Dear my mental illnesses,

I am sorry for the boiled blood that will have spilled all over this keyboard by the time I am done with this letter, for it’s not supposed to be an angry one, but the sounds of your name on my tongue infuriates me, saving no room for a little bit of respect.

I am not your friend.

I have never spoken of you with love tugging at my lips, in fact, I wish I didn't even know your name. I have never fallen in love with you like other beautifully tragic writers have.

You see, I was first introduced to you all when I was far too young to understand what was happening to me. When you all came, you brought your friend Suicide along.

Suicide trickled through my veins and infected me with her bittersweet poison, which made me miserable and generally unenjoyable to be around.

You've put up these walls that are nearly impossible to break. You are not welcome in my house, you are not welcome in my relationships, yet for some reason, you are always laying just beneath the surface causing my acts of irrationality.

You have made me far too careful and far too afraid of letting people in because that way I could get hurt.

I wish I was the type of girl who could fall in love countless times and not end up affected by the aftermath; but, in all reality, I'm not.

I'm the type of girl who rarely even likes somebody enough to say that I love them.

I'm the type of girl who is always terrified of who is going to walk out of her life next, and for that, I blame you.

I blame you for the fact that I can sit in bed at four in the morning and think about all of my past mistakes and how I seem to be completely and utterly alone.

You have made me irrational.

You make me feel like nobody could love me, and the people who say that they love me are just using me, even when I know that none of it is true.

You make it impossible for me to ever let my walls down for the people who would be willing to brave my storm, and you choose to let them come down for people who wouldn't even stand in the shallow puddles of Hurricane Anke.

One person that has no good intentions for me whatsoever can get into my head can get closer to me than a thousand people who just want to love and protect me for who I am, not somebody that they think I should be.

Suicide, you are not my friend but the friend of Anxiety and Depression. I'm not entirely sure why they love you so much, but maybe it's because they too wilt every flower that is in a thousand-mile radius from their path, leaving survivors that are broken and bruised from impact.

Dear Suicide, nobody wants to be your friend. Nobody wants you breathing down their necks 24/7. We don't love you. Hell, we don't even like you.

Dear Self-Harm, the only thing you leave behind are scars that remind us of the fact that sometimes we would rather kill ourselves than deal with whatever the day is going to throw at us.

You are an impulse that, despite our greatest efforts, we seem to think will help us.

Spoiler alert: it doesn't. It never will.

Sincerely,

Your Old Friend Anke