Warning – I am an atheist and this poem does make a remark about God. If you think yourself likely to be offended, I suggest you stop reading. Please don’t tell me I’m evil or going to Hell or something like that because I am respecting your beliefs by giving you this warning, so I am asking you to respect mine.

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When you look at me
What do you see?

(When I can’t breathe in the middle of the street and they walk straight past, they notice but they don’t care, they just keep going, they think themselves more important than me, are they, are they, are they, are you better than me because you’re not on Prozac and pills and drugs and you can wake up in the morning and feel something and go to sleep at night without wishing you don’t wake up, does that mean you’re more than me?)

When you look at me
What do you see?
A girl?
A nutter?
A statistic?

(Just another statistic in a wave of numbers, white teenage girl with depression, moderately severe anxiety, part of a percentage, 6.03, isn’t it interesting, just a statistic, an age group, mathematical, reduce me to a number)

When you look at me
(And I mean reallylook)
Will you try and concentrate
Try and focus
Don’t look at the clothes
Or the eyeliner
And the bands around my arms
(And you immediately decide I self-harm even though I don’t, just because I like having something around my wrists)
And label me
(Goth)
Please don’t make a snap decision

(Most first impressions are made in the first two point thirty-four minutes, in two and a half moments you will have written me off as just another freak, just another girl with eyeliner and chains and lace and black clothes and pale skin and dyed hair, just another girl in a doctor’s office being put on medication, increased, another girl on the four month waiting list for counselling, I’m not a freak, I’m a sick girl, another one just like her and her and her and you never notice do you and when I have a panic attack in the middle of the street and you ask my name and give me a tissue and get my phone and look through my phonebook and call my dad to pick me up and think him irresponsible for letting me out on my own (even though the doctor said it’s important for me to have a semblance of normality) you will go home and your wife or your mother or your boyfriend will ask you what you did and you’ll say ‘I helped a girl who was having a panic attack’, we all know that you mean ‘I helped this nutjob’ and by tomorrow I won’t even be that, I won’t be a person at all, I will be an extension of YOU, a story you can whip out to impress people with your kindness because you went out of your way to help someone you didn’t know (even though you were standing still) and if you’d had anywhere you needed to be you wouldn’t have stopped, I wouldn’t have even registered because if you’re busy everyone else, the sick and the poor and the HELPLESS are under your radar and tomorrow I’m an extension of you

So when you look at me
Please try
Please make the effort
Please concentrate and focus and
And…
Oh god, please

(Even though I’m an atheist and think God is another extension of self to make you feel better, just a pill, a medicine to keep you happy, I say oh God a lot because oh Prozac isn’t as catchy)

Please
Please close your eyes when you look at me