“Bipolar doesn't exist.
Your therapist made it up for money
Get a hold on your life and
stop looking for excuses.”
It’s people like you
who make my life so hard to hold on to.
Do you understand the devastation
in my heart
when I learned I’d never be in control?
That even with pills
I’d never own my emotions
grip them in hand
stay sane?
Just because you can’t see
the chemical imbalance in my brain
by looking at me
you discount my suffering
the light, the dark
the wanting to die
wanting to fly
pretend it’s not real.
It is not me being a moody teenager.
It is not me being weak.
It is not me not owning up
to my faults and flaws.
It is not an excuse,
it is reality,
my reality,
one I pray never touches your life.
This is the stigma I live with,
will always have hounding me.
It is as real as blood
as the chemicals I have off kilter in my body
as the knife
as the pen-
it is real.
Shut your mouth about things you know nothing about,
cannot understand
refuse to understand
and leave me and those
that suffer the same
my brothers and sisters
united by stigma and pain
and bipolarity-
leave us to gather what shards of sanity
we have.
