People Assume…

“Mental illness.

People assume you aren’t sick unless they see the sickness on your skin, like scars forming a map of all the ways you’re hurting.

My heart is a prison of, Have you trieds. ‘Have you tried exercising? Have you tried eating better? Have you tried not being sad, not being sick? Have you tried being more like me?’ Have you tried shutting up?!

Yes, I have tried. Yes, I am still trying, and yes, I am still sick.

Sometimes monsters are invisible, and sometimes demons attack you from the inside. Just because you cannot see the claws and the teeth, does not mean they aren’t ripping through me. Pain does not need to be seen to be felt. Telling me there is no problem, won’t solve the problem.

This is not how miracles are born. This is not how sickness works.” ― Emm Roy

Be Near Me When My Light Is Low…

“Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack’d with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a fury slinging flame.

Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.

Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day.”
―Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam