A Poem by Carmelita

Carmelita is a part time staff member who also participates in several AccessCNY mental health programs. She has been positively impacted by the peer support system! As a result, she wrote this powerful poem inspired by the relationship building of peer supports. Just last week she went to a training on mental health peer supports. Here she is posing with her colleagues from all around Central New York!

If You Could See What I Feel

“If you could see, What I feel

I wonder then, would I be understood…..

If with empathy, you could see

I once had hopes with possibilities

How I have struggled with my past, with little or no dignity

But, most importantly, that it had been stripped of me

When I needed help and wasn’t taken seriously

When my hurts were medicated, not even cured

I searched for connection, but not one was pure

I wasn’t looking for sympathy–empathy would have broken the barrier

Yet no one dug deep enough, so I alone was the carrier

I use to never feel like myself, I felt the need to wear a mask

Just waking in the morning, was viewed by me a task

Assumptions made about my life when I just wanted to be clean

If you could see my Worldview, you’d see things differently

If for one switch in time, I could live my life undefined

Instead just Empower Me! my soul screams

Because forever, I’m in recovery

I wasn’t seeking attention, otherwise I would live on the mention

Of medical language, conditions and diagnosis

But through genuine Peer Support, those voices are frozen

You see, I’ve had all my life to think about the things I have learned

There were some “AH HA” moments, and topics and situations that burned

Like: “If someone talks of suicide, would it make you squirm?”

Would you honor that individual, to sit, listen and maybe learn?

If you would see What I feel

I think you’d finally see

Why I view my world from “IMPOSSIBILITIES”

 

By: Carmelita H.