You are beautiful

“My brother killed himself 
on the twenty-eighth Thursday of last year 
and I missed four days of work 
and my mom wanted to know ‘Why’. 
My brother
 he was always a fan of beauty 
but what he did
 was not beautiful at all.

 And last week I got the news
 that one of my good friends from high school
 had overdosed 
(again)
 except this time
 she’d gone too far
 and now she was gone.
 And I had a hard time falling asleep at night
 and her mother
hugged me tight
 and thanked me for coming to the service
 but I did not 
want to be there at all. 
This is not
beautiful. 

The girl down the street 
would’ve turned 21 last year 
and I can scarcely imagine
 the wild times she would’ve
 (should’ve)
 had.
 But she is buried six feet deep
 after falling nearly 300
 and she did not leave a note.
This is not
 beautiful.

 My freshman year of college
 and my roommate was beautiful
 and how I wanted to be just like her.
 But she wore herself down 
till she was 
almost invisible 
and if you blinked 
you had to go and find her all over again.
 So now her parents are no longer supporting her college tuition
but are paying her hospital bills
watching their daughter crumble.
 This is not 
beautiful.

 So y’all can take your narcissistic 
romanticizing
 and glamorizing 
of self harm and eating disorders and committing suicide
and shove them as far up your ass
 as you possibly can.
 Starvation is not beautiful.
 Killing yourself is not beautiful.
 Sadness
 is not beautiful.
 This note I am writing 
is not beautiful.

But you
 you are beautiful
 and it’s about damn time you start believing it.”