Twenty One Pilots & Sabrina Benaim

"I feel for you but when did you believe you were alone?"

Mom, my depression is a shapeshifter. One day, it is as small as a firefly in the palm of a bear, the next, it's the bear. On those days, I play dead until the bear leaves me alone.

"You say that spiders crawled inside and made themselves a home where light once was..."

I call the bad days 'The Dark Days.' Mom says, 'Try lighting candles.' But when I see a candle, I see the flesh of a church. The flicker of a flame, sparks of a memory younger than noon. I am standing beside her open casket. I is the moment I learn every person I come to know will someday die! Besides Mom, I'm not afraid of the dark; perhaps that's part of the problem.

"Petrified of who you are.."

Mom says, 'I thought the problem was that you can't get out of bed?' I can't!

"And who you have become."

Anxiety holds me a hostage inside of my house, inside of my head. Mom says, 'Where did anxiety come from?' Anxiety is the cousin visiting from out of town that depression felt obligated to bring to the party. Mom, I am the party! Only, I am a party I don't want to be at.

"You will hide from everyone denying you need someone to exterminate your bones."

Mom says, 'Why don't you try going to actual parties? See your friends?' Sure, I make plans. I make plans but I don't want to go. I make plans because I know I should want to go; I know sometimes I would have wanted to go, it's just not that much fun having fun when you don't want to have fun, Mom!

"Friend, please, remove your hands from over your eyes for me."

You see, Mom, each night insomnia sweeps me up in his arms and dips me in the small glow of the stove light. Insomnia has this romantic way of making the moon feel like perfect company. Mom says, 'Try counting sheep.' But my mind can only count reasons to stay awake.

"I know you want to leave.."

So I go for walks. But my stuttering kneecaps clank together like silver spoons held in strong arms with loose wrists; they ring in my ears like clumsy church bells reminding me I am sleepwalking on an ocean of happiness I cannot babtize myself in! Mom says, 'Happy is a decision.' But my happy is as hollow as a pin-pricked egg, my happy is a high fever that will break! Mom says I am so good at making something out of nothing and then flat-out asks if I am afraid of dying! No! I am afraid of living!

"But friend, please, don't take your life away from me."

Mom, I am lonely! I think I learned that when Dad left how to turn the angry into lonely and the lonely into busy. So when I tell you I've been super busy lately, I mean I've been falling asleep on the couch watching SportsCentre to avoid confronting the empty side of my bed. But my depression always drags me back to my bed..

"Living like a ghost, you walk by everyone you know. You say that you're fine but you have lost your sway and glow. So I'll stop by to let you know.."

Until my bones are the forgotten fossils of a skeleton-sunken city, my mouth a boneyard of teeth, broken from biting down on themselves.

"Friend, please, remove your hands from over your eyes for me. I know you want to leave but friend, please, don't take your life away from me."

The hollow auditorium of my chest swoons with echoes of a heartbeat. But I am a careless tourist here, I will never truely know everywhere I have been.

"Would you let me know your plans tonight? 'Cause I just won't let go 'till we both see the light. And I have nothing left to say. But I will listen to you all day. Yes I will..."

Mom still doesn't understand!

"Friend, please, remove your hands from over your eyes for me."

Mom, can't you see?!

"I know you want to leave but friend, please..."

That neither can I!

"Don't take your life away from me."

Author Notes: Just something I thought of at 3 a.m. It really helped me get through some shiz.

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