Go to college to be an English major, but lack purpose, and wonder why you're there. Bury yourself in Sylvia Plath and Elizabeth Wurtzel and Joe Lansdale and Tom Piccirilli. Find the words that make you

Be a being that was fused in a womb, that would later give birth to a curious consciousness. Be born with fear lodged in your throat and monsters on the wall. You tell everyone that your first memory was

Meltdown. Depressive episode. Panic attack. Malaise. Suicidal urge. PTSD Flashback. Sometimes the sadness becomes so overwhelming that it seems to squeeze your brain. You can think of nothing but pain.

Sometimes I want to be like the girl in the photograph - settled snuggly in the warm #lifespiration. Hashtag goals. A perfect braid and warm sweater, coffee and books, stuck in perpetual peace. The light

From the moment I saw the shadows looming over my cradle, she was there telling me to rock back on my heels. To climb out of the crib and flee. Fear is my primogeniture and my primal skin. I carried fear

We all know there is a lot of bad writing on steemit. Not everyone is a professional writer. Not everyone HAS to be a professional writer. (For example, I think @diabolika is a captivating, intense writer,

If you're like a lot of women, most of us think that the way to get a leaned out, hot body is to diet and do tons of cardio. Maybe we'd lift some light weights or do body-strength exercises, but we're

My goal has always been to have someone be able to open a book of mine and immediately recognize it as an Autumn Christian novel. Writers like Bukowski, Faulkner, Pahlanuik, and Poppy Z. Brite are immediately

It was also around 2 years ago that I started really getting into fitness. I did it to combat my eating disorder and my body dysmorphia because one day while I was staring at myself in the mirror, hating

It was 2 years ago when I decided to really get my life together, because I realized it was either save myself or burn. In the beginning, I was miserable mostly 9 days out of 10. This is demonstrable because

I know, I've been away from Steemit for a while. I could regale you with tales about how I traveled to the Amazon and wrestled the legendary albino python, but instead I'll just tell you that's a complete

Years ago I got really high on homemade pot brownies and while on the couch barely able to move I had a vision that haunted me for years: I saw a group of humans that traveled on a spaceship to the end

(TENTATIVE ALTERNATE TITLE: Would you like to feel less scared and helpless when faced with the extraordinary responsibility of action, motive, and consequence given to you as a human being ?) It starts

I I knew it was you again when I saw the glitter coming out of my mouth flecked with blood and spit. I knew it was you who broke my face in the mirror, and stretched my hips into the shape of a Gothic

I've never been good at receiving other people's love. Every time someone says "I love you" it seems like a mistake. I hear those words and I become hard, like something in a frozen garden, curling

I have strange, mixed feelings about the “Anxiety awareness” articles that I see pop up. I understand how debilitating and crippling anxiety can feel, how fear can ultimately ruin your life. But I feel

Empathy is one of humanity’s greatest assets. The reason that we’re able to enjoy stories is because we can easily slip into the thoughts, motivations, and lives of other humans. The origin of the word

I just ordered some pu-erh off the Internet and while I find the thought of a tea-sipping writer sitting at her desk and tapping away, probably wearing fuzzy socks and covered in dog-hair, to be almost

Sometimes when I close my eyes I find myself straining to hear something - a quiet something - so unrecognizable and so undefinable. I wonder if it even exists or if I am just trying to make cogent sense

In order to be a writer, one must build a life that is conducive to writing. For most of my life I found scraps of time to write, moments of soft isolation inbetween work, relationships, the everyday minutiae.