The mask of success,
The cataclysmic pressure,
Whirlwind confusion,
Futile pleasure.

Editors and hypocrites,
Simultaneous interpreters,
Sheer disappointment,
Agonizing letters.

What shall I do?
What does life have in store?
Why can’t it all end,
So I can sleep once more?

Shock therapy, they say
Shall cure me for good,
But this bone-breaking pain
Does not what it should.

So I curl up in the dark
With a bottle of pills,
Knowing that death
Might rid me my ills.

But I only wake
In a sterile room.
Doctors and mothers:
Their frustration fumes.

Shrieking paranoia,
Empty faces,
Trials of treatment
Glaze their gazes.

Then comes recovery
And death of friends.
Slowly but surely,
The bell jar ascends.

But it still menaces,
Above my head,
For again it will fall,
It’s distortions I dread.