I want to thank Anger.
For making me the best person I can be.
Of course, it wasn't really anger.
Anger is just a superficial emotion,
A bandage to cover the holes in your heart
Where all the blood is flooding out of.
No.
Anger was the kick-start.
It was the hammer beating down
On that lump in my throat when I wanted to cry,
Fall down a dark abyss,
Get ripped apart in a black hole,
Give up on everything I believed in,
Everything I worked my whole life for.
Anger motivated me to do something —
Anything —
To numb the pain that was living under my skin.
It wasn't always good.
Sometimes Anger made me jump a few steps back,
Sometimes miles.
Anger was the bundle of nerves dancing under my shoulder blade
That made me get up and fight.
I didn't know who I was fighting
Or what I was fighting for,
I just fought.
I just made a fist and put all the things that stole
What made me me —
My happiness, my well-being, my spirit —
On the target.
Anger is the rush of adrenaline that represses all the real pain
That waits in the deepest, darkest corners of my mind
For me to open the gate.
And with anger, you feel good...enough.
Unfortunately, the rage wears out.
You do too.
All of a sudden, you go from a high to an all-time low.
You're collapsed on the ground,
Heaving for breaths of air as if you were drowning.
It feels like you are deteriorating.  
(Little did I know then that this —
The most excruciating part —
Is where the turnaround really began.)
It's worse than the violence of anger.
This monstrosity, this creature that makes you want to just...
Slice your leg open,
Hits you like an 18-wheeler you couldn't have seen coming.
It's the kind of accident where you can't even recall
What you were doing when it happened.
A total, utter blur.
I really can't remember how I even managed to get up,
It's simply something that happens without one being aware.
You feel like you're in the eye of a tornado,
With zero control of what happens to you,
When the mad chaos stops or where you're thrown off to.
All you see is the constant spinning of everything terribly wrong,
Circling you like the planets out of orbit.
The laws of physics have changed.
The world is, quite literally, upside down.
I wish I could retrace my steps to figure out what potion I took
That turned me sane again.
Everyone's journey of recovery is different.
Scars don't all heal the same.
I can say though, there is a day when you'll realize that —
Somehow, with whatever impossible magic —
You're okay.
You are breathing.
Your heart is beating.
Blood is flowing through your veins.
You are a whole person,
Not just fragments haphazardly glued together
For an ostentatious mosaic.
And that's the moment.
That's when you know,
In the depths of your heart,
That you'll continue to be okay.
And nothing is ever the same after that.
I promise.