I used to look up to you-

I used to be, “[your] little boy”

Then later I grew up and became “big red”

And since then there was a distance,

I was a foot taller, but that wasn’t the only distance.

Today that distance is five by two by six feet of dirt and a lifeless stone with your name on it.

 

A knife wedged between us in every family photo

You wouldn’t cry when I would,

Yet you would when I was gone

You broke me

You broke me more than I broke bones and limbs

But not as much as I broke my skin,

I would cause streaks of red,

A simple grin

 

Now, I am an addict,

Yet, not of anything physical

Not of heroin or amphetamines,

Well, more of something emotional

Such as serotonin and dopamines,

The worst part is, I’m addicted to what I hate

My thoughts

The same thoughts that cross my brain, the same thoughts that everyone has

“I’m nothing” they’ll whisper

Those same damn thoughts that destroy my mind,

They bleed as I bleed, as we all bleed.

Not through our skin, but through our pens

See now that we grew up, we’re done with that

Or at least I am

I still bleed, but as my thoughts would.

That’s what makes me know-

I hurt myself today,

To see if i still feel.

I have conquered all of this pain,

My broken skin now healed,

My damaged lungs still breathe

I, still, bleed………

And so do you.

 

Going through middle and high school we face waves of depression and waves of bliss,

Some of us know the sounds of pills followed by a swig of water

Anti-depressants and diagnostics ring through my mind,

They ring up and down the halls
They bring nothing but false sanity

And maybe sanity, has less to do with actions and thoughts,

But more to do with reality.

 

We were all told that we would be nothing,

Or if you were like me we were told we would be something.

But in our minds we crumbled upon that pressure,

We fell to our knees and we succumbed to the dark clouds that came over us,

I felt that way,

It’s hysterical, because I would tell myself that all of the time.

 

Now,

who here is a writer?
Listen up, real close,

I am a god. Little ‘g’

I’m not an egotist though

So please hear me out,

Everyone who writes and creates their own worlds,

Controls their own set of beings or chooses that fate of others through imagination

Those are called storytellers,

But writers, put an idea into a concrete form.

Another word for writer, is a god.

 

Hear me out though,

For if I- a kid who was diagnosed with clinical depression for suicidal tendencies,

An orphan who damned himself to his own prison-

Can be happy, can smile,

And can be at peace

So can you.

So this is really to the people in here who have been told they would be nothing, or even anything that they wanted to be,

We are gods when we create our own stories.
I now call myself a god, which then means I actually am something.

Then I know you can too,

So what I am trying to say, the one thing that I am trying to change,
Is how you see yourself, for you are not nothing,
But you are something
You are the creator of worlds, of stories and of lives.