I'll Never Start by Saying "Dear Diary"

The first time I studied poetry was in sixth grade, when I wasn’t that mentally fucked up. Even then- I had a ball with it. I learned about limericks, haikus, poetry that’s the words formed into an image (which is pretty damn cool), and I had several assignments that were simply “write poetry about whatever you want.” This was how my foot got in the door.

The next year (seventh grade) was when I started to be very depressed. It was school life, home life, and my personal self that were all piling up on me to the point that I didn’t know what to do. How it started is a blur, maybe it was writing down phrases that popped into mind in classes when I stopped listening to the teachers drone on about life science or civics, like I cared about all that. Diaries were on my never to-do list and journals were short-lived inspirations, so the remains of my middle school angst are the scraps of paper I keep in a locked box far back in my closet. For this assignment, I opened the box. Back then, the further I reached into myself trying to grasp some feeling or identity, the easier it got to write than to talk. Now, the further I reach into my box of collected papers and notes to myself, the more it grasps me, and demands not to be forgotten. I can look back and see where I started to question gender and sexuality, I see where I created alternate identities for myself that felt like delusional fantasies. I remember closing my eyes and wishing I could show up to school as an entirely different person, always a guy. I would be happy and cool, I’d be able to talk to anyone and make lots of friends, I wouldn’t be sad anymore, even if I didn’t know why I was sad in the first place. Diaries always held that stigma for me, I was trying to be masculine before I even knew I was a man, journals seemed like an equivalent that would suffice. Nothing gold stays though, I tried to shove my fantasies to the back of my mind and I think the reason I couldn’t stand to keep the same journal was because I quickly got tired of looking at what I’d written even a day or two before. In seventh grade, my poetry wasn’t shown to anyone, it was a way of release without actual consequence. Eventually, it seemed writing poetry was all I had. That’s a lie- I also started to self-harm, quickly my addiction and poetry grew into an itch I could never quite scratch.

What kind of child lives in constant fear of himself? This child. What kind of world doesn’t pick up the signs? This world. Do they really have to wait to be told? Or does it have to continue, a fight to the death? In one corner we have the champion, death himself, and on the other side is goody two shoes, can’t even keep the hair out of his face. What a disgrace, he’s a mockery, the other kids don’t have to trip him, he already keeps his shoes unlaced. Because he fears the end is near and it will all be too late, his articulate plan, out of place.

(An excerpt from a book of poems I started piecing together in 7th grade)

By eighth grade I was paranoid of people realizing how fucked up I was, that was when I started to try and act “normal”, a foreign concept at the best of times. We had more poetry assignments in English class which brought my teacher to take notice of me, like a cockroach whose home was recently discovered, I was desperate to hide from her view. I took on a faux identity in the lunchroom and for my classroom writing assignments. I was isolated, like I was watching the world from an outsider point of view. With nothing better to do than write, I kept writing, until one of my friends found some of my poems. While I thought she’d judge me for being a depressed creep, she didn’t. Ally Frankenfield told me I was good at writing. She loved my poetry and asked if she could read more of it. Never once did I feel scared showing her something, I put what I had left of my heart and soul into my poems, I gave them everything I had, it wasn’t much but it was everything. The poem below was one of the many I showed her, she always made me feel safe, even when my poems showed my fucked up view of family life.

They watched the light leave my eyes / Forced to surrender, at the time it was a surprise / Under control, my life under attack, for my attention it pried / Sometimes I would cry / Watch as my life fell apart / In the night, to wake with a start / It’s said blood is thicker than water / But if blood is spilt, is it still considered stronger

Ninth grade, Ally and I weren’t close anymore, that happens sometimes, you know? I was again wandering around not knowing what to do with myself. I wrote twice as many poems because I’d just started high school, I was stressed and because of undesirable scheduling, I had no friends for the first three weeks.

Through the course of ninth grade I became closer with a friend I’d had through eighth, but I started to think differently about her. Her name is Mya, I fell in love with her, I think. See, I know I was in love with the way her curly hair glowed in the sunlight. In love with the form and shape of her lips. In love with the idea of touching her skin so gently, imagining my trembling fingers slide their way down her arm until my hand was palming hers. In love with all these ideas of her, but looking back on it now, I don’t know if I was in love with her. Regardless, she started dating this asshole who didn’t treat her anywhere near as nice as she deserved. I didn’t hate him, I just hated he was dating her. I hated when he made her sad, I hated when he broke up with her then begged her to take him back, and I hated that she did. Suddenly, I had no one to talk to because she was so wrapped up in him, how could I tell my best friend my greatest secret when she, in turn, would hate me for it? It went back to me shutting down in class, shutting down at home, shutting down with my friends, if she was wrapped up in him then I would be so absorbed in my woe until one of the only things I thought I had was once again writing poetry.

“After you rejected me I couldn't stand it, I had to do what I had to do. I cut out my own heart and I gave it a sad smile. I put it in a box, knowing it would be in there for a while. It sits in the dark, in the corner of my room. And there it'll stay, because loving you was my ruin.”

I need the slice / To ricochet throughout my veins / Just roll the dice / Each number increases the pain / My hunger subsiding / With every gulp I’m drinking / A thirst finally quenched / And the time between sips shortening / What am I coming to where I can’t go on / To quit would mean to lose what I’ve known for so long / To stop would mean to resist the temptation, until it’s gone / I don’t know if I’m really that strong

I’ve never read as much poetry as I’ve written. Although one poem, more so the poet, has stuck with me over the years, “To This Day” by Shane Koyczan was one of the first modern poems I’d heard and not so surprising- I didn’t hear about it at school, but rather through social media. I looked more into Shane Koyczan, a lot of his poetry is relatable for teenagers and young adults because he talks about his childhood, about being bullied or not fitting in like it’s still as important now as it once was. Many adults act like you’ll shed your childhood, shed your past. Parents will tell kids that they’ll “get over it,” as though I wasn’t currently living through my own hell; my parents didn’t even notice my struggle. At the same time, I didn’t want them to because if they couldn’t figure it out themselves, I wasn’t going to tell them. How do you tell your mom you sometimes want to kill yourself? Easy, I didn’t. I wrote poetry about it though.

I like to break down songs with clever lyrics sometimes, Eminem’s lyrics for the songs “Beautiful” and “Sing for the Moment” are ones I really connected with in middle school. While my mother played his more popular songs, on my own time I took the lyrics from his deeper songs to heart. For instance, these in the afore mentioned “Beautiful” by Eminem have stuck with me, he says:

I’m just so fuckin’ depressed I just can’t seem to get out this slump … I’m starting to feel distant again So I decided just to pick this pen up and tried to make an attempt to vent, but I just can’t admit or come to grips, with the fact that I may be done with rap, I need a new outlet.

Little thirteen-year-old me knew he was reaching through the ripped mp3 file on my hand-me down iPod classic, reaching through my torn and finicky headphones, reaching for me because he knew I would understand him if no one else did. Eminem sometimes got tired of rapping like I get tired of poetry, like one gets tired of their loved one after having the same argument over and over. Donald Trump invented the term “fake news” and I coined the term “same” in response to Eminem.

I didn’t tell her I was proud of myself for learning to tie a nooseI didn’t tell her that one day it might not be so looseShe doesn’t know I’m considering to alter my fateI never told her death invited me on a dateAnd she’ll never realize my emptinessAnd she’ll never see my eyes when they’re blackBecause only when I’m aloneDoes my reflection show my eyes as big, dark, stones

Tenth grade was rough because I made a ton of stupid choices, nothing with lasting consequences, but the kind of choices you look back and cringe at because hindsight is 20/20. I don't have a lot of poetry from tenth grade. My most vivid memories that weren't those mistakes are of me sitting in Spanish class, across the classroom from the few friends I had in there, and getting really depressed. That class was the one I could majorly zone out in and I had pages and pages of notebook paper filled to the brim with ink, as I only wrote with pens. I started to fill pages with terrible shit I thought about myself. I have memories of writing about how I wanted to be dead and would draw gore, like heads chopped off bodies and detached limbs just out of reach of their former owner. Memories of me writing down song lyrics that were stuck in my head, memories of writing and writing and writing the same lyrics until they formed eyes and noses. I have memories of drawing lips and then lining them with thick black ink blood and then writing fuck you all over them because that's what I imagined they would be saying, screaming. That's what I wanted to scream, at no one in particular, but everyone in general. I was so tired of being me. I was tired of it all and I wanted to be dead. Poetry was hard to write. It was difficult to focus my mind on anything other than being sad all the damn time. If I had related to Eminem in his song “Beautiful” before, I now felt him alive in me more than I felt alive in myself. It got to that time when I had to do what all the new-age emos were doing, listen to Twenty-One Pilots, I dug deep into Panic at the Disco, Fall Out Boy and MCR as well, as one does when they’re depressed. It seemed like I was turning into the monster I always felt inside of me, maybe it was begging to come out or maybe I was always the monsters I wrote about in my poems before.

The shading is perfectOr so it may seemTo anyone, they believe the façadeBut it won’t work on meYour terrible lies cover and hideWhen I come near, they have everything to fearBecause I can tear down your life I can call the shotsNo one will know I existedAnd you’ll be tied up in all the knotsIt’s a tricky business I will admitBut you have a few cracks that make it easy to commitIsn’t this a fun little gameIt’s designed to make the crazyGo a little more insaneSo while it’s fun to watch you be torturedI must return, but this game isn’t overLove,Your demon

Eleventh and twelfth grade were better, I struggled, but in a different way. I started reading some modern poetry, like works from Rupi Kaur, and even older poetry, like Charles Bukowski. The poets can be opposites, but sometimes very similar which is strange because the poetry is decades apart. I listened more to Shane Koyczan (who is my favorite poet) and I still try to introduce my friends to his work. I know that the poetry I write follows themes that relate it to other poetry, the intensity, the rhythm, the imagery, even the topic of my poetry is almost always my mental ‘health’, as it is with many poets. Regardless, the great thing about poetry, is almost anything can be a poem, and even if all my poems sound like they're written by the same depressed and anxious seventh grader I've always been, I have hope one day I'll write better poetry.

All my poetry leads me to where I am now. Right before eleventh grade, I came out as a transgender man. I started going by Elijah and using he/him pronouns. I like to think my life hasn't changed much. That my gender doesn't really impact my day and I don't think about it. Sometimes I do reflect on it though, all the poetry I write feels like my gender has always been an issue, and it still is, because I don't always pass. Every day I find myself a little hurt by it. Every day I get a little sad about it. I'm not depressed anymore, my life is better. This shows in my poetry. I try to write happy poetry now, because I'm not depressed, right? I'm happy. Although, I run into problems when I'm writing happy poetry. Not as many happy words rhyme and come together right in my mind, it’s little things like that which make me question whether or not I’m “cured”. After years of depression, I don’t know what normal life is supposed to feel like. It’s always seemed black and white to me, either I’m happy or I’m not, that’s not how it’s supposed to be though. Living is a balance of all these different emotions that I need to learn to accept. There will always be highs and lows, but I know for certain I’m not depressed anymore and I’m trying to come to terms with how I’m supposed to cope with that.

"Convinced you to walk to Target with me/Told you not to ask why/The most natural things are the hardest to say/They're unnatural for a guy" This poem taken from my Twitter, is about my boyfriend coming with me to target because I got into this hyper mode from my monthly cycle. He didn't ask why I was desperate for sweets and chocolate, and I didn't want him to ask. I've been talking to the doctors on campus because I have university health insurance to see if I can start taking testosterone, I'm running into road blocks. "Don't want to hear their idea of good news/Want to be able to live a life I choose/Drugs can help me get where I wanna go/Medicine can give me something to show" the thread continues "But right now I'm apathetic right now it seems pathetic to beg and useless to fight find me the path of least resistance and I'll resist it out of spite" Because I'm getting tired of it, I'm tired of being told no or maybe, if they can't help me then I don't want to deal with them, I just wish the process didn't have to be strung out. "Test in 20 minutes I haven't studied for/I know I won't do well why didn't I study more/in this class there's few tests, I only get four/I build things up to the point they're such a chore" I wrote this because fuck it, I'm not going to say I'm perfect, I'm not going to write a poem about how college is 100 percent A-Okay, because it's not. It can be hard fucking work and I'm going to damn well write about it the way I want to. I say all this because poetry and depression have formerly always been intertwined. The difference now is I want to get to a point where I can write good and bad things about my school, my boyfriend, my life as a transgender guy, my mental health and improvements, rather than just the bad. These past few months have been a new stage in my life, poetry is still developing its role but instead of using it to funnel solely angst, fear, and sadness, I want to broaden its meaning to me. It’s slow and hard work, I’m not going to change over-night, that’s obvious enough from the recent poems I’ve written, but I know I’ll get there because I used to think I’d never get over depression, and I have.