So I colored. Outside the lines. Then burned the page and built a website.
I walked into the mental health system holding trauma by the leash.
It was frothing at the mouth, dragging me by the ankle, and whispering,
“Color me surprised, btch.”*
They gave me a workbook.
A lavender-scented mood tracker.
A worksheet titled “What Emotion Are You Feeling Today?”
with exactly zero boxes for “Rage that could power a small city.”
“Let’s try some breathing techniques,” they said.
Ma’am, my nervous system is in Morse code.
Your butterfly inhale isn’t reaching the battlefield.
I asked for a lifeline.
They handed me a f*cking Crayola.
So yeah, I colored.
I made the trees bleed.
I gave the house abandonment issues.
I made the clouds spell “Help” in passive-aggressive cursive.
And when they said,
“Great job staying inside the lines,”
I said,
“Oh, honey—those were never my lines.”
Because this isn’t art therapy.
This is art warfare.
While they were handing out glitter glue and trauma pamphlets,
I was writing a survival manifesto
on the back of a napkin in a waiting room that smelled like vanilla and despair.
They wanted compliance.
I gave them chaos with captions.
They wanted quiet coloring.
I gave them a narrated series of emotional crime scenes
with a goat voiceover and a tip jar.
Now I don’t just “cope.”
I co-opt.
Their weak-ass solutions became launchpads for my sarcasm empire.
Their worksheets?
Wall art.
Their crayons?
Ritual tools.
Their silence?
A punchline.
Because when the system hands you a coloring book,
but your trauma has teeth—
you don’t stay inside the lines.
You turn them into a stage.
You write the captions yourself.
And you charge admission.
I Tried to Get Help. They Offered Me Coloring Books.
I asked for tools, they gave me crayons,
Told me to doodle out the demons.
So I sketched the meds, the bills, the pain,
And drew a goat flipping the game.
Now I color outside every rule,
And shade my trauma in jewel-tone cool.
They gave me art—I gave them fire.
This page is ash, this phoenix higher.
—The Funny Phoenix, drawing outside the DSM lines
