Twenty percent of teens experience some form of depression before adulthood, according to www.teenhelp.com. Depression can be caused by genetic, psychological, and environmental issues, and may cause issues with sleeping, thinking, and the appetite of a person.

Junior Jadon Martin has experienced what depression is like. He says that there wasn’t a definite reason behind what caused his depression, and that it started when he was young. Martin was insecure about himself, and feels that this was an ignition to the fire. He says that his problems only got worse increasingly from that point on in his life.

During this rough patch in Martin’s life is when he found his muse, poetry.  Sitting somewhere with just himself and his thoughts is where he likes to write his poems best. He writes about personal experiences such as his depression, family, and ex girlfriends. According to him, his poems do not have any shared themes or messages, but  he writes straight from his emotions. Martin says many of his inspirations for his poems come from one of his idols that he himself can relate to.

“A lot of my inspiration comes from my favorite artist, Van Gogh, because he was very depressed and he found out how to transform it into art,” Martin said.  

Martin made several cyberfriends on the social network website Tumblr. The friends that he made had thousands of followers, and he noticed that they posted writings on their pages which intrigued him. Martin talked to his friends about it, and they encouraged him to start posting his work on his page. He took the advice and ran with it. He shared that he was never really apprehensive about posting his work.

“It was never really a struggle for me to post my (poems) because I always get great things back,” Martin said.

Martin’s Tumblr page is now reaching just a little over 10,000 followers. He says that since posting the poems, he has received messages from his followers complimenting different aspects of them. Martin has found the positive feedback to be rewarding.

“It made me feel like I was good at something, or like I had a purpose,” Martin said.