symptom check: 9 for 9

just a little bit relatable

Check your privilege?

You are lucky if you can study for psychology without being triggered by a clinical description in your textbook.

If you don't see parts of yourself in every diagnosis.

If you can memorize the diagnostic criteria for depression any other way than by checking off the symptom list.

If you have the luxury of having to speculate what it might be like to be suicidal.

If you are able to say, "Maybe they should just get over themselves."

You are immensely lucky if you can sing along to twenty one pilots without feeling as if your soul is fracturing because of their honesty.

If you have never saved a song or a quote or a text from someone special, thinking, "This might save my life next time."

If you have never run off alone into the night, hearing the steps of all the ghosts chasing you that you still aren't and never will be rid of.

If you have never had to hide letter openers and X-Acto blades.

If you are able to live for the now and not worry about where you might be the next time things go wrong.

If you aren't afraid of cycles.

If you aren't afraid of yourself.

You are so unbelievably lucky if you have never been afraid of what might happen in the hours you aren't quite there.

Take care of yourself. You will turn out just fine.

not much worse than being alone with the world while it trembles and vacillates

right now it feels as though
every cell
in my body is crying out under the pressure
of unsaid words

in my place
screaming,
"just say it already"

well, it's not that simple

a weekend passed
then another
enough time to find that "perfect moment"
or maybe not
accumulated words crumble under pressure
metamorphose into leaden silence

at first I could see them
hovering
written out in empty space clear enough
to read from
like a script

now I know I'll never say them

all the right moments passed

the words kept weaving in and out
of each other
filling up the space
until it became a curtain of ink
unreadable
and unmeaningful

but every time I swear I'll say them

each word plucked from the mass
cutting through
the white fog between the world and me
revealing the cracks
and holes
and anything through which I may escape

perhaps this would be less painful
if only
the words spoke for themselves
without the need for
my mouth the interpreter

or if these were words you would ever
ask to hear