I  Need Help: A collaborative Poem 

I need the help I push away.  I need a stream of unending grace as I learn to resist the ache on nights I feel numb and caged. 

I need the help I push away.   Forgive me if I say “I’m okay” even when my hands shake.  I’m only afraid of my feelings being paraded; a social experiment on how depression hurts.   

I need the help I push away, but only if I’m promised I’ll receive the healing I feel I deserve. 

And afterwards, please treat me the same.  Not as a sorry sight, not as the person who was once broken, the one people would avoid out of pity.   

All I’m saying is if I say I’m hurt, lift me up pat my back, then return me to the crowd.   I want to heal and still belong. 

I don’t want eyes that stare at me only to remind me of what I was; a shipwreck.   

So yes, I do need the help I push away.  But only when the world learns to hold on without making me wear the label of what I survived.   

Forgive me when I push you away, I’ve been trying to heal on my own so long I’ve forgotten that others can help.   

But I don’t want to be seen as just another shipwreck on the shores of life 

I want to rebuild my ship and become Theseus’s ship, still recognizable but forever changed.  I know I need to learn to accept help but it’s easier said than done.   

When all you’ve been able to rely on is yourself, it’s easier said than done.  But just as Rome wasn’t built in a day neither was it built by one man.  So, I’ll rebuild my ship with the help of others and sail away from these shores of depression with a reinforced hull.  

Too long have I mouthed the words I’m okay when I was breaking inside, when i was already shipwrecked.  No more, no more will I mearely pay lip service.  Because it’s okay to not be alright and I need to learn to live those words.   

The italicized words are from a new friend of mine Echoes Of Unsaid Things he can be found on threads at https://www.threads.com/@echoes.of.unsaid.things