“If we start being honest about our pain, our anger, and our shortcomings instead of pretending they don’t exist, then maybe we’ll leave the world a better place than we found it.” – Russell Wilson
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“Anyone who has actually been that sad can tell you that there’s nothing beautiful or literary or mysterious about depression.” – Jasmine Warga
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“A vivid imagination is awesome. A manic imagination is a curse.” ― Stanley Victor Paskavich
Continue readingto say we were lost boys would be cliché
but clichés have ways
of cementing truths into language
like hard red suns that scorched West Philly & warm beers we guzzled ‘till we couldn’t walk straight & time went missing like a thief
who stole my innocence
& we packed into an old sedan on a road to nowhere &
perhaps, if time is not linear, this had to happen &
if free will is a myth, we had no choice in the matter,
merely swigging, smoking, fighting in adolescent wastelands
Continue readingin psych wards, they take your belt, shoelaces
anything you could use to hurt yourself
when I’m there, I fear the world will kill me
so, I give them my belt, tell ’em to take good care of it
& I talk to others there
& I feel damaged & I identify with compatriots –
Continue readinga Black man has been slaughtered, again
shot like a dog, in front of family
did you see? it was broadcast
to millions of eyeballs
he suffered from bipolar
a disorder i share with this
now-deceased man
Continue readingI didn’t realize I was sinking
‘til I ended up in the psych ward –
red stitches on a woman’s neck
she looks like a scarecrow
she sliced her own throat
to make the torment end
I was sinking
(Photo by Mishal Ibrahim on Unsplash)
I attended an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) for my mental health in early 2019. It was a few months after my dad had died, and I was in bad shape. IOP helped a great deal, and there was something one person said during group therapy I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
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