One day you’re going to find yourself
standing in the cold, teeth chattering
another name you used to call yours and
you’re going to wonder who you belong to.

You’re going to wonder why this always happens to you
and you’re going to ask yourself
“What’s wrong with me?”
when you’re already pretty sure you know the answer.
You’ll probably get emotional,
find your way back to the blade again or
make a trip downstairs to
your parents’ liquor cabinet when they’re not home.

The people you call friends will notice that
you’re getting bad again and
they’ll hug you and
text you a Bible verse that you attempt to appreciate.

Your mother will soon notice the tally-marks on your wrist
and find an empty bottle of vodka hidden
in the pile of t shirts in your closet that
you haven’t washed since the night he slept over.
She’ll scream at you,
“He’s just a boy”
and you’ll scream back,
“no mom, he’s THE boy”
and your little sister will ask why you’re always crying
because she doesn’t know what a mental illness is.

You’re back in the hospital.
It doesn’t really help, but you feel safe.
There is no cure for heartbreak or depression,
so the medication the doctors
force down your throat doesn’t change anything.
The lumpy tablets you gulp down remind you
of the so many times you swallowed your pride
and later regretted it.
Pills don’t change the fact that he’s gone
or how you see the world in black and white.
You’re convinced you’ll never live to see the color grey,
although that’s what the overcast winter skies
have painted every morning since he left.

My situation was never nearly as painful as yours because
I wasn’t born with a rare arrangement of chemicals in my brain,
but I can feel you hurting unlike the others.

Here’s the thing about you and I:
We fall in “love” too quickly,
so they call us impulsive.
We let our tears fall too fast,
so they call us too sensitive.
We admit we’re hurting,
so they call us selfish
because starving kids in third world countries have it way worse than we do.
But telling someone that they can’t be sad
because someone else is shedding more tears than them
is like telling someone they can’t smile
because someone else is happier than they are.
They call us worthless
when they can’t even see the worth in themselves.

We’ve had different bullets
shot through our similar hearts
and we’re not scared of matches
because we’ve gotten used to getting burned
so many times.

Heaven isn’t on our side, but we’re not scared
because we’ve already been put through hell.
Damn it, we’ve made it through hell.