BEST POETRY NIGHT I HAVE EVER BEEN TO

 I just had a poetry evening that I want to tell you about.

I haven’t been in a slam of that kind before. It was a kind of hip-hop, lyrical street poetry. I cried like a small child. And I saw - I was not alone, a few more people shed tears in the hall.

On stage, during poetry, people recounted in their pain what they had to go through, even themselves starting crying in the middle of their own poems.

About depression, anxiety, suffering, and sadness, about loneliness, homelessness, about the war in their country. About OCD BPD ADHD and other mental health problems. One woman wrote a poem about her shopping addiction, the way she described every experience and feeling - even that made me sad.

I don’t understand how people can put it into words? so beautifully, lyrically, metaphorically, and deeply? such powerful lines, I felt everything myself, I shed tears like a little baby.

And after each powerful line, everyone was shouting, supporting the performer..almost everyone felt each other's pain and understanding. I was sitting there, and I was ashamed to remember what I consider the end of the world? why am i "depressed"? I have never experienced what they have experienced …

it is impossible to repeat not one poem or several lines, but a sentence from poetry about war: “no one leaves their kid on the boat unless the water is safer than the land,” that man was swallowing pages of his passport to not be returned back home. Each man poured out his whole heart and emotions into their lines. One woman, perhaps 70-80 years old, read her poems about youth. All her youth she had anxiety and hard life, she could not fall asleep at night and suffered from insomnia, but now, when the end is near, she is already falling asleep and she is sleeping peacefully. "I have never noticed the beauty of this world, now I know that it has always been at my door."

This night left me speechless. I thanked the performers for opening their hearts to everyone and talking about this mad world we live in. About the suffering of a man, about their own traumas. I realized that it is really impossible to be in the physical form without trauma.