21st jan 2014

i spend most of my evenings crying these days, 

stuck in the diagnostic self-destructive ways. 

i know a happiness, it's just gone for now,

rainy days and rainy cheeks, sadness we won't allow. 

brighter days are to come,

equally is sadness and a lot of rum. 

piña colada, my favourite drink

for every season i'm on the brink. 

cut me, tear me, break a bone.

someone hold me, i am so alone. 

6th feb 2017

when people ask me how i am i lie, it's almost a habit now.
every time i feel the pain in my cheeks when i twist my face into a smile when it doesn't want to smile at all.
how do i tell you?

when the professionals ask if i have any thoughts of suicide and i say
'some' and i smile it off as if there's a hope inside that carries me.
please ask me
'any thoughts of living?'
and i'll say 'none'.
i'll still laugh it off because i am the punchline.
but they don't ask,
so how do i tell you?

when they say
'what's wrong?'
but nothing is wrong
and nothing is right.
i just bury this guilt deep inside.
guilt that i shouldn't be alive and every day i am feels like a knife in your back.
a knife in her back.
how do i tell you who she is?

when people ask me to stay safe for others, to stay safe with others
AND I DON'T WANT TO.
but i am really trying.

how do i tell you that i hate every moment pretending?

5th feb 2017

it's dark inside my head when i think of you;

not in a good way. 

never in a good way.

your hands are on me, 

they are acid and i am alkali.

'stop it, you're hurting me!' i beg,

but you're a young, white male™

an your cologne smells like privilege. 

you don't pander to beggars, 

you never have.

and so, no, you do not stop.

my skin is burning under your touch

and i am supposed to enjoy it?!

i am supposed to enjoy it.

i close my eyes and press on my eyelids 

until my optic nerve responds with kaleidoscopic distractions.

i don't know how else to get you out of my mind.

the sirens sound

i panic.

i am running.

faster! faster!

ESCAPE.

beads of salty terror run down my forehead 

into my eyes.

burning like your touch.

i stop,

look around to see where everyone has hidden.

but they are not hiding 

and there were no sirens.

my heart is tachy,

just like your charm,

just like your pimpled fucking face.

i thank my body for protecting me,

today there is no danger.

you are not here.

just in nightmares.

just in moments i give myself to anyone who will have me.

you took my autonomy, 

i'm easy, a slut,

absolutely gagging for it.

gagging for peace of mind.

4th august 2012

lost words so sincere,
being silenced: her biggest fear.

light so bright
she closed her eyes,
everyone else is
full of lies.

tell her to reach out,
to try to touch it.
hopelessness she feels
she masks.

light is hope
hope she doesn't want.
hope is life,
life makes her scared.

'touch it, feel it, try it' they dared.

and so she did.
and so she fell.

so fast,
so swift,
so smooth.

opened her,
found no one to soothe.

silent screams,
her biggest fear.
her last words so sincere.

15th feb 2013

suffocated, voiceless,
scared and restless.
words unspoken,
still so broken.

warmth and kindness won't thaw a stone heart.
pretend princess,
insides torn apart.

blood from the thorn
of her cruel, thistle crown.
remind why it must be worn,
take if off and she will d
                                       r
                                         o
                                           w
                                             n.

scars remind her,
the world is vast.
searching for an answer,
still haunted by the past.                                    

dear s.p.

5th august 2012

sylvia plath,

you wrote with a math we fools don't comprehend.

wise thoughts i shall lend

from you,

to understand

the darkness

embracing your one man band.

no grace, grace-less?

no faith, faith-less?

no hope, hopeless?

did you reach

or were you holding in

the all consuming black din?

in those lines

in your fine rhymes.

every syllable packed

decades passed, still attacked

by many a fine literaturist.

cinder bones but you exist,

still.

sharp words so bitter on the tongue

unravelling for meaning:

articulate yarn undone. 

10th feb 2017

there are going to be some days where my pain is really bad,
there are going to be some days where my brain is really sad
and i need you to tell me.

tell me pain is transient,
tell me sadness will wash away.
tell me my mind is an ocean,
sometimes stormy on a cold winter's day.

tell me painkillers soothe
and that blankets comfort.
tell me good times may run dry.
but that it still rains in the desert.

tell me the world is vast,
but that i'm going to explore it.
tell me even great people have a past
and that no one will make me ignore it.

i miss you so much.

i've been home a week now, things are 'stabilising'.

in the dark hours it's easy to forget that there's any progress at all. the nights feel so empty and cold. my thoughts are writing, rewriting, spinning a web of words that move so fast i can barely acknowledge them before they've left. my thoughts are a quill, scratching and scribbling wildly in the air, they disappear just as fast as they have formed.

my brain writes poetry faster than my heart beats, but the words bleed out of me faster than my brain can clot them.

i want to cry.
i don't really want to cry, but i really want to cry.

i watched final destination and it's sequels. i'm too scared to stand in puddles now, too frightened to hold a butter knife on the off chance i slip and jam it in a plug socket.

i had a shower earlier, my shower ghost came.
i heard them banging on the door, shouting 'ITS THE POLICE' and i thought 'oh god what have they got to tell me?' and i remembered she's already dead. it wasn't the police, it was no one at all. as i sat on the floor shaving my legs i told myself

"it's not real, it's not real, it's not real, it's not real, it's not real."

i thought how nice it would be, if it was the police knocking on my door asking me if i had seen her, because at least when she was running she was alive and she found her way home.

nearly every week since i found she was gone i thought how fucking wrong movies are, when the white middle class woman finds out her child or her husband has died and she screams.
NOOOOOOOOOOO.

because death isn't that dramatic, but at the same time it's worse.

i remember waking up to a message from her mum and i read it and i just couldn't take it in. i thought 'no, this isn't how it works' because i wasn't screaming, i wasn't exploding; i was struggling to breathe, imploding.

it wasn't delicate like a movie scene, i was ugly crying, whaling at the top of my lungs feeling so, so distressed but at the same time completely removed. because she can't be dead, because things are going to get better for her.

the image of myself from the outside that day, a birds eye view, reverberates within my chest. i was never taught that people can die so young, nor was i taught that not everyone gets better. i was never taught how to cry delicately or how to mourn.

often i feel like i'm not entitled to feel so bereft, so crushingly devastated that she's gone.
because in our conversations years before she told me she was afraid,
'what if the only way out is, you know...'
and she meant suicide.

for goodness sake sophie why didn't you fucking hear her. 
she was telling you she was afraid.

i remember one night she messaged me, a message so sweet it frightened me half to death because no one is ever that sweet intending to stick around. i remember ringing her, trying to subtly ask what she had done and as she told me i thought

'no. no. no. this isn't for you, you do not deserve this. stuff like that is reserved for people like me'. 

and she sounded so resigned, she just didn't care.


i wish i had told her that i never minded her ringing me up night or day, i wish i had told her that i would talk to the police everyday if it meant she was okay. i wish she had heard the conversations i had with the police and how every time i'd despair, not through any kind of anger, but through that heart dropping helpless feeling. i wish she knew how many times i had cried wondering where my friend was, because the thought of being without her was just too terrifying.

it's weird, i remember when the police asked me where i thought you'd be and they'd find you and you'd say to me:

'how did you know?!'

and i'd say 'just a hunch'.

that just a hunch told me you were gone that day, that just a hunch knew. that just a hunch has served it's purpose now, i don't want anymore hunches.

i miss you so much.

oops i did it again

-title courtesy of britney.

'oops i did it again' referring to the fact that again i was admitted to hospital.

• um, 10th time lucky?

last week i was plagued by confusion, the type of confusion i can't even begin to explain. in fact, i am trying to explain it but my night meds are fogging my brain right now. 

i felt really confused when the crisis team suggested admission. i mean i know i had been hysterically crying down the phone to them about how i didn't want my niece to have to be told that her auntie had killed herself. but what this really necessary? i know i was actively trying to kill myself more than i was trying to live, but i was trying to live.

ever to believe in fate, i was actually trying to hang myself as the crisis team called to tell me they had found a bed. as in, they called as my face was turning blue and as my eyelids were getting heavier after i'd told myself that i wasn't going to stop this time. 

before my friend drove me to the ward i made a comment about how i wasn't looking forward to being admitted as i didn't want to be on constant obs to begin with - as is protocol. oh THE IRONY.

i kindly asked the doctor to take me off obs and low and behold the bugger not only kept me on obs, but kept me on bloody eyesight. 

~~for people who aren't ward wise: there are different levels of observation that are decided on a person's risk & presentation. these tend to be on a scale of 'so-fucking-close-that-if-you-try-to-move-inappropriately-the-alarms-will-be-pulled' (arms length), then 'every move you make, every step you take, we'll be watching you' (eyesight) then it's '15s' and maybe they have every 30 mins, but after that it goes to 'general obs' which most patients are on which is hourly checks. ~~

eyesight obs are very uncomfortable, peeing with the door open kind of uncomfortable, having someone sat watching you from the door as you sleep kind of uncomfortable.

it felt like as soon as i got to the ward i just stopped. all this energy it had taken to just be existing just drained right out of me and i was just staring and crying in different places on the ward. so needless to say, monday was crap and tuesday followed the same tune. when i got off eyesight obs i looked at myself in the mirror and thought to myself 'wow, i'd probably have kept me on eyesight too'. my eyes were sunken and dark from 2/3 days of minimum food & fluid intake, my hair was greasy as fuck and i just generally looked dishevelled.

today, wednesday, i woke up and i had the fucking sensational feeling of it BEING A FUCKING GOOD DAY. which was an immense relief. it was a really good day. 

anyway, i'm here until tuesday & have been given a patient information leaflet on lithium to mull over. 

over and out until i have less of a sedated brain, gonna go ask a nurse for a talk ~or something like that~ because my brain is like 

1. Press the big red button
2. Do it
3. Press it already

• PRESS
• THE 
• FUCKING
• BUTTON
• ALREADY

and the big red button will not only jeopardise my life, but also jeopardise my changes of getting better because if the nurses found me doing said thing it'd be instant discharge. 

k bye 4 now