The Brightest Dark: Poems from an obsessed, anxious and depressed mind

by C. H. Lakes

Are you going through mental health issues? Or is someone close to you dealing with mental illnesses? Or maybe you are just interested in this subject and want to understand a bit more about it?

If you answered YES to any of the above, this book containing a collection of poems about mental health will be a must-read for you.

You can trust me. I've been struggling with mental illnesses for a bit over 15 years. I've gone through all the slight ups and the downs and the very low downs. Dealing with obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorders, traumatic experiences and depression has been very difficult and extremely painful. I came to the point of feeling terribly lonely and deeply sad because I felt like no one around me understood how I was feeling or the urgency of it all. This only made my condition much worse...

In the middle of all the darkness, I started writing these poems that expressed what I was thinking or feeling in a very honest and raw way at times.

To be honest, I'm still in the middle of it all, of that huge and powerful and tremendously painful storm that makes you feel like you're going to die at any minute out of sheer panic, pain and/or exhaustion.

At the beginning, I really wanted those poems to remain hidden out of shame, embarrassment and fear. But through therapy, I realized that mental illnesses are nothing to be ashamed of. They are as valid as any physical illness. Another person helped me see how these poems could help others going through mental health issues.

So I decided to publish this book for you, to try to help you feel seen, understood and validated. I also hope that it contributes to normalizing and destigmatizing mental illnesses.

This book is for YOU: you, the one who feels an extreme amount of emotional painyou, the one with a difficult and traumatic life story that just keeps haunting you and making you sufferthe one who feels so awful, like it's all too much and you just can't do life anymorethe one who feels like no one around you understands what you're going throughthe one who feels like everything is a burden, a mountain to climb, even something as basic as chewing your foodthe one who struggles to take showers, to brush your teeth, to get out of your pajamas, to eat and drink waterthe one who can't manage to get much or any work at all donethe one who has intrusive thoughts or images that make you feel like you're going crazy, that increase your anxiety levels to the max and make you want to run away screaming and hitting your headthe one with frequent anxiety attacks that make you feel like you're effectively going to die and/or go crazythe one who gets anxious about feeling anxiousthe one who's scared of looking back at the past years because of how bad you've feltthe one who's scared of going crazy or losing controlthe one who is constantly one inch away from cryingthe one who feels trapped, like there's no way out, like you're drowning, suffocating and slowly but steadily withering, being erased from the face of the earthGet a glimpse of what it feels like and HELP SAVE LIVES.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0BPQM3CZF
• ISBN13: 9798367440911
• Release Date: December 2022
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 126 Pages
• Weight: 0.39 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"