The Ever-Breaking Hearts Club

I grew up not knowing that my brain worked differently than others. I always felt a little different but thought other people's brains worked like mine. I learned I was technically “gifted” as a teenager, but never had any guidance on what that meant, and it wasn't until I was an adult that I learned I had ADHD, with a splash of mild brain injury for a little extra kick. As a kid, I always heard “you should consider writing” or “if only you applied yourself more,” which I know many can relate to, and I really did (do) aspire to make writing a bigger part of my life. But it is only recently—in my 41st year—that I have come to understand that writing is at the core of my being, like air to my lungs, like water to a parched throat. I need to let the words out, or they'll eat me alive. Operating a mental health clinic is an important part of who I am. I have seen the difference that diagnosis, therapy, and treatment can make in people's lives. I have met people from all walks of life, working with people experiencing homelessness and addiction, and people who appear on the surface flawless and strong but inside are broken, carrying the weight of so many in silence. I see the cracks in the system that both extremes fall through. These themes run through my work: trauma, justice, inequality, kindness, perseverance, and above all, love. Some people confuse poetry with pretty words. In my estimation, poetry is a feeling, an image, a snapshot of a moment in time. The words are the medium, but the poem is so far beyond the medium as to become something else entirely. Some poems live on the page, and the reading of them breathes life into a part of us we had forgotten. Some poems live in the lungs and must be spoken into existence (come out to open mic sometime!), but it is my sincere belief that all poems live to be shared. It is in the sharing that we create shared meaning, inexorable bonds that tie us together, that remind us we were already one. I write for the people who refuse to go numb. The ones who refuse to callous, who pick the scabs from the broken and breaking hearts and cry out into the world that they are awake, that they are so full of love that they cannot be still. I write for the people who refuse to sit idle and watch the world spin away. I write for the broken-hearted, so that together we can heal, and break, and heal, and break, until time turns us all to dust.