Some paint with colors, with brushes dipped in sunlight and shadow, stretching their hearts across a waiting canvas. I paint with words. My gallery is made of sleepless nights, of racing thoughts that refuse to slow, of memories that echo louder than they should. Every poem is a portrait of battles most people never see. Mental health has never worn a face, so I give it one. I sketch anxiety in trembling lines, each sentence shaking beneath the weight of a thousand imagined disasters. I paint depression in faded shades, where every color once bright has forgotten how to shine. I draw bipolar storms with violent strokes across the page, lightning and darkness fighting for the same sky. I shade trauma in layers, because pain is never one color, never one moment, never one scar. The page becomes my canvas, the pen becomes my brush, and every tear that falls becomes another drop of paint. Some people see poetry. I see self-portraits. I see the version of me that survived another day when my mind became a battlefield. I see the wounds I couldn't explain aloud, the fears I couldn't fit into conversation, the demons I couldn't introduce by name. So I painted them instead. Each stanza a brushstroke. Each metaphor a color. Each confession a layer covering the cracks while somehow revealing them too. Poetry is not just writing to me. It is taking invisible pain and giving it shape. It is turning chaos into creation, turning scars into masterpieces, turning suffering into something that can finally be understood. Because when the world asks, "What does mental illness look like?" I don't point to a mirror. I hand them a poem. And within those lines, they'll find every shade of heartbreak, every color of healing, every shadow of despair, and every glimmer of hope that kept me alive long enough to finish the painting.

Psych Ward Chronicles part 4 Do You Know Do you know what it's like to be woken being screamed at yet no one is there? The voices in your head telling you nobody cares Do you know what it is like to feel the sun upon your skin, only to see darkness never bright again? Do you know what it's like to be haunted by yourself inside your mind where all your demons and skeletons dwell? Do you know what it's like to have your heart turned cold or warmth used to be your mind body and soul Do you know what it's like to want to be no more to end the suffering for sure Do you know what it's like to be a shattered time and time again to rebuild then it happens you'll never win Do you know what it's like to hate the way you look to be discussed by your own image straight blah Do you know what it's like to want to be the hero of your story to only be the villain always so sorry Do you know what it's like to have all the love and care in the world to want to share it with the one special girl to only have be stripped down and beaten not knowing if you'll feel evermore Do you know what it's like to hate the way your perceive to hate the way you think when all you need is someone to see.... I do I know what it's like.....

I just came home from a 2 week stay in a behavioral health facility. I became really bad mentally due to life's current situation. I'm doing better now but during my stay I wrote a lot. So I'm going to do a series called Psych Ward Chronicles here is part one. "Are You" Are you okay? Feeling down and cruede? Are you feeling lost? The world grey, the sky not so blue? Are you overwhelmed? Thoughts racing fast, memories that linger from a hurtful past? Are you low on self-esteem? Looking in the mirror not seeing what the world sees a king/queen? Are you anxious? Chest feels tight, every moment a harden fight? Are you scared of what the future may unfold? Not sure where you'll be, how life will flow? Are you safe in the place you stay rather it be home or your mental state? Are you worried how life will be when you level out, grow like a tree? Are you happy with the thought free of demons, can't haunt you no more? Are you okay?

I don’t remember the last time I felt whole just fragments of a person scattered across sleepless nights and apologies I never said out loud. My mind is a warzone no one else can hear gunfire thoughts, memories exploding without warning, echoes of everything I wish I could erase but somehow never forget. I tried to explain it once… how drowning feels when you’re breathing, how silence can scream louder than pain, but they looked at me like I was speaking in ghosts and one by one, they turned their backs like I was something too heavy to carry. Maybe I was. Now I sit here with the weight of my past pressed against my chest, every mistake replaying like it’s the only story I deserve to remember. I wear guilt like a second skin tight, suffocating, impossible to peel away. And forgiveness? That word feels foreign in my mouth, like I’m not allowed to taste it. Like redemption was meant for someone who didn’t break things the way I did. I look in the mirror and see every version of me I hate every wrong turn, every burned bridge, every moment I should’ve been better but wasn’t. And still… somewhere beneath all this ruin, there’s a whisper. Soft. Stubborn. Still alive. It reminds me that I’m not the only one fighting battles behind closed eyes, that there are others sitting in the same darkness trying to convince themselves to stay one more night. So I stay. Even when it hurts. Even when I don’t believe I deserve to. Even when the people I love feel like strangers now. Because maybe broken doesn’t mean finished. Maybe shattered pieces can still catch light. And maybe just maybe I’m not as alone as my mind wants me to believe.