This isn't your average poetry book. This isn't a book about fond memories and sweet love. This is a book that depicts the realities of living with mental illness, abuse, and trauma. It's about the chaos it creates inside the mind, the damage it does to the heart, and all the ways it blinds us. This is a story about me, raw and honest, depicting my diagnoses, my relationships, and my past. This is me opening my soul, exposing my mistakes and finally finding my sanity again. This is my journey from innocence to transcendence and everything in between. I can only hope that by opening the world up to the realities of mental illness that we can help foster a more empathetic future where stigma goes to die. Remember, we are not our past we are not our trauma we are not our mistakes we are not our mental illness I hope one day you unearth the strength and courage to find healing.