**Trigger warning: suicide attempt** I was 18 and sitting in the bathtub; now cold. I had just received a text from my then partner reading “I am walking on eggshells with you. You are so passionate I'm not sure what it is or what to call it, but I don’t think I can give you [...]
I was told very often from family and I would say friends but I have no friends...my illness causes me to be isolated and lonely. Nevertheless, I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia & bipolar disorder, yet I was still unconvinced of what I was enduring until I saw others with similarities and I had the [...]
I have struggled with my mental health for as long as I can remember. Even as a little kid in kindergarten panic would take over and I'd run out of the cafeteria in a panic, scared of the noise and the people. It only got worse with age and constant bullying. By the age of [...]
After withdrawing from the college of my choice in a state of depression, I returned home and experienced depersonalization. It felt like I was in a Snoopy cartoon where the adults were talking but it sounded like nonsense. In other words, my body felt disconnected from the my mind, my brain and my emotions. I [...]
Show me a psychotic child and I will write you a tragedy. "Your boy is sick," the fire chief said. "And very dangerous." No one had ever laughed when shown photos of burned bodies. Teachers, however, praised the unkempt loner who rode a skateboard, wore tie-dyed jeans, and excelled in mathematics, philosophy, and foreign languages. [...]
*Note: These poems are not a series but rather individual poems that stand by themselves* Pinwheels Purple clouds spin like pinwheels I shoot my crimson arrow droplets burst my soul falls with them still my ego is drenched with sorrow. I shoot my crimson arrow I am high as that child’s kite still my [...]
Trigger Warning *Suicide* In 2012 I put a gun to my chest and pulled the trigger. That was when I realized that I had a problem. For years I’ve suffered with severe depression, bipolar disorder, and drug/alcohol addiction. As a queer non-binary man living in the South I had always had issues with self [...]
Marble I hold a green and blue swirled marble in the palm of my hand. This fragile sphere is a miniature earth—I am larger than life. Sophia Falco is the author of The Immortal Sunflower (UnCollected Press, 2019), a winner of the Raw Art Review Poetry Chapbook Contest. The Immortal Sunflower is a [...]
*trigger warning - self-harm* When I first became mentally unwell, I never thought I'd be here now, sharing my story—a survivor of my own minds torment. I was 16 when I was first diagnosed with clinical depression. I was in such a dark place, scared of the thoughts in my head, scared of what people [...]
Recovery is Non-Linear Recovery is non-linear. Anyone who says that getting better is a straight line - I want their secret. I want to be stable, but what does that mean? It means sometimes being unstable, wobbly, broken in particular ways. We shatter and come together. We hurt and we heal. We scream, cry or [...]
