helloworldimadeit-blog

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find what makes you happy, it’s out there

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happy happy me

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sentimentality

What am if not a sentimental monkey full of joy. I sit back on my single bed with the sun pouring into the dorm room I’ve come to know as home. I sit back in fuzzy covers and reply to texts from my best friend and create new ones for my mother.

Today when I woke up after sleeping in I appreciated how great the sun feels on my skin and my friend’s text tells me how happy this makes her. Though my first reaction is happiness mixed with love for her, for a second I am confused. 

Do I not always feel like this? Did it used to be different, and in that second I allow myself to remember. Immediately I see what she means.

I still can’t tell if it’s a coping mechanism or if my brain always struggled with memories this much. I try to suppress the thought that my troubles with memory might be all the weed, smother it with the response that I needed it when it was there.

Nonetheless I let myself remember, partly through the stories of those who were there. Like my sister who didn’t tell me she was scared by the weight I had lost ‘til I had gained it back, my psychologist had called me on it at the time but I had hardly noticed. I hadn’t been eating and I hadn’t really been living but somehow I hadn’t noticed. It was a hard summer and for whatever reason my brain didn’t connect each negative day with the next, I had tunnel vision from the depression but depressed me didn’t want to live in that tunnel.

Now I sit here with my blue duvet warming my legs, not too worried that I slept through my first class of the day because I have a good relationship with my professor and so far I am doing quite well in the class. It’s an A- I am particulary proud of, and a class that makes me happy for the future in a way I haven’t been in quite a while. Social justices is a sad topic but my professor spreads her positivity to my heart and I know I can be a part of the change. One voice has power, even mine. And when I catch myself thinking like this it’s hard not to look back and be happy-- less than two months left in this genre of therapy. The one that transformed me from a shell of myself to a thriving version; the therapy that took away the weight of all the negative thoughts my mind had been carrying since my auntie died, as well as some before and many after.

I hadn’t realized how far I’d come til I stuck my neck up a bit to look around. There is nothing I can ever be prouder of myself for then both saving my life and turning it in to such a worthy one. And letting all of the beautiful people I’m so blessed to have around me help get me here, each of them saving me on different nights in different ways until here I am. Here I am, in some form of remission, gearing up and ready for the next chapter of my life.

             --EMILY FRANCES

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I decided I would work through my past by putting into writing, and leaving behind my 18 years in a lovely book as I step into my future and continue making art.

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My new chapter started without me noticing.

I had made it to my dream university and was thriving.

I graduated high school through a cloud of depression and nearly at the end of first year I was stepping out of it.

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a new chapter

I used to want to die.

I used to cry myself awake as each part of my body ached to be anything else

I used to want to die,

as all of my pain from my past screamed for me to let it out

I used to want to die as days of my life would go by

I watched each day drift away and resented my self for every feeling that could have been felt

but instead I lay numb

Instead I would sleep

Instead I would take my antidepressants and let the bad thoughts rule my mind

On occasion I would take myself to the ER--

       my need to no longer be alive was too scary.

scary not just for me

but for everyone around me

each tear I brought to a loved ones eye tore me down until I knew nowhere to go

except the place they help everyone

I sat in that ER alone, surrounded by surface wounds and physical ailments

I didn’t know how to reach out anymore.

I didn’t know how anyone else could handle it

        handle me

                 understand the pain I had raging inside

I didn’t want to make another person sit by me while I cried

I wanted to die because I forgot the warmth joy could sprinkle into my life

I forgot what I loved when I looked into a mirror

I forgot the family who lives inside my heart,  

I didn’t want to tell them I had failed but I could no longer think of anything else to say

The ERs weren’t life changing

at best they were a safe place to spend a night at worst they took a piece of what then was my dwindling hope

But it was enough to let me survive this storm

I was drowning in salt water

and it was a fucking buoy

                                and that was enough

I clawed on and it let me float.

because I used to want to die but my supports at the time kept that from happening

because I used to want to die more than I wanted anything else

But now I don’t

I used to want to die

But now I want to write

I used to want to die but now I want to give my heart and soul to any who need it

I used to want to die but now I want to love, everyone around me, everything inside me, and everything I can create

I used to want to die,

but fuck that

Because now I want to live

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I had made friends along the way and was as close as ever to the ones who had helped me through my journey

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Somehow the hardest summer of my life ended and it became fall.

My future began without me even noticing.

Even the tones of my poems became more uplifting

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she

she used to be loving, with a side of outgoing and kind

she was the definition of carefree

until one day she wasn’t.

wasn’t loving

or carefree

or spirited

she barely was

one day she looked in the mirror to see that all she was was a shell

that she had hollowed herself.

she had wanted to die a happy woman

to live a happy life

she had longed to spring laughter into the world

and joy into any heart she might touch

she wanted to feel the warmth of the sun inside her chest and let it light her days

to love unconditionally the world and herself

to float with the confidence of someone whole

but she had forgotten what a happy life felt like

she hadn’t yet learned of the world and it’s tides

tides that you must let wash over you    not drag you in

she focused on the water rather than the horizon and got lost in the waves

she became an irrecoverable kind of lost,

she forgot the beauty of land,

and the warmth that waits on the horizon,

she could only remember those who were gone without her

the lost separated her from all those she could save

                  or be saved by.

She used to like the ocean,

            or maybe it was love

Before the waves swept her and her sanity

                                                                away,

Cold infused with her body

and Salt crept inside her veins

and Water found its way into every crevasse

She took her last Gasp of a Breath

she floated through the waves, and sunk down with the other shells

 she became a peaceful piece of what she once was

angelic in her stillness

as each part decomposed

she left on the shore something unrecognizable in every sense

Yet the ocean flowed on

as it Has and always Will

forgetting the life it stole

  without remorse

             or even understanding of the Beauty stolen from that beach

Laid to rest by one tide

                                          -- EMILY FRANCES, CA

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s/o to Blake Loates Photography and her mental health driven campaign. These pictures were taken among my lowest summer to date. 

I’ve healed so much since then in ways I didn’t even know was possible. 

Thankful to my supports and DBT and myself for always pushing through

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#acceptance