May is Mental Health Awarness month.
I suffer from anxiety and depression. Many people do. I imagine many mental illnesses require the same if not more attention than depression does. It is exhausting always having to search yourself for motive and intention. It isn’t easy to separate rational ideas and expectations from irrational ones.
Reality is not so easy for those suffering with a mental illness because our perception can be skewed. When we look at reality it is like looking at all the details of a painting with only the light of the moon. Everyone else can see that painting under sunlight.
Don’t get me wrong. Just because it might take longer to reason things out does not mean we are unreasonable people. Sometimes, because we know we have to take the time to examine internal and external information, we can be more reasonable than many of our peers.
This poem is about depression. How selfish it is as an illness. I may not be able to hear or see you standing there trying to help me very clearly, but I CAN sense your presence. Don’t give up or just walk away. Know part of me can hear you and that part of me is trying hard to survive.
Even in these depths
Burning in the flames
Of tortured despair
I hear you calling me
Your voice loud, clear
Trying to ground me
To keep me here
Your arms reaching
For my broken limbs
Void of bone, muscle
Drained of their power
Your eyes searching
For any sign of life
Finding only ghosts
With no will or motive
I feel your heart beats
Speaking fast and solid
Trying so urgently
To jump start mine
To stop the virus
Of absence, loneliness
Growing inside of me
Sometimes the Anxiety can drive me CRAZY and I have to work really hard to ground myself. I get it.
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When the inner voice of depression, or grief, or despair whispers or screams to give up and surrender, it is so very important the others do not give up and turn away. Thank you Hasty for putting it so well. reblogging
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Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
A must read from Hasty
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Your writing and poetry are penetrating and relatable. What if depression/ anxiety is not a mental illness per se, that is just a convenient label. What if it’s really an acute perception of reality beyond the mental and physical? That’s why we feel it to the bone, it is that all encompassing, b/c we perceive something is really wrong with the world and it is reflected within us. What if it’s part of the path to awakening?
Your poetry elicits that kind of soul searching response.
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Wow. Love this. This one hit me. Thank you.
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This is so beautifully put, in words and poetry, to connect and make sense of the pain and stress of being trapped inside a mindset which seeks to self-destruct (and worry about it every step of the way). Thank you always for hanging on in there, for advocating for those of us who struggle with these conditions, and for making them so straightforward to understand.
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