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A Bird's Forgotten Song

A Poem About Living with and Learning to Breathe with Mental Illness

By K ➶Published 6 years ago 1 min read
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My brain is an ethereal royal filled with caged birds who have forgotten how to sing.

That can only be set free by the wind that breaks through my lungs when I take the time to fill them mindfully. Breathing. It’s not as easy as you’d think.

You cope with your breaths each time seeming easier by it’ll all come back to this.

The picking at various parts of my skin, the hard blinging of my eyes, the twitching of my nose, the chewing the fuck out of my tongue, I don’t do this for fun.

It’s an endless, vicious cycle that always has a light at the end of it and once you get there it’s like the ocean rushes over your feet and you feel alive again.

But it doesn’t last because eventually, that same ocean will keep rising until it drowns you.

It’s impossible to breathe under water but as time goes by, I’ve learned how to develop my own gills.

I can breathe, even when my brain tells me I shouldn’t.

I can laugh, even when my brain tells me I’m too sad for that.

I can smile, even when my brain tells me it’s a façade.

I can live, even when my brain tells me it’s impossible to.

But isn’t that the point?

Everything feels like it’s too much.

There’s always way too much.

But I’m still here. I’m still trying. I’m still fighting with my brain day in, day out.

I am breathing. Underwater. No longer against my will.

I am letting the birds out of the cages in my mind and teaching them how to sing again.

inspirational
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About the Creator

K ➶

https://www.instagram.com/unbelievably_enough/

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