depression

May: Mental Health Awareness Month

Trigger Warning: I describe mental illness and suicidal ideation as well as suicide and suicide attempts. A link to a variety of resources is provided.

Normally, my website is a place for my poetry or my fiction, but after a conversation with a colleague last week, I felt a renewed sense of why I advocate for mental health and talk about how important it is to reach out if you are struggling.

My co-worker talked about how his nephew committed suicide, and I personally have lost a few friends to suicide as well, but their stories are not mine to tell. However, I can tell you about the aftermath. The hole that the loss of their lives ripped through my heart.

I, too, have tried to kill myself, whether it was from an overdose of pills or because of a psychotic-fuelled nightmarish episode where I ran into traffic in a fit of a hallucination.

I know there is a lot of stigma surrounding mental illness, but I am now willing to be vulnerable about my bipolar and my complex posttraumatic stress disorder. If by being honest about these illnesses can help save lives, I’d share my story as many times as it takes.

Of course it’s scary to share it, but what’s scarier are those who are dying undiagnosed or living with mental illness, struggling each day.

If I can do anything to ease your pain, know I would do it. I am just one person, but I am one person who cares.

Please reach out to a person you trust if you need support or if you can’t find anyone, try the list I have here if you’re feeling suicidal.

But please don’t wait until you feel that hopeless. Get help soon. People do love you and care about you. We want you here and we want the demons to be silenced, too, but there’s a way to silence them without ending your beautiful life.

The world needs you in it.

Isabelle Palerma

Unlike You: a Poem

“Unlike you . . .” a prompt from Kay A.

In less than a month,
unlike you to care about the wreckage of the Titanic that is my heart.
I have witnessed you stampede on
and trample me barefoot.
Yet,
the teeth you bared is what
I have come to expect.

Family taught me
(for better or worse)
to murder with mercy.
When you were flashing your baby teeth,
sharpening like knives,
I was practicing my smiles
in polished glass.

Unlike you to offer condolences
or express empathy,
and yet, the past few days,
while Lazarus has been in the tomb,
a different side of you has been exposed.

Unlike you to show warmth,
still a reptilian cold underneath,
but the air is a bit milder now – less frost,
less chill.

Unlike you to offer benevolence and yet,
a crack of a smile,
a beginnings of generosity.

Is it possible you were murdered by my mercy?
Killed by my kindness?

Or did New Year’s resolutions just fall
a few days behind on this calendar?

I’m not one to gaze the gift horse
in the mouth,
but I do have my suspicions
when you were flashing those fangs,
honing them like knives,
and are now sweet as spun sugar.

Just call me Doubting Thomas
if your kindness only lasts as long as
Lazarus was in the tomb.

Isabelle Palerma

A Cage for Your Heart: a Poem

An architect constructed you a mansion
for your heart and you called it a cage.
He crafted each room with so much caution
and care.

The muscle nestled between your ribs
felt like a boulder I was incapable of swallowing,
I am a myth,
tugging on strings that have strangled me.

My fantasies were polished glass shards
shattered by laments and heartbreak.
Ancestors draped mirrors
with black organza in bereavement
after a loved one died.
The fabric is as light as a ghost,
so tell me,
how did I still I wake up with
bits of glass crunching beneath my feet?

The sadness was a fragile creature –
the weight of black organza –
and yet I am a myth,
desiring nothing more than to pull
the strings that choke me.

But it’s gentle sometimes,
sneaking in like a moth,
as soft as a ballerina’s skin
and barbed wire.

Our wires danced across the dance floor,
and if you watch,
we might just choke on the memory,
the softness of sadness, and
the gentle lull of love.

Isabelle Palerma

Lypophrenia: a Poem

“A feeling best described as sorrow that has no clear cause.”

We thought by giving him a name,
it couldn’t break me so badly,
but the agony still extinguishes the illumination
within my irises, within my pupils,
within my soul.
There is a darkness deeper than I care to admit,
but I cannot hide from forever.
(My fire has not ignited in days,
yet I cannot hide in bed
and relinquish myself to the shadows
completely.)

I swore to myself
I would not drown in thoughts such as these,
but sometimes,
the devastations are greater than I can control.

It sometimes feels as though
I am caught in a riptide,
the ocean current pulling me away
from everyone who loves me
until all they are is a speck of sand,
a memory.

(My honesty is raw,
my words are plain.
I usually hide behind an ornate metaphor
crafted carefully and I tread with caution –
not to overstep the boundary lines.)

I have picked up the pen several times,
but the ink well is dry
and my thoughts crystallize
like honey thickening as it cools.
Nothing makes sense when the demons
take the reins
& I try to swallow the bile down.

I try to offer a courageous smile,
but I feel weak and collapsing
is the only option I have sometimes.

Don’t judge me for the anguish I carry.
Each one is a sparrow beating its wings
inside my chest,
desperate to be released but finding a home
buried deep in my rib cage
alongside that dimly burning crystal
that is a barely beating heart.

(I cannot swallow
for all the feathers that have climbed
from my chest to my throat,
from my throat to the wet insides of my mouth.)

So, instead, with this inexplicable sadness,
I lie here,
my heart – my sparrows – knocking against my chest
(an unspoken tragedy bearing down on me).

Isabelle Palerma

Image via freepik.com

Healing: a Poem

I remember a photo I saw of a two-hundred-year-old
cherry blossom tree.
I imagine the events it must have borne witness to:
births, deaths, tsunamis, the rise and fall of empires,
but still its branches spread with pink and red blooms.
I wake up some mornings, an elegy for self
on my cracked lips, gazing upon my scars
and wondering why I’m still here.
But to some, I’m still blooming and they don’t see
the fractures I think define me.
Perhaps I still have some life in me.

If a tree can withstand two-hundred years
of storm and sun,
I, too, can live and love a little longer.