1 Who Am I

My name is Nelle. I am 20 years old, and like every basic early adult in this time period, I have depression. It's weird because all of my friends that have come to know me, knew me from my smile. So when the depression became unbearable and my smile started to fade, the ones closest to me started to quickly take notice. Though at this moment my depression had hit its peak, depression was not a new thing for me. I've been depressed since my freshman year of high school, but this year by far was the worst that it has ever been. Within a 5 month time frame, I had lost 40 pounds, not stepping one foot into a gym or eating healthy. This year I had developed numerous coping mechanisms in order to get through the days. At first I was confused on why nothing would work for me. In every friendship I was usually known as the therapist friend. So if I could make a point to successfully help my friends, then why couldn't I help myself? After asking myself this question, I began to analyze myself until I found the answer. Though I am "the therapist friend," that doesn't mean that i'll always have everything together. Even a therapist will need therapy for themselves every once in a while or they'll end up just as bad as their patients. And just like that, I became just as bad, if not worse than the friends that I helped counsel.

This was it, this was the year I had finally broken. I couldn't handle it anymore. Even so, everyday I tried to find the strength to put a smile on my face, and with each day, it got harder. I eventually gave up. Behind that smile that I put up, was a petrified girl full of deep dark metaphors to describe the new and foreign things that one would call emotions. Though on the outside I came off as happy and uplifting, that was not the case at all. I was actually someone who was very broken, hurt, and lonely. Though damaged and alone, since I couldn't help myself, I was always there to help others. But even doing that, started to become a struggle. Helping others started becoming too much for me and I could no longer handle it.

After many years of being held together by duct tape, I had finally broken. Duct tape, no matter how strong it may be, can only hold up for so long and now all that is left is the broken remains of someone who has worked so hard to even cover up the oh so evident cracks. My emotions had become too much; they were consuming me. The internal box containing them has become so full to the point where it had completely broken beyond repair and the contents have flooded the area causing me to drown. I'm drowning, and I'm scared. It's like I have fell into a great big body of water and suddenly forgot how to swim or even float for that matter, when i've been training myself and have taken many years of lessons. I'm drowning and there is no lifeguard around to help me. I keep sinking and getting further and further away from the surface. I have lost, and my overbearing emotions have won.

This what everyday started to feel like to me. I couldn't bare the pain, the emotions. In high school, I had reached a level of depression to where I had become almost emotionally numb. So feeling any sort of emotion, whether it be happy or sad, was new to me. In college, I had finally reached a point of happiness, but when I finally began to feel that happiness,it had also opened me up to feel pain. This pain had reached new lengths. I was truly wanting to runaway and die every single day. I was losing myself, who I was, who I wanted to be, my goals in life. "Why am I like this? How did I become like this? What made me like this? Who made me like this?" For so long I couldn't find the answers to these questions, but after writing this, now I have. These poems though deep and dark, this is the real me, the new me. I'm still just as nice and bright as ever in person, however that darkness that I had pushed deep down has risen and taken a little more control. Again the darkness is not new it's just a little more apparent this time.