It’s all in your head, that’s what people say! And indirectly they’re right they forget. It’s in my head and my head is inside my body that is the most important organ that controls everything. What they forget is that every mental illness is the malfunctioning of our brain and chemicals. It isn’t made up; even what’s made up is psychologically characterised as delusion which is another mental illness.
What an irony right?
I suffer from depression and I am not ashamed of it. I have made depression into an art form for myself through poetry and visual arts. I have chosen to display my emotions and not hide them from the world. My photography series showcase my emotions and so do my poems.
Depression is neither black or white, it’s a feeling made up of grey cells that tear you apart. What matters is how you hold on!
A series of poems and photographs, 'Behind Closed Doors, is a tribute to everyone out there suffering unseen. You are not alone!
Depression is a Monster
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Depression is a monster that doesn’t live under my bed,
Instead, it has found a place inside my head.
It’s like a Boogyman or El Cuco, shapeshifting always, keeping me delusional.
It traps me within its source of black hole and tells me tales I cannot live with at all,
It plays tricks and games and keeps eating my soul from within like the Death Eaters in Harry Potter who they thought could never win.
My happy memories and my confidence is somewhere in a far away land,
Broken into pieces like an island.
The sun hurts my eyes and the sunset, night sky, rain, and fog have befriended me.
I look blankly into the overcast sky, like I am in the depth of an ocean searching for my whys;
I struggle to exorcise the monster and I know one day I will,
It’s either its life or my survival.
Pills for Pain
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What wouldn’t we do to reduce pain?
Pop a pill that would disassociate us or do a brain surgery that would help us forget all the painful memories that have made us wretched souls.
Maybe I would bind all my memories into a book and put it away on dusted racks,
Maybe I would revisit them once when I am ready or I would never.
I would let them stay unwritten maybe, or written with invisible ink because I know my story would break even the strongest heart,
I would do anything to forget my pain and life, I would keep nothing;
Nothing deserves it.
What’s there is Sleep?
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What’s there in sleep?
Nothing but dreams and nightmares coming together in harmony to give you a restless night,
A tyrant whom you need but don’t want,
A vice and virtue stuck together with a blotched neck,
A black hole gaping out in the cosmos to suck you in its abyss; sometimes temporarily and sometimes forever,
You don’t need to sleep in order to dream,
Dream with your open eyes and fight the demon of your nightmares,
‘cause they’re not under your bed but around you.
Withered Flowers from a Plundered Grave
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How eerily beautiful it shall be,
The withered flowers on a forgotten grave.
A tombstone lay unseen behind bushes and shrubs,
Weeping with the sweet maiden in white,
Laying still earth while.
Moss and dirt covering her name,
The beautiful epitaph gone in vain.
But the fallen flowers still adore her,
Might it have been Ophelia in a different world.
Lavender and Jasmine surround the air,
While bougainvilleas and lillies drop under the rain.
The maiden still sleeps with a peaceful harmony,
The withered flowers on her grave keeping her in memory.
I wish to pass her someday in reality,
While she calls me in my dream in her darkest vanity.
I wish to leave a bouquet of Orchids,
Maybe like me, she would love those bits.
The love she never got I wish to bestow on her,
Maybe she is just me from a time unknown and unseen.
You can follow Rupsha's work here.
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