Author: Anonymous

I might tell you I love you soon. This is such a hard secret to keep and I wish I could ask you for advice.

I wonder if you have any idea.

L,

You see, there’s something you don’t understand about me. I don’t even understand it, if I’m being honest. But I’ve struggled with severe depression and anxiety most of my life. It is all I have ever known and it has been branded onto my identity. So is internally suppressing and fleeing from everything I think and feel. I bury the truth so far down in an attempt to shield who I really am from everyone, especially myself.

There is no truth in me — I wonder if you see that. I lie to myself, to you, to everyone just by getting out of bed or opening my mouth to speak. Everything, all of me, is tarnished by lies in one way or another, and I couldn’t even begin to extricate the lies from the truth for you, even if I wanted to. The best way to sell a lie is to wrap it up and surround it with the truth. There are so many layers to me, I could not tell you which was which. Even the exterior facade could either be truth or lie, or some combination of the two. I really don’t know. But I do know that my anxiety is ten times worse than yours every day. My depression is beyond crippling. My mind is so dark I could be a Sith Lord.

And here I am with the pseudo-strong presence, being that support for you, encouraging you, keeping you going in your own mental struggles that I am so ill-equipped to handle. I don’t get to fall apart like you do because you can’t pretend to be strong like I can. You were merely thrown into the darkness. I was born into it — molded by it. I even get to wear a mask now to feel more a part of it. Bane references aside, I’ve come to resent you for it. How are you able to so easily fall into a depressive episode, allow it to completely derail your day and shirk all your obligations while expecting me to stay strong and help you through it, but when it comes my turn to let my facade slip just a little to allow you to see my own depressed mood, you fall into another episode, allow it to completely derail your day, and you neglect your obligations?

Because when you struggle, you need me to get you through. But when it’s my turn to need you, instead of throwing me the rope to help me climb out of this pit, you just jump into it with me so we are both trapped, and I end up being forced to carry you out of it. I really just don’t think you understand how irreversibly broken I truly am, and I doubt you ever will. It is easy for me to act like a Christian. Show people respect. Be a good employee. Display integrity and honor. That’s how I grew up and I know all the right moves. But none of that defines me like the shroud around my mind does.

You’d be terrified if you could look inside my mind. Hell, I’m terrified. If you were somehow able to play “Guess the Person” by rummaging through my anonymous thoughts, I doubt you’d win. I’d likely be labeled a sycophantic psycopath. But the thought of shedding it all, overcoming it, and truly being someone worthwhile just…. sickens me. I can’t explain it. I can’t fathom the idea of letting go of the depressed bundle of anxiety I have become. Like a bird letting go of its wings, my sickness is a part of me, and I don’t know how to live apart from it. I’ve been running for so long, that stopping to change direction seems so wrong to me. I’ve already given up my life as forfeit, and to reverse it into a meaningful existence sounds like a wasted endeavor to me, and I just cannot give myself to it. My woes bring me comfort in a strange Stockholm Syndrome sort of way, and I am content enough in my discontent.

I just can’t imagine a world in which my identity is any different. And my imagination is quite…. grand.

-B

I wasted so many poems
On him that I forgot
What is was like to write
The lines realistically.
Like how you spoon fed
Promises
While I stayed up late
Every night at our cathedral
Hoping you would
Come here my prayers
Instead of floating
Down the river
With your other lovers
And our broken promises.

Missing
Sips, tomfoolery banter
Repetition of songs
And the way you dance.
I miss floods being drained,
The full tone of the television,
The quick witticisms
Of semi drunk apostles
Arguing over trivial philosophies.
I miss the cathedral where I prayed
To be found
For awkward dancing and
Lowlights.
Mostly I miss
People being people
A room reminding me of humanity
And the flush of love
As rivers through my arteries.
Resurging my heart with
Undiminishing hope.

Loving you was pure madness

And it absolutely terrified me

Even before insanity crumbled

And especially after.

I could not help to mourn the ways

Collision courses and roadmap signs

Diverted time after time.

All I wanted was you

But I was irreversibly terrified

Of the ways you reached me

And of all the ways

I took I knew

I could never reach you.

You know, they say when you’re constantly thinking of someone it’s in part bc they’re thinking of you. Not sure why? Or how you do? Given your current setup…do you think of me? If so, is it often.

I often think of you and have many dreams with you but I’m not sure what they mean.

I would love some clarity.

I hope to hear from you when I’m right and ready to do so.

It wasn’t easy giving into my feelings, I admit I fought hard with every fibre and sinew to resist the lure of your words and the allure of your charms. I fell, I fell hard because I knew I had fallen in love with you. I knew I wanted you, all of you. The perfections, the flaws I wanted it all. My dreams and longings were filled with together, forever; I fell deep into the happy ever after story. That’s why it hurt so much when after all we had been through you suddenly gave up. You found new ways to destroy all we had and you wielded them like a warrior wields his weapons, I became the victim of trust. The trust that allowed me to place my heart in your hands but you refused to see, to even care about all you were throwing away. I wish the world could see you now for who you are and the way you made me feel, me who shared just about everything with you in this one sided love affair. I wasted my time I guess they would say, strange though it doesn’t seem that way to me because I’ve seen the inside of your heart and there is still a part of me that will always yearn for what we shared.

I see only a shadow of who I once was. I see no reflection in the mirror; I can’t speak the words that betray my pain. Each day feels like an endless highway as I walk its crooked trail. Where are you when the sun goes down? Where are you when blue skies turn to autumn gray. Seems like only yesterday we were laughing like a couple of kids but just look how soon you changed.

Nothing stands still and so now I find myself with no fight left in me, it hurts still; yet I accept you are gone. The broken in me finally understands that your words were just a means. I filled some invisible void and now you no longer need me I am relegated to just someone you once knew. Time will force us further apart and on the final crossroads we will depart and never meet again. Still every once in a while my soul feels restless and my thoughts turn towards you. In solitude I spend the time missing you, remembering you, dreaming of you.

am