When one of my closest friends told me she thought she was suicidal, every subsequent day I forced myself into two in the morning conversations about the value of being alive, pushing myself into tepid late-night soliloquies, wondering what I had to say in order to delay the day I feared the most. I have examined the darkest thoughts of the people that I love to tell you this:

I believe that we can kill the parts of ourselves we dislike without having to kill ourselves. I believe we can kill off the people we used to be, but we are worth far more than ever having to kill ourselves.

I believe we are poetry. Each of us are salt water and supernovae, petrichor and sunlight. Anything that tries to stop us from existing is only as fragile as the night.

We are not broken. Though our problems at times weigh us by the ankles, a stone in the apathetic sea of discontent, I have never believed we are worth submitting to the crashing waves of conformity.

When my friend told me how much she hated herself, I realized how hard it is for humans to reflect. We are not mirrors, we are wind, our souls a container for the hurricanes that lift us off our feet around the people we love the most. But it is hard for us to see ourselves the way we truly are. For years I have hoped her shining existence might be reflected within the winds of who we both are.

And when my friend told me she hates the person she has been, I wondered why the poltergeists of the people we were in past lives haunt us the way they do. Your chest is not the house of ghosts, your pores are not a graveyard of the good things you have lost. Here lies, the person you have yet to be. Here lies, the love you have yet to give. Here lies, the promise of a better future, a better life, here lies a soul so powerful it can hardly see itself in a mirror, it glows and it shakes and it is not deserving of the rope you imagine tied around your neck.

And when you find yourself awake at two in the morning, letting the weight of who you used to be tie you down like anchors and cast you off at sea, remember you are saltwater, you have every right to be who you are. Sixteen years drowning in the ocean of reality, and I can tell you that we are not shipwrecks. Love yourself, for you are poetry.

I believe in us. We are not the burden of our sadness, the taste of death we sprinkle on our tongues, the cracking cage of coordinates that protect our hearts. You are your own Home, wanderlust with the ocean breeze. You are a reflection of beautiful things, and we can over come the people we are.