2011 Nat'l Poetry Month Contest & It Gets Better project

Hey friends. I wanted to let you know about the It Gets Better project. It falls right in line with the goal of YouMakeMeFeelLessAlone. Sparked by incidents of LGTB kids being bullied and committing suicide, Dan Savage (the well known sex columnist) created the It Gets Better campaign of video diaries from LGTB people who are speaking about how life gets better after those wretched teenage years. I am honored to know several people that have contributed videos. There is also an It Gets Better book available now! Check out the videos, the book, and the site. Maybe you'd even like to contribute a video. http://www.itgetsbetter.org/

The sentiment of It Get Better doesn't have to be limited to LGTB issues. To celebrate National Poetry Month and get the word out about It Gets Better and YouMakeMeFeelLessAlone, I am holding a POETRY CONTEST. Contribute your writing to YMMFLA and give others hope that dealing with issues like mental illness, addiction, sexuality, and relationships GETS BETTER!

Click here for info about PRIZES and GUIDELINES.

100th post to You Make Me Feel Less Alone!

This is the 100th post to You Make Me Feel Less Alone! Thanks to everyone who has submitted, read entries, and commented. Keep the submissions coming!

Karissa Doll, age 18. California.

Just Another Drink

Just one more sip
But somehow the bottle's already gone
It never stays full for long
She lays in her room
She knows nothing's okay
She knows she's right
But it's all wrong

Through a nights sleep
The day disappears
It just disappears
It's already gone

Just another drink
And another bottle
Things fall apart
The roots so deep
What you've come to be
Just another drink

So unforgiving
It won't leave her glass
This isn't her
It's all just a blur
But I see so clear
The ending so near
Of my loss of faith

Another drop
And my heart stops
It can no longer feel

I've become so numb
I'm just too young
To know who you've become
Would you want that for me
To do as I see
To give up everything
For just another drink

"I'd just stick with you If it were up to me."

Colleen, age 15. Kentucky.

Poem: Too Many People

Their is too many people
in this world I see
I'd just stick with you
If it were up to me

Exposure Therapy I might need
but, even after sessions
I still believe
that their's

Too many people
& I feel like I have
no room to breathe

So many people
that I block out
So I can't see
because it causes so much anxiety

If it were up to me
I'd just stick with you
I don't like being alone
but, I would be okay with finding alone with you.


Poem: His Kind of Red Sky

Lying in the grass
Staring up at the sky
I got a glance
Of his kind of red sky


Poem: He Comes Close

You're a fighter
& you've come so far
Holding on
So don't let go now
No one will ever understand completely
But, he comes close
With your thoughts & your feelings
You may be alone
& in severe pain
But, tomorrow's a new day
& it's never too late
To begin again.


Poem: Though You Hurt

Though you hurt
Though you suffer
Though you may never be the same
You are constantly picking yourself back up
& trying again
'Cause all you really want
All you really need
Is happiness somewhere in between

Things are starting to change
You're realizing you won't be the same
Though you hurt & are afraid
Who says things haven't ever been this way?


Poem: To Make it Make Sense

To make it make sense
You call it beautiful pain
Is it possible the sun will come out tomorrow?
Will the moon & stars show again?
Does something beautiful end?
------->YES<-------

"Like a captured rabbit I pounce at a chance of freedom."

A.M. Young, age 22. Jenkintown, PA.

Pain

Reality flickers on and off
Like a lamp in my mind
Sacrificing sanity in the process
I am lost
Anxiously breathing, heart pitter pattering
Like a captured rabbit
I pounce at a chance of freedom
But I am lost

I am unsafe alone
But worse crowded within the mob
Reality an occurrence
I am uncomfortable
Now a light which once flickered
Is the spotlight on my mind
I am forsaken by my spotlight
Still I am uncomfortable

My spotlight shines
When it once flickered in and out
Now blinding my eyes
I am in pain.

At last, new poems!

Sorry, folks. It's been a really long time. But here are several new posts for YMMFLA! Check them out. Post comments about what you think. Send in your own work!

Anonymous.
[break her down]

Like a flower in the sky, I fall gently, creating disturbance beneath me and natural disaster across the seas. I take my place on the stone ledge, fixing my eyes on the edge, begging some part of me not to go through with it, all the while knowing I won’t do it. I witness fear enter in, starting to call revenge my closest friend, daring the eyes to see all they have done. I pinch myself, this is no dream, catch a deep breath, finding in me, searching deeper for more meaning – nothing. Getting closer, feet are trembling, my heart keeps beating; now its racing, somehow being torn between, never knowing if it is worth it to stay alive. I hold my head above the water, those who follow, somehow stronger; though they stumble they find footing absent from my own. No one sees me, the sun betrays me, I jump into the black beneath leaving behind my last words and a final goodbye - not even a shadow. I am beauty, see me falling? Catch me.


Latoya Brathwaite, Age 18. Barbados.
Suicide

I smashed the mirror on my bathroom wall
And watched my reflection shatter
Depressed, sad, ugly girl...she was gone
The memories, the revolting pain, it all ceased to matter
I smeared on some makeup
I dyed my hair red
And that night...that night,I left her behind
Lost within the sharp shards of glass, her face, once was mine

My words dripped with forged bouts of happiness,
Sentences punctuated with the whitest "Oh-emm-gee"
Ten, eleven, twelve...ficticious tales of a wild, exciting life
I laughed until I cried, I cried on the inside, inevitably
I signed on to Facebook
I added my new "friends"
And when in pain I told myself, she would fade after a while
So I drowned her out in sleeping pills and bullied my mouth to smile

The moon hid behind the cloud, the crickets screamed
The night I lost my virginity
When it was over, he pushed me off the bed and laughed when I started to cry
Where were my friends
I felt ugly again
Depressed
Lonely
In my hand, the butcher knife gleamed
Before I could carve a line on my wrist...I saw her reflection
The knife distorted the image but I recognised her
Clarity replaced insanity...the wrongs I did to her,came flooding back to me

I made her overdose on the wild life
Evertime I pretended to be like them, the noose tightened around her neck
I stabbed her in the heart when I gave away my innocence
Clarity.
Her reflection would always be mine
When the knife slid from my hand...I realised, I had already murdered
Me.


Joshua Diehl, age 18. Denton, Texas.
Concerning Inadequacy

Inspiration,

How you torture me as a flipping switch
Turning swiftly, repeatedly, from marriage to suicide
Between art and happiness, I cannot decide
But sorrow never seems to kick me into the ditch

My heartstrings have become sanguinary
But this could never be a fault of yours
Lord, I do not think this has been a dream of sorts
Although I am not certain of anything, anymore

No longer shaped like a cradle, both hands on the rusting rail,
Barely shuffling up perished steps
I forgot to take the time to reconstruct a liar’s bed
No wonder I come home only to the coffee she left

Time will spread her wings and fly
If you let her stare too long into the sky
I do not think your love will fix everything
But God, how I would quite love to try


A.M. Young, age 22. Jenkintown, PA.
Molestation

Binds me to the past, like a pair of steel clasped hand cuffs
Tightened to my wrists, I feel them squeezing the blood
Blood that should be flowing from my hands to my heart

My heart beats rapidly as I am linked to the past barely surviving
Laughing at the notion of thriving ever even considered
Soulless it seems from the lies of the deep abyss

Light indigo lines ran rapid in the child’s eyes
Or were they dark like the color of the soil
Forgotten now the simple description of the doer

Look what ignorance has done to the Molested
Ignorance of the molested and the doer
Ignorance of the guardian, the watcher, the closeness

Binds me to the past, like a shackle of a slave
Crippled I am soul, body, and mind
My innocence forced out

Driven out of the soul like a whipped, beaten horse
A stallion beautiful once, but now a simple ass
Loaded with the stress of a strain not its fault

HA! Says the molested, HE! Says the ass
I am wounded, forgotten, overlooked
I am bound to this past, the emotion of a tumultuous storm

The storm rages on and pours down over my body
Cleans dear lord of all my oppression
“Blessed are they who mourn,

For they will be comforted”
I can only pray
The binding of the my soul to the molested


Anonymous.
Little Word

If I were going to write you
it would only be one word—
hi.
I’d print it so small
that it would be barely
visible, just a whisper
of lead on paper
saying
I am still here.

"I look in the mirror and I see a stranger."

Nicole Easterwood, age 20. Ohatchee, Alabama

I can feel the heaviness again.
I am driving down the road
at ninety to nothing,
flooring it so I can get home,
so I don’t have to do this
in the middle of the road
alone.
My sister’s there.
She knows what to do,
what to say to me
to make me begin
to calm down.
Even if I don’t tell her
what’s going on.
There is nothing here,
but blackness
and my mind
is pacing back and forth.
I keep trying to figure out
what triggered it this time
so I can know not to do
whatever it was again.
But each time
it’s something different.
Each time the “thing”
that makes me feel like I am
losing
control
changes.
I can’t pinpoint anything anymore.
I can’t figure out what it is this time.
All I can see
when I turn around
each corner is
fail,
Fail,
FAIL.
Like nothing I’m doing matters
and the sea of brackish water
is consuming my lungs
when I am mute.
Like all it would take
to make all of the tension
and pulsating stop would be
making a stop by “Blunt Guy’s” house.
I could waste away
into the pot
and the alcohol and,
for a little while,
I wouldn’t feel like
I was dying.
The offer is
so tempting.
Then I think of Jake
and my mentor and
what they would think of me
if they knew all of this,
but I can’t take all of it anymore.
I look in the mirror
and I see a stranger,
someone who
could not possibly be Nicole,
someone who should not still
be here in this town,
someone who should
be gone by now.
And Jo is the only one
who really understands
that I can’t be
in this house anymore.
That even driving is a task
and my chest is still heavy
and stomach churning
as I pull in the driveway
and try to breathe,
breathe,
breathe.

"The knowledge that I’m not alone helped me find balance."

Amber McLain, age 18. Michigan

Panic rises and grips my throat, my heart. I feel like death has his arms around me, waiting for just the right moment to move his hands around my neck. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. Why does no one understand that? Can no one understand what’s going on? I’m too shy to ask for help, but is it really not obvious? Mom, dad, sisters one, two and three – do you not see how much I’m suffering? No one understands, until…a book. A book gives me hope. Many books, actually. They help me realize that what’s wrong isn’t that I’m crazy; what’s wrong is that I’m depressed; I might very well have panic disorder. This is oddly calming; just knowing that I am not alone in this struggle helps. I don’t feel as bad, don’t feel the need to hide, don’t self-medicate. The knowledge that I’m not alone helped me find balance.