why?
The sun it shines for me
but rain will surely
enter it’s way
for my life is not a picture
in some local magazine
No beautiful mountains to climb
because my pain has washed
them all away
no tall green trees to see this year
because my heart has burned them all down
can’t you see the flames?
Inside, in my mind, to me I
resemble a house made out of glass
my mental illness has taken over
and has began throwing stones
the pieces cut me up as it shatters
The illness, is like lightening or a razor
first it strikes me hard and deep
then cuts my face, my body and my soul
it’s bitter hate I ate
and it’s rotting me away
apart from everything, I simply ask why?
SEG
*I have spent almost my entire life trying to understand mental illness. I figured that once I understood I could then be the puppeteer instead of the puppet. It doesn’t seem to work that way. I wrote this poem in my mid to late twenties. If I got it, I could stop it. Nope.
During the weeks leading up to our appointment we were texting ideas to each other regularly. My husband sent me a text suggesting I might incorporated the 
and wanted the Ketamine above the semicolon to show that it was Ketamine that started up my life again. I had to show that with the beat beginning after the semicolon. Vanis nailed my ideas.
It is difficult to see in the photos I am posting and I plan to update later with more professional appearing images. These pictures were taken the day of our tattoos from our phones.
I am aware and can acknowledge these perceptions I have of myself and how they affect my interpretation of the world around me. The variety of pills I have been prescribed over the years have definitely placed brick walls in my way.
It is disappointing that more people don’t embrace what an amazing life we have been given. I want to live in the now. I am training myself to be present. I won’t lie. It is excruciating. I am trying to discover myself in this new world that has opened up to me and it is quizzical. I am enjoying most of my discoveries even through my confusion. I just don’t want this new world full of half living individuals to destroy me. I am discouraged today. I am working again. It is a challenge. I am grateful that I am able. I feel I have so much to offer. I am running into closed doors and tall unbreakable walls. This is all still so fresh to me. I am processing. I want to be a better person. A whole one. I am having emotions I don’t necessarily have experience with because the depression numbed me. I think, I didn’t know all the emotions I could feel. I have had to redefine my emotional language. What I mean by that is my knowledge of the definitions of feelings was strong. I believed I was in touch and self aware. However, my first hand experience was damaged by my mental illness. I feel with Ketamine I am distinguishing the differences. I will give you an example. As I have stated I have lost many things because of my depression. Friends have passed away. Disappointments, massive ones, have occurred and my depression deepened. I did not grieve. I thought the depression was evidence that I was going through the stages of loss. I have recently realized I was crying when I thought I saw a friend that passed away almost three years ago. It startled me. What was going on? What were the tears about? It had only been a few days since my Ketamine shot. I was perplexed and afraid. Was the depression resurfacing during the period between treatments? I think feeling any sadness at all has been my deepest concern. I question with fear. It was only after months of treatment that I realized everyone gets sad. Grief isn’t clinical depression. Having a day of tears doesn’t equate to a lifetime of spiraling depression or hospitalizations. I have to constantly remind myself. I try every day to use the correct terms to express myself. I feel this is an valuable asset for my recovery. It is definitely a frustrating component. It is also the way in which I have grown most over the past year. I am still a work in progress just like this website…
will write about aspects of Ketamine that you may want to reject. You may think it is great that it works for me but you are different. Am I correct? I know I had these same exact thoughts. The people that were helped with Ketamine are lucky. I won’t be that fortunate. I am sure I have suffered too long to be helped. I bet those helped didn’t have “my kind of depression”. I had all the defenses, and mistrust I have grown to feel when approaching new treatments. As I have stated before and want to impress upon anyone reading now is I was at my end. No light on inside. I know from reading my journals that I didn’t have high hopes for Ketamine. I stayed around and fought for my family. If there was something that could help, didn’t I owe it to them to try it? It was not an easy endeavor. I was profoundly depressed and so angry about it. I write now and my feelings about the future are positive. I guess I worry that a depressed individual may blow me off because it seems so far fetched. I know, I had these thoughts. My family did so much research and were so hopeful that this treatment would work for me. I think they had to believe that because they knew I had basically checked out and was just playing the waiting game. I think I didn’t believe it would help me. I felt nothing would because the fact is nothing ever did. I couldn’t get my hopes up like my therapist and husband were. It is important to me to have you realize how far from the sun I was. I had been for years. I know now my depression
was always present. It just manifested itself in a variety of different ways. I have used many crutches over the years to combat my illness; without success. I was fighting off depression with running shortly before my most recent break and hospitalizations. I was training for a marathon, and my body betrayed me. I ignored it. I needed to run. I was being chased by the demon. I couldn’t seem to run fast enough or long enough. I would run when I was broken because I knew what was in store for me if Satan out ran me. The evils of depression go beyond any will power you think should kill it. I have lost so many, many things and people because I was ashamed of my mental illness and would go into hiding when the symptoms were at their worst. Many of my observations have been years in the making and others I found with the help of Ketamine. Depression is an insidious disease. It will steal everything from you. It will make life unbearable. It makes suicide seem rational. It embeds itself deep within and suffocates you in a world others can’t see. It painfully kidnaps you and leaves behind only a shell of who you once were. I was on my last breath. Ketamine turned out to be my oxygen. It forced air in, so to speak, and loosened the grip that bastard depression had on me. I was reviewing my journals and they saddened me. I have experienced much personal growth since my journey began. I recognize the girl
that wrote the words spread across the pages of my journals, but I am not her. Thankfully. I still find myself angry that I didn’t discover Ketamine sooner. I am trying to accept that I found Ketamine when I did. I think I will be way ahead of the game when I accept and embrace my diagnoses. I have spent a great deal of my life denying my illness to others. I didn’t want to appear weak. I didn’t want to be labeled and judged. I still don’t. I do know that if we don’t start discussing it more freely without the fear of repercussions, more will suffer in silence. It is a raw subject and just slightly intimate which frightens the general population. People don’t want to discuss illnesses they can’t see. I want people to understand the true severity of mental illnesses. It is just so cruelly debilitating. We need to realize we have a voice. We need to be heard.
ken of in our home. Matthew was taking a research class at the time and decided to write his semester paper on Ketamine. He was then invited to present his finding at the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program’s yearly presentations. It was all so exciting and fascinating. Matthew’s 
terested I have linked his 
