It seems that in its search for eternal balance, my brain has decided that for every time I feel good, I must feel equally and oppositely bad.

Whenever I get to a point where I can let my consciousness surrender my control, I have noticed that my subconscious steps right back in to retake it.

If I wrote an old timey diary I’d be diagnosed bipolar, in the morning it would say,

“I think I can do this,”

And in the evening it will say,

“You didn’t, and you can’t.”

An unkind mind will make you wonder if all of your accomplishments exist or if they are just an elaborate effort of manipulating memories so that when you go to sleep at night you are able to say,

“Everything is OK.”

Poetry helps me communicate because poetry allows me to write how I think, and my mind is poetry. I think all of our minds are poetry. I think that by practicing poetry we are practicing knowing ourselves, and sharing important lessons to those we love. I think that by practicing appreciating poetry we can practice appreciating others, learning to speak to listen and not to speak back. I think poetry can be a wonderful escape from mental illness, because now I’m thinking about poetry instead of how mean my brain can be to itself.

I have accidentally felt so much that I can’t feel anything else until the next wave of anxiety has me feeling fear. I feel this indifference eroding the corners of my soul.

Maybe the thoughts of others wouldn’t be so hard to decipher if we thought of them as poems. Maybe then their screams into the void could be appreciated by those who understand, care, and may even have enough energy to do something about it.

Maybe they’re screaming because it’s not OK out there.

I feel like we all see mental illness against this backdrop of a world that is normal. We measure ourselves by what the average person does or what we are told they are expected to do. We deride ourselves for being unable to function in this normal world with its normal people and its normal norms, and then we look in a mirror and say,

“Everything is OK.”

Because we can’t say,

“I don’t know how to address any of my problems within the current mental health care system because I can’t tell if it is broken, I am broken, or if my getting better in the eyes of the world and society actually means I’ve broken myself beyond repair.”

I feel like we need to remember how sick the world is without taking that upon ourselves.

Alas, we are mentally ill.

I have accidentally felt so much that I can no longer continue this poem.

Call 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. It provides free and confidential support 24 hours a day, seven days a week for people in suicidal crisis or distress. You can learn more about its services here, including its guide on what to do if you see suicidal language on social media. You can also call that number to talk to someone about how you can help a person in crisis. For crisis support in Spanish, call 1-888-628-9454.

For support outside of the US, a worldwide directory of resources and international hotlines is provided by the International Association for Suicide Prevention. You can also turn to Befrienders Worldwide.

Help is Available

If you or someone you love is living with substance use, alcohol misuse, a co-occurring, or a behavioral health disorder, there is hope. The Break Free Foundation aids individuals seeking recovery through the Break Free Scholarship Fund. It sends anyone who lacks the financial resources to attend a recovery center to do so at low to no cost.

Review our Treatment Locator Tool to find the right program near you, as well as our list of Hotlines and Helplines. Click here for a list of regional and national resources. On this road to recovery, no one is alone. We are all in this together.