just lei

they say you died the same way you lived that year,

barely. 

they showed me your body,

at the end. 

as if I’d ever want to see the girl I’d loved

like that. 

still,

and cold,

and dead. 

but then your mother told me

you’d looked like that ever since

i left. 

so i held my tongue and my breath

as your family and i gathered in mourning

at your deathbed. 

and it was so hard to match the girl you died as

to the one who had the touch of midas 

the one i’d known

the one who took me to Rome 

with money her father sent,

and danced naked in a lake

on a dare i hadn’t even meant.

who laughed louder than everyone else. 

and girls like that don’t die

so I felt out of sorts

pretending to mourn 

the corpse you’d let take your life. 

my body didn’t feel like mine 

underneath yours.

as you dragged your tongue

down my neck

my skin screamed no

and you pretended not to hear.

all i wanted was to unzip myself

and step outside of me

away from your crushing weight.

to not feel you anymore. 

even though later, i wondered if it

would have hurt more

to be a silent observer

of you panting over me. 

each thrust breaking 

the scattered shards of my hope.

and sometimes i wonder

if i deserved it

for being so sad and alone 

and self destructive

that even your callous embrace

seemed attractive. 

perhaps it was to teach me

what happens to suffering girls

who trust men who only see them

as bodies to lose themselves in

for a night.

every inch of you screamed

look at me, 

look at what the world has done to me! 

and i saw, baby, i promise i saw. 

each bruise yelled at me

they covered every inch of your body

that could be hidden behind clothes. 

they screamed at me

demanding to know how i couldn’t have seen,

the pain that you lived with. 

and the cuts, dear god, all the cuts

all over the body i had spent

nine months creating. 

so vicious, so loud. 

i touched one and it 

wept blood. 

and i couldn’t stop myself

from thinking how many tears

life had stolen from you.

how many of them i had missed

and which cut, which bruise,

had been the last one. 

what pain had been so unbearable

that it made you believe

you couldn’t take it anymore

that you couldn’t have shared your agony with me

which blow had killed your hope. 

and as you lay dying in my arms

your wrists open,

perhaps in an effort for all that hurt

to finally leave your body. 

i couldn’t help but think you weighed nothing.

and wondered if it meant all your suffering

had gone.

whilst i strongly believe that only time, therapy, positive energy and support, bad days and good, medication, or sometimes a combination of them all can treat clinical depression (for me, it was indeed all of the above), i do also have a handful of go-to activities i do when i start to feel that tell-tale boredom or emptiness creeping up on me. i’ve found that the best way to avoid a relapse (even though obviously, depression isn’t always something you can just “avoid”) is to literally fight against it with little things that make me happy and keep me from being able to wallow or dwell. 

i’ve recently downloaded the app duolingo in order to fulfil a dream of mine to learn another language. it’s honestly the best app for language learning that I’ve come across: it’s quick, fun, easy, interactive and i’m actually learning!! the feeling of acquiring new knowledge and actually completing something has been invigorating. whenever i find myself with too much time to spare or feeling down or bored i jump onto duolingo and instantly feel better.

i force myself to write everyday. even if i know it’s nonsense that will never be read by anyone else. even if it’s not a typical creative piece like poetry, but just a to do list. because i know that even if the process isn’t always the most fun, at the end of the day, the satisfaction i feel at actually sticking to my goals and producing some written work, good or not, is worth it.

listening to more music. i was never that into music growing up, just the basic pop tunes, beyonce, rih, nicki etc. but now i try to add two new songs to my playlist every week so as not to have it get stagnant. music really can save a life and change your mood. feeling down? i put some bad b*tch songs on and have a mini concert in my room. by the end of it, i’m far too pumped to be sad. the other day i even started playing Christmas music – there’s nothing better equipped to put me in a good mood than the music i associate with comfy weather and presents and family and food. 

keeping healthy and maintaining a constant skin routine as basic as it is has also done wonders for my mental health. feeling good about my appearance, waking up and not hating how dry and flaky my skin is, washing my hair and finding that it isn’t coming out in clumps anymore because i’ve stayed on top of my hair care, and feeling more confident about wearing certain clothes because my skin is behaving, is honestly the best. drink water kids. wash your face at the end of the day. cut out fizzy drinks and eat more water heavy fruits. even if you can’t afford to see a dermatologist doesn’t mean you can’t improve your health.

do things the younger you always wanted! always wanted to be an Olympic swimmer? go to your local pool, start now. write a book? sit down, do it now. knit yourself a scarf? who cares if it’s July, get your needles.

for nearly my whole life i've overperformed academically at school. i was always the “smart one” in my family, teacher’s pet, my homework and essays were always one of the best in the class. it took me nine years to painfully realise how ingrained in my own perception of myself that this academic success was. this was toxic. whilst academic success is very very important, and something that should always be applauded because it isn’t easy – it also shouldn’t be prioritised over gaining knowledge, mental health, life skills, or having a trade. i thought it meant more to do well on a test than it did to truly understand the content being taught. and during my two years at A levels, i found it extremely hard to balance my new workload whilst also maintaining my identity as “the smart one”. maths in particular really tried me. as the months went on, rather than asking for help, or admitting that for once I was not immediately the best at something, i instead started skipping my maths classes. i was still doing well in history and english and decided i could just ignore maths. and ignore the negative effect that being subpar at it had on my self esteem. this obviously didn’t work because ignoring a problem doesn’t solve it. it also isolated me from potential friends who i avoided because i didn’t want to answer the inevitable questions they’d ask about my absence. soon, simply the thought of going to school seemed unbearable to me. so i stopped. my mum would drop me off and id walk towards the school gate then straight past it. and then go home. and sleep my problems away. it was quite honestly, one of the darkest periods of my life. i hated being in school and yet i hated myself for being truant and getting worse and worse grades. it was a never ending cycle of just misery and self-loathing.