When I was fourteen years old one of my best friends died. 

I wandered the halls of my dreary middle school where

my anxiety levels rose and my confidence fell. 

My heart raced as I ran from my classroom

to the nearest bathroom stall where I would sit and write.

I sat and I wrote about the horrors of panic attacks,

about the shortness of my breath and my deep longing to escape reality. 

 

When I was fifteen years old I was better and I was worse.

Some days I would smile and it would be from the joy 

deep within my heart that I forced myself to grasp onto. 

I searched for love because it was what I always longed for, and 

I dated an immature boy. I thought what we had was real. 

What the hell did I know about love?

Nothing, that's what. 

 

When I was sixteen years old I discovered the beauty in driving alone on 

long roads with the windows down and my favorite music in my ears.

I came to love solitude and the peace that overcame my soul. 

I began to learn more about who I was and who I wanted to be, 

all the while discovering my vast love for the arts.

The day I witnessed one of my own photographs develop before my eyes

was the day that my perception of this world opened to a whole new view.

 

When I was seventeen years old I was deeply in love with 

being alive and finding beauty throughout my journey. 

I had always felt that I was a girl with a depth that not many people could understand, 

and I could not help but believe that to feel as deeply and intensely as I did 

was a blessing that tended to bring a lot of pain. 

 

When I am 18, when I am 19, when my hand quivers as I pick up my pen, 

I will remember that I harnessed my poetic voice.

To this day I find myself too often writing about the despair

that comes with living and the pure joy I find in being alive.

I am sane, and I am insane. 

I am free, and I am caged. 

I am okay, and I am not okay. 

It is so exhausting to be the biggest paradox I've ever known, 

but I grow and I learn and I could not be more thankful for this life I get to call mine.