison to that brain.

I wish everyday could be this inspiring.

I wish every single day could hold this much creativity.

However,

it is tiring.

I want to hold onto the endless space. But I know there's more to life.

That's good.

The up is terrifying

the down is

down.

The hope is the day that can be had. just like this day. that is enough.

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#poetry #poetrylife #manicwriter #mentalhealth #lifeofabipolarwriter

How can I be so dumb and smart at the same time?

The reactions are the rolling of the eyes, the generalized disgusted wariness. The signs of disbelief mixed with perceived egoic exaggeration.

But that doesn’t change the imprint of

there’s something wrong here.

And there is. and there was.

How can I recite four different languages and within the same hour, run straight into walls. Bruises blushing across my legs.

My sleep deprivation so bad that I can't even bathe myself without falling and cracking my head open.

Can I be alone?

The hands that were so agile. The ones that guided my pencil to the page, the ones that helped me create the art that I used to show the innermost darknesses that I had always kept hidden away.

My body. The one that danced for years.

That guided me gracefully across that stage. So strong and capable.

And now, I have to have someone guide me into the bathtub and wash me while I sob.

Ashamed at my apparent physical weakness.

My entire life.

I have been in constant decay and revitilization.

Not the subtle decay of the body aging, but the state of my mind. Pacing, erasing, easing, and startling myself back into unknown states of reality.

What is real?

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#poetry #lifeofabipolarwriter #manicpoems #mentalhealth

The first time I felt shame

I was in the sixth grade.

I came home crying 

Because I felt a predator prey.

I told my parents 

I was crying and they wanted to know why.

Shame came through for the first time.

My fears were irrational.

My tears were unjustified because my thinking was deemed petrified, made up.

There can be no terrors in youth.

The second time I cried, I was irrational because I messed up that table. The table that was was older than me.

There's wisdom in the antique.

I am nothing in my youth.

I hid.

I ran across state lines because there was no belief in my words.

How could there be when something is constructed in the mind of a young woman who knows nothing of herself.

Or so they thought.

The words of doubt singed in my mind,

I questioned every uncertainty from that point on.

One dramatized line after another 

I crafted another reality, according to them.

And maybe I still craft the thing that makes me a victim. 

Or maybe I'm speaking from experience.

They will never know until it's all taken for granted.

Until the words stop bleeding from my being.

I will be invisible. 

Her skin

The flesh raises in singular bumps, tiny mountains rise, 

they form the patterns on her skin as her hairs stick straight up. 

The repercussions of my touch. 

Her hair

To her is something that grows on her head, 

to me is her story. 

She smells good there. She carries the follicles that grow into potential. 

She carries her identity. 

Her smile

The radiant burst of energy that comes. 

It could fool death, the mortal. 

Her feet

They meet each other as she lays down, connected with my flesh. 

Her stretch marks

that wrap around her juiciest curve.

They hug the line of her hips.

All I want to do is kiss every single tree branch where they appear and multiply,

until each and every one melds into the veins that course through my skin.

I stare at the beauty that is her imperfection.

Even when she turns away, the embarrassed pink hue creeping upon her face.

I want to keep staring, my eyes lingering, wavering over the body that holds this beauty.

Her laugh

The thing that carries me over to the next day.

She is nothing but these things. She is everything except these things. She is the thing that alludes me and in that place I harbor my love. 

One day I woke up,

and that was enough to set me back. 

I don't always feel like I'm trudging through life like this,

but when I do, I'm alone.

I've tried to take a companion.

And it's not their fault that they may never get it.

They're not unintelligent, they're not oblivious.

Living a life with these constant ups and downs causes me to cut myself off from humans.

Sometimes I stay awake at night, as the sun bleeds into my room.

4:30 am

I am still laying there, hopelessly yearning for an hour of shutting my eyes.

They say I'm not in a pattern. I need to have a schedule for myself, then I will sleep.

But have I never had one? 

Isn't life one scheduled day after another?

Sometimes things just come and go.

They say that I'm okay and maybe I am. 

There's nothing consoling about telling me how I am.

I think I've lived with that knowledge, that seated intuition that I at least know myself.

Is it that you can't trust my constant mental cycling?

That maybe I don't know myself because I'm always in overdrive, or I'm too tired to care.

I'm tired of labeling, but in my label I feel that I finally have that legitimacy that I've been waiting for. 

That one thing I can call upon with absolute certainty. 

Everyday is a challenge but it's nothing I'm not used to.

For now, I choose to try. 

I choose to have companionship, not because they will fully understand, but because they are trying to. 

Roses are red. 

The red that creeps out of a gaping mouth, wide for too long.

The concave nature of the in-between space. 

Violets are blue.

Bluer than that inner pool that swallows up the semblance of self. 

Drawing you deeper as you try to ascend. 

The mark I bear has always been with me.

But you say that it’s too subtle.

Are you really like that though?

The question that pierces through your outer layer, you can’t help but feel that searing tinge of pain as you look into the eyes of the human that will never know your struggle.

But there is no mark on your forehead.

It’s not in plain sight like you thought.

You harbor it inside, where it’s safe.

There is no sign of something that will place you as other than normal, healthy.

You may never get them to see through the mind and the eyes of someone who is barely hanging on.

That doesn’t matter now.

It doesn’t matter because you smile when they tell you about your own experiences.

You laugh when they make light of discomfort.

You pretend that it doesn’t matter.

In their world, it never will.

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#poetry #mentalhealth #lifeasbipolar