CAPTAIN CAT

“My brother killed himself on the twenty-eighth Thursday of last year and I missed four days of work and my mom wanted to know ‘Why’. My brother he was always a fan of beauty but what he did was not beautiful at all. And last week I got the news that one of my good friends from high school had overdosed (again) except this time she’d gone too far and now she was gone. And I had a hard time falling asleep at night and her mother hugged me tight and thanked me for coming to the service but I did not want to be there at all. This is not beautiful. The girl down the street would’ve turned 21 last year and I can scarcely imagine the wild times she would’ve (should’ve) had. But she is buried six feet deep after falling nearly 300 and she did not leave a note. This is not beautiful. My freshman year of college and my roommate was beautiful and how I wanted to be just like her. But she wore herself down till she was almost invisible and if you blinked you had to go and find her all over again. So now her parents are no longer supporting her college tuition but are paying her hospital bills watching their daughter crumble. This is not beautiful. So y’all can take your narcissistic romanticizing and glamorizing of self harm and eating disorders and committing suicide and shove them as far up your ass as you possibly can. Starvation is not beautiful. Killing yourself is not beautiful. Sadness is not beautiful. This note I am writing is not beautiful. But you you are beautiful and it’s about damn time you start believing it.”

“Please don’t expect me to always be good and kind and loving. There are times when I will be cold and thoughtless and hard to understand.”

“Instead of admitting I was in pain I let people in my life think I was a lazy fuck-up, when in reality I was just trying to keep my head above water. I didn’t think anyone would believe me if I told them how bad I felt, because on the outside I looked healthy. But we do not have to struggle in silence. We do not have to mask our pain with shields of sarcasm or plastered on fake smiles. My pain is real. Your pain is real. As author John Green wrote, ‘That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt.' So feel it. Let it wash over you. But don’t let it stay. Don’t let it be all that you are. And know that you’re not alone. These words on this page, well, they’re for you.”