“What do you even have to worry about?”

“High school was so fun!
Why do you say you hate it?
Don’t be so dramatic.”

They tell me.
But then they go on, after they see my grades

“You’re not even trying!
Just study harder!
Oh, but you can’t take normal classes, no.
We want you to take all honors.
Honors classes are better for you.”

“You have a D in College Algebra??
That’s unacceptable.
You’re grounded.
Until you can get your score up, of course.”

Is what they tell me.
You wonder why I hate school?
It’s because it *****.
It teaches you that if you make mistakes you’re worthless.
And If you don’t get that letter up to an A you won’t get into a good college,
You won’t get a good job,
You won’t earn good money,
You won’t be able to live,
Not that (dare I say) a fourth of us even want to.

Did you know,
That the average kid in high school has the same level of anxiety
As the average insane asylum patient in the 1950’s?

It’s a ******* problem.

And don’t read an article about it,
Written by a Millennial,
Read by a Baby Boomer,
About the problems of a generation
That they don’t know.

I’m sick of it.

What do I have to worry about?

I have to worry about my future.
I have to worry about it every waking hour of my life.
I have to stress,
And agonize,
And internally SCREAM about it.

Because of how hard it is.

And I can’t “live in the present,”
Because I have no time
To do trivial things (without feeling like a failure).

I have no time,
To get the “eight hours of sleep your child needs” every night,
Because I’m doing homework,
Or crying,
Or procrastinating,
Because I know I can’t do it.
I just can’t make myself.

And I wish they’d be a little less disappointed in me,
Because It’ll never compare to how disappointed I am in myself.

Let me get one thing clear; I don't cut myself for attention.
I cut myself to release all the unspoken words that float around my head like torn up pieces of psalms in the wind
the blade is my psalm
It is the scripture I imprint on my skin
Every drop of blood is a prayer
A prayer that one day I won't find the color red, the color of my life, to be the only color that sticks around
The color I find in my sink and on my skin
It is my religion
I talk to God but he doesn't talk
The blade talks
Talks when I cant stand to look in the mirror
It talks when I stand alone in a room full of people
It talks when I can't think about anything other than my next high
It talks when I can't get out of bed on the weekends when everyone else around me can't sit still
The blade is my religion
And if this is religion maybe God doesn't exist

i’m terrified
because i know
one day i’ll die

not just my body
but my memory
everything that remains of me

one day i’ll truly die
nobody will whisper my name again
and i’ll become

irrelevant

insignificant

unimportant

someday, nobody will think of me ever again
all i was
all i wish i could be
all i will be

will mean nothing.

there is a fire in my chest
that roars with every breath i take
i am suffocating,
choking on the fumes

at night, i am my own firefighter
i use the jaws of life to cut open my skin,
reach inside of myself
and extinguish whatever is burning me alive
until the flames re-ignite again in the morning.