Today I am wearing

A tired scowl on my face

And a battered heart on my sleeve.

One long day

In a storm of willful ignorance

And here I am.

Two hours of explaining myself

To people who don't listen

To inconvenient truths.

Three comments

Of tone policing

And false progression.

Four years of fighting

For autonomy from a

Controlling mother - dead or alive.

Five years agonizing

Over a scumbag

From my past's release.

Six years of abuse

Thrown in my face

By a false movement.

Seven other victims around me

Feeling the same...but knowing

There are countless more of us.

Eight paragraphs about the issue;

Questionable (at best) "reasons"

Behind excusing this "movement".

Nine times I have to hear

About the immorality of the LGBT

And non-members' assumptions.

Ten years of gaslighting;

Sweeping my attempts at healing

Under the rug for convenience.

Eleven times to ask for help,

Only to be barred

From facing my demons head-on.

Twelve years old, being slut shamed

For my figure; slut shaming myself

Because that's what he made me feel like.

Thirteen years he'll be in jail -

A lifetime that I'll deal

With his actions.

Thirteen reasons why

I am disgusted by the idea

Of "MAPs" normalizing their shit desires.

In times when the world seems like an abyss,

And loneliness gets too hard to miss;

Fear not the you thus though know,

But live on in this world shelled emptiest glow.

And hug and kiss, live, laugh, love!

What's the use the of crying just smile and shrug-

A simple lesson learnt today to live more tomorrow-

Fear not the struggles of life's heart felt sorrow.

And though relations set ship and sail,

Your the captain who'll sink if you live to fail.

So dream big and live large in life's tiniest space,

Live on right now because tomorrow may be a total waste!

Thinking about suicide is part of the background noise of my daily life. When I’m well I catch myself thinking about how people in my life would react to my death, or inventing elaborate scenarios that kill me. I often invent some heroic, self sacrificing death that validates my life and existence at the very end.

When I’m not well, or let my mind wander too far afield, my thoughts become actively suicidal. There is almost always an active plan in my head. How I will do it. Method, avoiding trauma to others who will find me. The plan evolves and changes over the years, but there is always one. I sometimes enter a kind of practical, macabre state and assemble the things I need for the plan and make sure I have them around in case I choose to end it all. I have those items now around my home.

Mostly, I waffle between the two extremes. Not really doing all that well, and not really plunging down the rabbit hole into the dark. Just bouncing between the two, because I can’t really trust either one - feeling good, or feeling bad. So I hang out in a melancholy garden of life that never blooms, but never quite dies either.

News of high profile suicides always has an impact on me. Especially by successful people, or people I respect. My mind always starts asking the same questions.

“If he/she, with all that money, those resources, all those people around them, couldn’t survive their mental illness, how can I possibly avoid killing myself?”

“Maybe they are right. Maybe there is a limit where you eventually have to follow through. Am I there?”

“Is my next bought of depression destined to be the last? I don’t have money, resources, or people around me. Is it inevitable?”

Robin Williams was really hard. And I know that I’m not the only mentally ill person who deals with suicidal thoughts who feels that way. A good friend of mine has a child fighting mental illness. When I came out to him and really showed him my illness, I mentioned how the Williams suicide had hit me. It had hit his kid very hard as well.

“Fuck Robin Williams,” he said with some bitterness in his voice.

Kate Spade is having a similar but less intense effect on me. I generally hide my illness from everyone in my life. My closest friends know the details now. They saved me a couple years ago after I checked myself into the local mental health ward so I wouldn’t follow through on some particularly powerful urges to end myself.

I didn’t know much about Spade, and didn’t have the respect and admiration for her that I did for Williams. But it’s still grabbing me more than I like. She had supports. People who loved her knew about her illness and challenges. She could afford any treatment or resources she wanted. She had no financial worries. She was in active treatment and on medication.

She still killed herself.

People don’t understand this illness. Or the random, role-of-the-dice nature of treating it. There is no model that we know works. Sometimes, there is no truly effective treatment. Unfortunately, unlike other illnesses, it take only a moment of surrender for the disease to jump from managed to fatal, and no way to predict and intervene in that internal momentary process.

This tragic death, like all the high profile suicides before it, will inspire others to follow through on their own suicide. Not inspire, no. It will convince them that their despair will never be conquered, and be the tipping point in their own struggle.

Should we be covering these things in the media openly?

I remember the days when celebrities were dying and no one would talk about the disease that killed them - AIDS.

There was so much shame and disgrace associated with that disease then. If you had AIDS, it was because of your choices, your lifestyle. It was your fault.

Mental illness carries the same disgusting labels and prejudice. Often its much worse. We are convinced we are weak, broken, less than everyone else. I’ve lost a lot of people in my life since I checked myself into that hospital. People I loved, whom I thought loved me.

We must discuss it openly and beat down that stigmatism. But we have to look around, watch the people we love who are struggling and make sure they know you love them as they are. You accept them as they are. Not in spite of their illness, not because of who they have the potential to be, and not because of the great person you think they will be when they get over their illness.

Replace “mentally ill” with “has cancer” and re-read that last paragraph. We must treat the mentally ill like they have a disease. We must treat them the same way we would expect to treat someone with cancer.

Neither one is a choice. But many of the mentally ill must find a reason to choose not to kill themselves at times like this.

Be that reason for someone.

You will never be responsible if someone chooses to kill themselves, that is their disease and their tolerance for it.

But you can be responsible for someone choosing to live.

She was simply a complex enigma that draped confidently upon the coy darkness dripping from her never ending sparkle.

A true sparkle full of poetically absurd whispering roars in nights amnesia for days memory. A sparkle that could provide gifts and promise implausibilities. 

She embraced irony and rejoiced in moments the world could provide nothing, more or less, than everything, in the slight of irony’s grandeur.

She adorned sparkle’s sass.

Related Write: https://theprose.com/post/218722/warrior-sister

Image: NastyLady - Deviant Art

Learning something new

Another birthday as you grew

Toddling towards maturation

Along ye way from conception

Clumsy-unsteady limbs

Stumbling on apparent deceptions

Festering-pestering

Developing one’s narrow perception

Joining teams throughout one’s teens

An identity entity crisis

Lost ’mong the mobscene...

Info deemed rare so eagerly shared

Unverified-but who in hell cares

Saliva & the spectacles

Dumb hanging testicles

But a common way

Doth approach yer news...

Such as opinionated

Biased point of views

Optics of the financially shrewd

Truth even second to moods

Twisted & spun

Meant to elude

Sole focused energy

’Bout the discussions

On who’s hot & what’s a fussin’

Who’s right & those pinned

Wrong & left slighted & a blushin’

Common sense’s dead

A few mourners now linger bereft

The rest simply oblivious it’s death...

Provocative memes replace

Well planned paragraphs

Critical thought’s now a tiresome task

Comprehension divided by half

I hide my face behind my hands...

Cerebral echoes-witty tweeting

Self defeating emoji laughs

Uttering idiom

Among the chattering daft

“Education wasted on the ignorant”

An oxymoron lost to the current

Down stream from someone’s lips

Into your vacant dreams

Spilling forth filth

Feeding churning seas of abhorrence

No amount of debate can

Embattle such a wretched torrent

Searched & seized

No knock warrants

Submission then reliance

Those in defiance

Subjects of pain compliance

Pandemic becomes one’s social illness

Ruthless reality with no forgiveness

“Paranoia just may destroy ya...”

This bubble is mine

No one can get in this

“Helter Skelter

Gimme Shelter”

Black & blue

Belt buckle welted

Security condescending

Granted freedoms insulted

Lives sampled

Liberties trampled

Behold your panopticon

It’s mirrored eyes

Calculating our world it intrudes upon

Assimilation on the rise

Average Joe raised on lies

A parody analogy

Decomposition & it’s stink

Decommissioning what one thinks

Obedience to paper men

And law printed ink

Earn a place in rank

The rest just splintered bones

Beneath the tanks

Numbers & power

Blood & banks

Acrid abandon

Desert flowers

All devoured

As we give thanks

Nothing’s new

We just never knew...

My eyes glaze as I gaze

Up at the deepest blue

Drawing in a moment of

Life deep into the lung

An ascending of cognition

Rung over rung

Aware ye heading

Poets do tell

A life of fables for

Other’s future ye sell

Numbers & power

Blood & banks

All devoured

As we give thanks

Splintered bones beneath the tanks...

Nothing’s new...

You’re only centered within

A dimension encompassing you

Reactive to each experience...

Chance, seemingly so new

Per sensory appearance...

Hiding my pain,

What would it take,

To remember my name,

Don't watch my face,

Become wet with rain.

Remember the first day,

Long long ago,

I wish you would stay,

You ask how I am,

I just say I'm okay.

May I ask again, send a plea,

What would it take,

For you to remember me?

Singing storms starstruck sermons surmise, surprisingly suffocating, sentimental stones.

Swaths sewing strife striping statues staggered, strangely sated, silently signing surrender.

Sorrow’s surprise summoned shrapnel, saturating stature’s stranded, synagogue suddenly.

Striking strongly, subjects soundlessly serenade, stupendous saintly solidarity.

Spectacular symphonies, solidify song structures, summoning Saturday’s Shadow.

I tried to forgive

I tried to love you without cautions

took down the tape

see I stopped acting like I am not a crime scene

I took off the bullet proof chest

and gave you the gun

took it off safety

cause we argeed we could trust each other not to hurt each other

get to close , we pull the rope tighter around each other

neck , were a see-saw

we run through the highs and lows

picking apart

old wounds

creating scars

we been through hell

but the burns are still hot

old self vanished

cut the thorns off this rose

cause I hate the sight of blood

see I tried to let of go the past

but it keep chasing us

I tried to forgive myself

you say , the past doesn’t matter

I try to tell you boy I am crazy as the mad hatter

your the one who handed me a gun , expect me to not to aim

sometimes the greatest enemy is ourself

I could take theese nails , and carve out my brains

and you would still love me

see we stuck in these four walls

caving into us

trying to break us apart

the world’s weight hovering over our shoulders

sometimes it feel like , the universe telling us

we ain’t mean to be

Man down

wouldn’t find another

won’t let you suffer

see I feel your heart flutter

lights off

lights on

making love

cause that’s the only we can do to turn down theese demons

we got all these obstacles

I put that weight in your heart

I tear your room apart

flip your world inside and out

walk upside down

just to reach you

walk across water

ain’t even close to jesus

you walk through hell

to be next to me

you love me , even though it hurts you

see if the past

didn’t come creep up on us

we could be happy

we too demons madly in love

we fell from earth

we ain’t holy enough to rest in heaven

see we found solace in the discomfort of pain

they say to let this go

they say we chasing infinty

maybe we got that forever love

ripped out my heart

tried to use my heartless

then you go again

perform cpr

until I come back to you

moan into your mouth

and parched lips

gulping your air

merged into you

became unmoveable in your mountains

go ahead and hurted you

start playing with the trigger

cause the voice’s got too loud

I know when I hurt me , I hurt you

Man down , I tried to stop the bleeding

and my hands kept figdeting around the hole

those blue eyes could swallow oceans

see these brown eyes are darker enough to bury souls

forgive my temper

I cock this gun so quick

my mind armed like a soilder

I got to protect the only thing left human in me

held me under

the atmosphere

love sounds really good

but they forget to mention

it is the only thing close’s to death

maybe were afraid of dying

by the hand of each other

we circle around each other

like were in battle

see we know cupid

got us fucked up

man down

we too late

from stopping the damage

we ain’t happy

we will keep eating paint chips

until we drink each other

fill each other memories

with the taste of us

cause even the darkest hour

the truth shudders

through the walls

we in this too deep

see we grew into a tree

fighting for oxygen

trying to let this heart stay open for you

holding out for us

we working through this bullshit

but this foundation of ours

is cracking under all theese hits

see we built a world

where the sun don’t shine

cause according to god

even good people

sin

and the evil men win

see we stiched smiles to are face

and we keep saying we okay

and yelling at each other

saying we need space

we keep leaving the door open just in case

see all we ever do is chase

each other

laugh it off

like the

only reason

I care

cause your like a brother

but you know after you there can’t be another

see I treat you like you was mine own

cheer you on like I am your mother

see I replay theese messages on my phone

I know we better off on our own

deep down

we out here acting like a clown

wearing a frown

we our are not afraid to drown

see we not afraid of being alone

see we are afraid of what happens

when we grown

will we get old

and forget about the stories we told

and the sercerts we kept .......,

see I could tell you the truth , but I rather stay on this throne

and not crack this crown

sincerly , Tyla

they say you feel blue and that’s true but it’s more than that you actually feel the color and i don’t know how to explain other than you just do like the ocean- navy and maybe indigo and a whole lot of black too a jay bird’s feather not the weather- for that you make me feel grey. like low hanging clouds and fog and mist i'm lost and i'm pissed all i wanted was a kiss maybe a little more but definitely more than this strike me like lightning i just feel like fighting and then you make me feel red with rage like spilt blood from the cuts i made on the page i just want to sink into the copper lakes of oklahoma that stain my shoes and the color white- but that’s one color i’ll never feel because no matter how far back i peel my skin i’m bruised and beaten and reeling about from your clouts steal my heart i don’t want to fall apart but i never was that smart most brains are pink but mine is not and that’s another color i won’t ever feel- pink is innocence and contentment but you were scared of commitment and threw me aside like an unwanted shipment god dammit

i’m sick and tired of feeling colors

they said rainbows were beautiful and symbolize promises but promises are made to be broken i'm broken you did this to me you made me feel green like i was growing but you made sure to treat me like a weed maybe i am maybe that's all i'll ever be but maybe i'm not tired of feeling colors

maybe i'm tired of feeling me