Let's sweeten time with poetry.

September: National Suicide Prevention Awareness month.
September 10: World Suicide Prevention Day

1,100: the number of college students lost to suicide each year.
1 in 10: the number of college students who have made a plan for suicide.
20x greater: the increased risk of death by suicide for those who suffer from depression.
18.8 million: the number of Americans who suffer from depression annually.
>25%: the percentage of people with depression who receive adequate care.
#1: Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide.

(A gem of eloquence, drawn from a poem by a much more artful Annie, but doodled by yours truly.)

The following is the first poem I'll ever share (!) in any sort of public setting. I'll simply preface my poem with what I feel is necessary background information. Just over a year ago, I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder. Many people haven't known, nor have I strived to make it known. However, this is not because I'm ashamed (though, unfortunately, society still has not quite erased the stigma associated with mental illness).

I promise that not all my poetry is grim- in fact, poetry generally acts therapeutically and makes me see beauty and art in the slightest of things. But I do feel that this is a topic we have no business glossing over or cringing away from. This is by no means an anecdotal poem and certainly is no depiction of my own life or experiences. It simply stemmed from a comment made by a customer at work who, upon learning I struggled with depression, exclaimed, "You?! But you seem like the happiest person in the world!"
Don't make assumptions. Remove the stigma. 
And please read with kindness. 
(I'm hesitant to declare titles for poems, and therefore often don't).

I moved to a city, which needn't be named,

yet to find what it may hold for me.

Of neighbors and locals, I asked for advice,

directions and places and faces I’d need,

but all told me most, and with uncontrived guise,

of the happiest girl that you ever did see.

One following other fell flummoxed to words

in vexing pursuit of veritable epitome–

was it grace? Magnanimity? Her rose colored frame?

They grasped in the air, though to capture a breeze;

elusive, essential, freely uncontainable–

tacitly felt before consciously perceived.

Cynic and skeptic each long had a shanty

upon a hunched shoulder, both of which I leased.

Yet one dour day as I held hands with shadows,

and grey was the only hue tinting my sight,

I sensed her. I saw her and thought, She must be

the happiest girl that I ever have seen.

I tried, in that moment, to comprehend she:

impossibly radiant, blinding, confounding.

Around her, an aura I felt embrace me

erased and renewed darkened passes with light,

a countenance showing what I’d ceased to see,

reverting me freely to childlike belief.

Returning each day, pulled like tides in the sea,

I watched and I pondered, supposed and observed,

and found myself wondering at night what she dreamed.

In transient moments, her eyes would cast down,

dimmed by despondent, anomalous cloud,

but ceasing before I could verify the scene.

A fortnight passed till we crossed paths on the street;

the hour was such that the moon watched drowsily.

With stature appearing to bear leaden grief,

she looked like the saddest girl I’d ever seen.

But when her eyes rose and beheld my advent,

my worry was quelled by her resplendency.

That was the last of her bearing I saw,

the night she’d proclaimed as her life’s apogee.

"A stunned city tries to make sense,” so they’d write,

and so in the paper I’d, dumbfounded, read

of the girl who had fooled us all, living to please-

concealment as natural to her as to breathe.

“Hundreds are wondering how this could be;

she seemed like the happiest girl they’d ever seen.”







Suicide Statistics drawn from
http://www.emorycaresforyou.emory.edu/resources/suicidestatistics.html
http://www.nami.org/Get-Involved/Awareness-Events/Suicide-Prevention-Awareness-Month

Mental Health Statistics
http://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-Health-By-the-Numbers