These poems about mental health were written by people just like you and me. Their struggle may have different nuances but in the end something unites us: our desire to share our mental health journeys.
Just like with the TED talks about mental health, it’s so inspiring to see people willing to expose their vulnerability and share their journeys.
I gathered these poems from Reddit users because I felt the urge to honour their stories.
I don’t know how to feel my feelings
But do feel less than nothing, less than worthless
Can’t connect words with the pain of the trauma
Not a good therapy patient,
Crying and letting it out would be perfect
I say things that would be hard for others
With no emotion whatsoever
Laugh, smile, deny, shrug off
Will my numbness frighten me forever?
I’m scared I feel nothing
Yet that nothingness freaks me out
It makes me realise the enormity of my trauma
Lurching, fearful, yet can’t voice what my fears are about
Can’t articulate, no idea what I feel
That’s not normal really is it
She looks at me with sympathetic eyes and says that feels sad
But I insist that it’s not, although deep down I know my response is mad
I feel the enormity for a split second
Have no idea how to cry, to mourn, to connect and make myself whole
I don t know how to express the pain I can’t put into words
And it’s something only I can control
When I say I don t know what that s like, I mean it
Have no clue what it’s like when someone cares
Validates your feelings and desperately wants you to share
Because I was a joke
I was defective; the broken, faulty, despicable one
My feelings and my soul didn’t matter
No wonder I believed them and wanted to run.
All these Mad Sounds blasting through In waves, broken, battered brain that no solution saves, all around me, crumpled ringing and static, I tried to change gears but I'm on automatic,
I rode on fast so I've caught up now, my front tyres popped, now it's fading out, my friends are riding off to a sunlit town, my platform has collapsed so I'm falling down.
Some point soon it's just waiting then, like being on trial with the Hollywood ten, there's still time might get lucky yet, For me to take on another debt.
What is this battle?
When does it end?
When will I be back on my own feet again?
The battle in question... is depression, my friend
It’s a constant labyrinth of the mind
With any positive memories left behind
Shadow after shadow block out the light
With no glimmer of hope anywhere in sight
“It’s not so bad!” You tell yourself “it could be worse!”
But you soon learn your mind will not be coerced
You try to remember how life was before
When nothing you did was ever a bore
Slowly you lose grip of who you were
And try to accept the life you’re doomed to endure
It is like the Scylla and Charybdis
And you wonder why any being would ever allow this
You fight the waves, but the waves fight back harder
You have to be vigilant, you must be smarter
It’s like the shoulder devil and angel but only the devil appears
The angel is not there to abolish your fears
You cry a river, but it ultimately swallows you
Is it any wonder the color for sadness is blue?
I know the struggle, no end is near
But you’re not alone, which must be comforting to hear
It’s not your fault, nor is it mine
Sooner or later everything else will align
And when it does, your light will shine
Bright enough to leave any darkness eons behind
Keep your head up, find a way to keep pushing on
Because everyone else will be lost the day that you’re gone
Don’t give up the fight, someday you will win
And on that day, your life will truly begin
Make what you can of every day and eventually you will see
I am here for you! As I know you are for me!
In the early morning hours the storm crests upon my mind,
You're there in the distance watching me. The waves rushing up around me. I can feel the chill in the water and the electricity in the air.
"Fight." You urge me. "Fight to exist."
Even in my weakened state, I resist the urge to sink below the tide. Refusing to give in to my depressive thoughts, even though I can feel each one grabbing at me. Threatening to drag me down to the darkness below.
You're there. I can see you, barely able to hear those powerful words of encouragement.
I will continue to fight.
This story is written once in blood, copied again on the back of the page with ink made from tears.
Every page that came before, unchanging.
The blank pages ahead stained by what's been written, but constantly rearranging.
"You coffin dodging oxygen thief.
Why are you the way that you are?
I hate so much about the things you chose to be.
You’re not pretty enough to be this stupid.
Anyone who ever loved you was wrong!"
I screamed silently with lips sewn shut, as I held my breath and listened while covering my ears,
Staring at the reflection as if IT was the whole.
Repressed feelings from the years came flooding back in,
like water into my lungs, leaving me breathless between these panicked sobs,
like the good times between the wretched.
Too fleeting is that feeling of calm.
Anxiety, hate and loneliness are the only emotions I recall.
The light blinds from behind this darkness I emanate from the distilled essence of my soul.
I sit here, running away from that whole,
only to look ahead and see myself crawling in circles on the bottom.
Reaching out to save myself from jumping,
I feel the push that sends me falling, glimpsing the face in the mirror,
before I disappear into the black of our eyes.
Please excuse this spill of sorrow, bleeding from the other half of us.
The darkness of this ink stains like permanence of death.
Monsters at bay
Shield yourselves
Lest your mind shall fall prey
To all the negative things you tell yourselves
I wish I could pray
But I no longer believe
In anything but the day lest I shall be deceived
My mind is its own enemy
And my heart is its victim
I shall repent all my sins because that is the system
I wish acceptance was easy
But my independence is gone
I am surrounded by people who wish to do me wrong
Paranoid
Until all my fears are gone…
They’ve got me tied down in a hospital bed. Gave me a pill. But I want to be dead.
The drugs make me tired. These white pills aren’t kind. They say I won’t feel the pain if I’m out of my mind.
Death peers through my window with an eerie grin. I’ve gotta go to heaven. Because I've been to hell with the pain I’m in.
“Let me pop this in your vein. It will only hurt for a sec! Oh, and we must do an X-ray, just to check!“
This may make you puke, sleepy and sad. But just think, others have it worse. So it’s not that bad !
You can’t risk infection, you must stay inside. When you become so frail you can see your ribs, you will lose your pride .
Watch your friends grow up, have kids and get married. And know you will never have a baby that you carried .
I sit here and think, why did this happen to me? This isn’t how I was told life would be.
We all have skeletons in our closets, Spooky ghouls with hollowed out eyes and slacked jaws, Ready to spill our secrets like ants to a picnic.
My skeleton is different, He talks to me at night, In the dark when I'm scared of what others would say, He's there to comfort me, with spooky whispers of jokes, Back chat with the monster under my bed, Always making me laugh. But he does all this from the closet, I'm not ready to let him out yet.
When I get home from school, I can't ignore him. I hope nobody finds out, But it's getting easier to speak to him now. His hollow eyes aren't so bad, and he's beginning to look very familiar.
When the sandman arrives, he's not very pleased, To see me still awake, talking to my skeleton, no dreams in sight.
He tells me funny stories of his times with Medusa, Drabbles about Mary, how he talked to her through a mirror, Before he got taken here.
He always gets quiet when he talks about here, As he slowly slides the door of the closet closed, Mumbling an excuse of time and school the next morning.
I concentrate less in my classes lately, I feel bad for the skeleton in my closet. He used to talk fondly of his time with the mummies, how he was fond of vampires and laughed with werewolves. Now he walks slowly, quietly, sad. He misses them, I can tell, but I just can't let him go.
What will everyone say when they find out? His wrists look thinned, his jaw seems tighter. He looks oh so familiar, why can't I place him?
My mum says she's worried, that I'm eating less, looking pale. I pay no attention, I just go to my room. My skeleton is waiting for me. Always waiting.
I don't really go outside much now, just stay between my sheets, Imagining it's my coffin, my door the the world the skeleton described, Where everyone was who they were meant to be, Nobody cared. I wish nobody cared here.
I try to ignore my skeleton, but it's impossible. I can hear his bones rattling as I lay awake at night, Imaging what it would be like in the underworld, If I would be a ghost, a demon maybe. I wonder if demons are as kind as my skeleton. I hope so.
My skeleton makes me feel safe, Feel myself. I wish I could have my skeleton with me at school. To make me laugh, give me confidence. But I can't let him out. He's my biggest secret.
My dad would say "we need to talk" and I'd panic. What if he found my skeleton? How would he know? Nobody was supposed to know. He tells me I need at stop, Start going out, Stop skipping meals. He says I look too thin. He says he can see my bones. If only he knew what he'd really see if my skin was so transparent. He said I look like a skeleton. And deep down I know he's right.
We all have skeletons in our closets. Gentle creatures with sharp teeth, Who could ruin us at any moment. But my skeleton is different. My skeleton is me. And it's time I set him free.
Mental health,
We've gone through so much together.
From people tearing us down to others building us up, with only greed and lust in their eyes.
Mental health, my friend.
You are every part of me.
The parts I view with sickening disgust and disdain.
And the parts I view with adoration and kindness.
Mental health, my love.
You have built me up.
You have torn me down
You are the eye of the storm and the hurricane itself
Mental health
You are a beast.
Not a monster.
But not a person.
You see, my friend, my love, mental health.
Your existence is of a cryptic nature
With nurturing passion, you are as vibrant and healthy as a field of dew kissed roses.
But with anguish and resent, you transform into a wall of thorns.
Mental health, the beast inside me,
Your flowers comfort me.
While your thorns damage my very being.
Mental health.
I promise to love and take care of you.
For as long as I'm able.
I promise to caress your petals gently.
Mental health.
These promises I must try to keep.
But mental health,
Please forgive me.
Forgive the hard days.
Forgive the promise slightly broken.
Mental health.
Please forgive me.
I love you
But I hate what you do
I love you
But I don't understand
I love you
You have so much love given but none to accept
I love you
I know loves hard to accept, but it's more about respect
I love you
About respecting the words your loved ones say and believing they can love you because they have no reason to lie
I love you
But I hate how you hurt
I love you
But your pain that you often don't try to work on it hurts me so deeply and I don't know how to go on
I love you
But I also love others, and that is okay
I love you
But I don't want to have "favourites" anymore
I love you
But people don't need to be put on podiums like that
I love you
You are one of my very dearest and always will be
I love you
I love how we help each other
I love you
But we are all on our own journey
I love you
But we must all follow our own path and I feel like often you are a fallen tree in the way that I need to climb over
I love you
And trees are beautiful and it's okay that my journey to happiness is taking longer so that you follow a similar path with less tree stumps in the way
I love you
And it's okay, my journey is taking me longer so that others may join me
I love you
But it still brings me pain
I love you
This story is over for tonight
I love you
And wish you sweet dreams goodnight
I love you
Lilting left, forging right
Steady, steady, fickle guide
I cleanse and wash in hellish scape
For what good am I sans purity?
My ego null, my passion void
Medicated by the muck himself
Who can call me who I am
When what I'm called is neediness
The doctor ill, the patient dead
What's more to inquire?
Answer yes, answer no
Answer what's the point?
And so I'm caught at the brink
A clean escape, but wrought with pain
Eternal choice, made once, earned once, damned once!
What draws me back but thickened blood?
What denies the dark but ledgers' mark?
Not pity, not hope, not sight of light
But the constant tumult
And lack of voice.
You place your mug on the table, self-righteousness scrawled across your face
And with a sigh you declare that kids these days don’t know what hardship is,
And that choosing whether you want avocado on your toast or not just screams privilege
‘back in my day we didn’t have mental illness,
People were tough
We stuck up for ourselves’
As if throwing a cover over your eyes
Denied mental illness of its existence
And makes you a generation of people with more morals
As if you hold some magnificent ignorance
One that has been dipped in the beautiful metals of your golden age
And wears a crystal crown that bears a weight too heavy for the modern-day snowflake.
So, tell the sober 16-year-old at the back of the class Sipping vodka out of a hip flask
That his attempt to hurt the body he hates
His attempt to forget that he is stuck in a body that he hates
is all an elaborate cry for attention -
that he’s coincidentally trying to hide from his mates.
Take the razor off that girl sat in her room
She’s only 15 but she sits watching her skin bleed
Each crimson droplet fuels her will to live
Like gasoline on a flame
Because she wakes up each day scared
Scared of what people will say at school,
And how much alcohol her dad has consumed.
Take a look at the girl curled up in her room
She had a presentation today in class
She said one word wrong and everyone laughed
Or so she thinks
You see, her brain works against her when it comes to speaking out
Because even though she knows what she’s talking about
The words seem to come out wrong
Like there’s a fallen tree on the road from her brain to her mouth
And only half of her thoughts managed to make it out
So don’t tell her to just get over it
Your ignorance is admirable
But not in the way you think
Your ability to deny a problem so big
That it fills the hipflasks of underaged alcoholics,
that has been carved into the skin of innocent kids
and has made it out of the mouths of the unwillingly silenced
just to be shoved back in
is truly an admirable skill
but what made it a skill of which modern-day snowflakes did not qualify
is your ability to watch parents bury their snowflake kids
and still refuse to give a shit.
How can she love anyone else,
when all she feels is hate,
and disappointment of herself,
her heart will just deflate.
The monsters in her head feels real.
They tell her everyone;
will surely see the ugliness,
and then they'll scream and run.
In the nights she truly believes,
the voices in her head.
They say that she's unloveable.
They keep her in her bed.
In the sun she’s out with friends and laughing,
but moon and stars brings fear and lonely tears.
She used to love watching the moon and stars,
but now they just remind her she can’t sleep.
When her head and heart are at full out war,
what should she trust, and what should she ignore?
Her................is a
..........mind.............minefield,
a..........................stress.
........mess of
.......................corrupts
Monsters ......................... her heart.
So......................can she,
...........how
...............the feeling................love?
trust..............................of
