19

19 Starts brand new,
Begs, pleads, God please keep me accountable. 2 years cut free.
18 Struggling to wrangle booze and pills,
18 Drunk for the first time; best friend sobers me up, until I move away, ruining the best parts of me.
18 Sober; I gave in at 4 and a half months the first time. I think I gave up at 24 weeks the last. Sober, not. Sober, not. Sober not. Trying not to slip up, trying not to get caught.
18 I think I remember a little bit of last year, but maybe not.
18 I can't decide if I will ever be okay.
17 Praying to God that I would die, crying endlessly, believing love was a lie. Starts drinking quote unquote 'for fun'; regrets to acknowledge that I think I'm allergic to alcohol, turns out I'm not.
16 Hurting daily, cutting myself in the school bathroom everyday. In such a haze from drugs, tries to kill myself for the last time. My estimate is the 6th. Finally able to burn my suicide notes.
15 Surgery prompts drug use, the first time I ever tried to overdose. I failed.
15 7 tramadol; I slept 18 hours straight. Before surgery I asked my best friend if the surgeon would tell my mom about the self-inflicted scars on my hips. He doesn't.
15 My brother thinks he may be allergic to alcohol. My mom says I may be as well, I don't question it. I mean who drinks anyway?
14 I feel depressed. I try to fix everyone but myself. I act as psychologist, therapist, mother, friend, when I'm pretty sure I'm none of the above.I hurt
13 I only have one friend at school, I dye my hair purple, still only one friend, I feel lonely.
12 How would it feel to die? I think I might want that, but I drop the thought.
11 There are shark razor blades at work, I decide I should try to cut myself, my friends mom has mentioned to me that my friend has done it. I was in girl guides.
10 My older brother is so cool, bright green hair and all. He doesn't need to do drugs or drink to be cool.
9 Grandpa has a lot of beer, but that's okay, because he is Grandpa.
8 I see mommy taking medicine a lot, I wish she would feel better. Pills must make people feel better, right?
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0 When my Mum was pregnant and I drained her vitamins from her body, did she ever think that I would do the same to her medicine cabinet as a teen?


EDIT: As of  OCT 28/2014, I have been self injury free for 2 years and 7 months
 Sober and clean for 358 days, nearly 1 full year.

Photographs of Myself

I want you to take my picture

To capture

I want to see myself the way you see me

So that I don’t see through the thick walls I put up.

The truth of who I am lies in the photographs taken of me

No lies, no masks, just me.

Put simply,

I want to be remembered,

And it wouldn't hurt for me to remember myself too.

I feel blue,

But in depictions of me scrawled on paper,

I see truth.

I don’t see you.

When I look at pictures I take of myself,

I see parts of me that are affected,

Blackened by the plague that is you,

And I see someone broken into

Invaded,

In such private places.

I want you to take my picture

Because when I look at it,

I don’t want to see you. 

Encased

Encased
I am a magic box
A treasure chest
I appear not as what I encase
Though as an illusion
Unable to be seen through
Truthfully I am fully opaque
Inner being never exposed
Intricate locks work as a barricade
The locks protect my inner workings
Casting a spell, they bend minds
So that no one will understand
Leaving people with inaccurate conclusions
I am not to be feared
Instead revered,
No, it isn't possible to pull away a curtain
No way for one to view early
I am a ticking time bomb
Gas ready to ignite
My chest is a beating drum
I encase secrets like a diary
A jumper, I find my peak
My feet a vehicle
They lead me to where I will rest
None know what my ribcage houses
Nor what is shattered inside
I am a secret
I appear not as what I encase
A treasure case
I am a magic box

Shane Koyczan

This moment is a melody, a simple memory
One back to the day when I saw you, for the first time
When I matched your voice to your indescribable rhyme
That day the first of many
When on a whim, I won
And because of that, I became one with the poetry I used to write
And I became new
Spilling the truth like it was the glass of milk I cried over yesterday
Broken promises and broken hearts
The things I've done wrong, and when I tried to just get along
You entered my life as a hero and a reigniter of passion
The poetry I once wrote was that of the past
My vocabulary is now much more vast,
Creating the illusion that I know what I am doing
When truly I am still trying to navigate the ebbs and flows
All the while still yearning to grow
This is for the times when you taught me to show; show who I am because of my past
This is for when you reminded me that others have it worse, that the crickets have arthritis, and that hurts
For the time you reminded me that I need to speak my mind, and say that this is my voice
When you reminded me that happiness and contentedness is the only thing I need, despite me sitting here filled with greed
I want this to stand for the dozens of times that I've walked a bridge wanting to jump,
But didn't, and instead wrote a poem
Because I heard your voice in the background,
I heard the strength you hold
And felt filled
So I wrote a poem
You tell me that atlantis is true
And that you and I are possibly on a mission of our own
We try to remember because we want to feel
For the years of nothingness we felt.
This is for the day I saw you live,
And I asked you how a young aspiring poet could become great
I ran outside and bought your CD, but only after you told me to write everyday
I wanted to hear you while I wrote
And as I write this, your voice fills my room
You just told me what I need to hear, that each slice of life is served with something sweet on the side
You remind me that there is something good coming from the storm
That perhaps the pain I've felt could help someone else just like you have helped me
You've helped me
You've inspired me
And I'm sure the eager sixteen year old probably wasn't your perfect idea of audience
Yet you were that depressed little girls crystal clear perfect picture of strength and role model.
You were the reason that that the same young girl wrote her life story as her first spoken word poem, the first one meant to be performed
You are the reason the girl read her dark history in a room full of over one hundred silent people
Expecting a miracle
When she could only deliver so much
You are also the reason I forget to rhyme
Because I can't get the words out in time
The first poet that I've related to,
The only one that I've ever felt connected to
Back when all I could see was darkness,
The poetry was my one escape
Listening through every somber bus ride, through each class,
Everyday for hours on end, your voice held me up, when I no longer could
Even when I knew I should
Your voice is an anthem to the broken
Hope for the hopeless, and strength for the weak
More often than not, your stories kept me alive,
Even when all seemed dead,
You reminded me that it wasn't simply in my head
I was given a safe haven through your tone
And I knew that I was never alone
My shame forgotten, and courage adopted, and the passion for the art form I love reunited
This is for the times you saved my life with your words
And the lessons you taught me that gave me self worth
Thank you Shane,
Because of you, my life has been changed

To the Man I Never Knew as 'Dad'

Thank you.
Thank you for being present in the hectic life of a hormonal teenaged girl,
For being there when her father couldn't be bothered
Thank you for being available to a young girl that needed a male figure in her life.
Thank you for being there for that girl and her family,
For giving all you have to make them your own family too.
Know that there is nothing but blood and title stopping her from knowing you belong to her.
Some might say step-something rather.
You are her dad.
You have endured thousands of thankless nights, hard labour, and more along the way.
This is her thank you.
Her reminder of why she is who she is today.
Why she would be proud to one day marry a man just like you.
This is your warning, that you most likely got more than you bargained for,
But that you shared the reward with a family,
Your family.
She never knew you as dad,
But you were always so much more than the title suggested anyway.