Don't Give In (Reach Out)

**This poem is dedicated to you Meghan, and everyone else out there who struggles with mental health daily.**

Devise a new rocket

take us to the moon.

Become an influential teacher

inspire our youth.

Challenge someone with a closed perspective

watch them as they to start to question.

Solve an injustice

like a meticulous detective.

Who knows what good you could have done, if you were still here?

Who knows what could have been if you had a few more years?

Like a researcher

who never got money for their grant.

Like a student who can learn

but was told he can’t.

Like someone with a forever closed mind.

Or an investigator who simply ran out of time.

You were haunted

insecure and shrouded in doubt.

Tethered underwater

so words couldn't come out.

Your hands felt tied

you assumed you were bound to drown.

But only God knows

we wish we could hear you right now.

Sons and daughters 

lost in flood waters,

There are still those of us trying

to cut the ties holding you down.

IF YOU ARE STRUGGLING, PLEASE I BEG YOU,

REACH OUT.

1-800-273-8255 (TALK)

**New National Line dial 988**

I used to write quite a bit when it was hard for me to express how to feel about certain things. It always helped to alleviate the pressures of the day to day; and honestly, I just loved it when words finally came together.

This isn’t a moment when words came together, so much as it is a moment when I didn’t really know quite what to say, but still want to say something.

Someone whom I cared for a lot took their own life. Moreover, life has a tendency to complicate things and I was out of the country when it occurred, which meant I didn’t even get to say goodbye. I struggled with that fact for a while, but more importantly if you are struggling with the day to day, please reach out.