My Masterpiece

If I’m being honest, I never thought I would see 30.

I didn’t believe I would see past 13.

Or 14.

Or 15.

Or 16.

Or 17.

Or 18.

Or 19.

Or 20.

See, Depression is that old friend that calls during the least convenient rhyme.

It’s the lightly damp blanket you use because you forgot to move it from the washer to the dryer and run it twice, but now it’s bedtime.

Depression is the moment when you wake up and that half-second where everything feels okay.

It’s the messy bathroom, with dishes in the kitchen sink, but friends in the living room.

It's the deafening silence that radiates through your walls and seeps into your head, suffocating you like a black mold.

Underlying.

Unseen.

Unkept.

Unassuming.

Until you’re unalive.

You see when I didn’t think I would see 30, it’s because I stopped dreaming at 13. And now I’m here, stuck between fantasy and reality, and trying to form and create pleasant dreams when all that’s happening is nightmares when I’m awake.

And this is why I sleep so much.

Fast bikes

Fast lives

Time flies

All because I want to feel alive.

Because while you have been living, I’ve been surviving.

I’m just an outlying statistic that somehow found its way to stay on the charts, rather than slip and fall off the tightwalk of this timeline we call life.

And only now am I trying to make the dash between my birthdate and death date mean something.

So excuse me if I’m not perfect.

I’m not sorry about the Kintsugi I’m crafting with my shattered peices, especially since I’m missing the memories of a childhood.

I’m not apologizing for this gold-covered masterpiece I’m creating out of nothing.

And maybe you wouldn’t place it in the Louvre, but I'll hang it above my mantle, where the noose could have been, and I’ll call it a Bansky.

And unlike Van Gogh, you’ll recognize my brilliance in my lifetime.

I’m not about to let my life be defined by the last period.

And maybe I won’t live in a mansion, but if success was only measured in millions, then erect a statue of Epstein and tear down The Redeemer.

I’ve forged diamonds in a coal mine.

Give me a hammer and let me chisel my David.

I’m beating the odds and Vegas bet against me so I’m putting it all on Red because of the blood that saved me, now spin the table and watch me cash out because I’m done playing roulette with the Russians.

This chalice that was once filled with Clorex is now overflowing with Champagne, and I’m not sipping on it slowly.

I might be walking a lonely road, but I’m done crossing over chasms that I cut in my childhood classrooms.

and while the scars are now faded, when you look closely, catch the truth dripping from my veins:

I didn’t just make it.

I rose up from the grave

and made this life mine.