by Charly Cox
When you were no longer there.
You see his limbs half in and half out, snaked around his duvet weeks from now. His finger pinching to zoom, swiping furiously through months. Looking at all these moments that at the time you thought were nothing of note but now are all that remain.
The tears slowly start to lessen, he gives you a lost stare and you offer a half smile. Dimples that suggest you know you’re being silly. Silly for crying over ‘a song’.
But in reality, there was not an ounce of silliness or stupidity to your reaction. You’d planned tomorrow’s walk, you’d planned the lunch you’d attempt to eat, you’d planned the words you’d say to him, to explain this wasn’t working any more, you had planned the whole damn thing and suddenly in a wisp of an unexpected thought, all those plans unravelled and you won’t stomach it for weeks.
Even now, looking back, thinking on the countless photos taken after that night, you wished you’d taken some too. You wished you’d smiled in a few. You wished you’d had half the heart you had that night to have made an effort or, at least, to have been honest sooner.
Love is also continued frustration. It’s anger. It’s hurting. It’s denying it for months and only seeing its presence, for the first time, in a memory. It is not always just the butterfly chase that you expected. Sometimes it’s also resentment. It’s embarrassment. It’s putting all of your dreams on hold, totally swept in not realising. It’s endurance. It’s anguish. It’s not what you wanted, not what you went looking for in your absent search for the next thing. It’s intoxicating, it’s routine, it’s hard goddamn work. But they don’t tell you that. Or maybe they do. Maybe you weren’t listening. Maybe you were hanging off the end of a feeling late night WhatsApps gave you. Hanging off the end of movies, of prematurely-written poetry you’d penned in hope of one day arriving there with a person. It’s horrid. It’s gross. It’s real and it stinks in a romantic putrid parma violet sweetness. So today you hate yourself for thinking you knew what love was but when it arrived you couldn’t send it back quick enough. Laying in your pants on the sofa with last night’s curry reheated screaming to no one but the ceiling.
‘I DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS. THIS ISN’T IT. HOW DO I RESIGN?’
But no matter how many times you swipe with wool-gathered ease through Tinder praying to erase it, no matter how many times you tweet your soul is a dark expanse and your heart is a gothic black cave in as many self-depreciating retweet-worthy characters, it isn’t. Your heart is filled with chest banging love and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it and that is it. Love is ‘that is it’ even when you feel like it isn’t.
she must be mad
mind part 1
You remember, quite explicitly, the moments all of the weight first felt tangible. Your best girlfriend from school blimps in on MSN, ‘I love you but I don’t think I can help you anymore.’ Each word sinks and anchors ground to the pit of your stomach and steadies your defences. She is right. A week later your best male friend bikes in the snow to your house at two-thirty in the morning and you let him cradle you as your apologies splutter out with a stench of lavender bleach. Weeks before, scissor scores sloped around the shapes of the tips of your fingers so you could no longer hold a pen on exam day. You lay, heavy in limbs and mind, cursing that no one else had ever felt this way. No one could understand. There wasn’t a name for you, so you create a face instead. Bright and brash, loud and lovely – you walk into every room with conversation, jokes, anecdotes, bold red lipstick, and funny styled hair. You swig from bottles of wine and ring in every party as the go-to girl for a good time. It is much easier this way. Nobody has to know. MSN has long folded, your teeth cleansed from bathroom cleaner, the hard skin on your hands now, just simply, interesting. It’s a charade that becomes so well-scripted, lovingly rehearsed, articulated in mirrors of bars before re-entering, that often it is hard to decipher which part of you is acting. You forget so quickly in those performances, of the excruciating pain, the sobbing, the fast heart racing to leap from out your chest via your mouth and spluttered in bile before you can leave the house. You deny yourself that those moments were true and that they ever happened. You attend doctors’ appointments, pop pills, dutifully research a Wikipedia file of celebrities with ‘bipolar II’, scream at your friends, scream at the chemist, scream at the man in the bloody corner shop, scream at yourself that even though the weight still feels tangible, it can’t be real. You are solemnly bored of pity, of being bedridden … of performing. Advisors come and go, all wearing different masks, some lovers, some friends, some professionals, your costume remains the same until one day you sit in front of a girl with deep purple hair and pink lipstick. She orders you a bowl of mash potato and a side of broccoli, an espresso and a Bloody Mary. She holds your hand and tells you the one thing that everybody else had given you with guilt but this time gives it to you as a gift. It feels warm, it’s cosy cuddled relief. It’s the truth and this time it isn’t lonely.
‘You’re not well. You’re ill. You’re suffering. It’s all real, all of this. I’m here to help you see it through.’
‘she must be mad’
They called me many things
In many places
All well-intentioned
Muffled nouns spluttered from kind faces
Adjectives
Then descriptors
Ushering packets of pills and tales of other strong victors
Sympathetic sighs and brushed smiles
With trying advice to dissolve difficult enmeshed vices
They all said things would get better
To treat this thing as a workable quirk and not an evil personal personality vendetta
That I had in for myself
Try loving yourself
And when you do tell others how
The journey you’ve been on is another girl’s now
Another kid just like you pressing their brain shouting owwww
The honesty will hurt a bit, it might make you sad
But ignite a spark that burns brighter
Than all of the times you heard
‘She must be mad’,
Ignite a spark that burns brighter
Than all of the hurt
To smile
‘Yeah, I guess I am, but it isn’t all bad.’
Ignite a spark that burns brightest
From all of the dirt
The dribbling tear-sodden thirst
To drink to the girl you knew
She must be mad but my god she’s brave too.
@saintrecords
When sanity seems so far
And guarded by gates made of worries
I thank a god
I wish were true
For Solange’s Instagram stories.
doctor, doctor, don’t help me
(written aged 15)
I think I crave rejection
And self-sabotage days
I like the way they taste
In their smokey beer cross haze
I like to feel this empty
To make some time for pain
Nothing drives me more crazy
Than the breaks of feeling sane.
selective feeling
Sometimes I forget I’m totally insane
But then I’ll start to hear voices
And remember again
I don’t want to be crazy
But sometimes there’s comfort
In that’s my word for lazy
Or sad
Or defeated
Or bouncing off walls
And I think if I wasn’t
I’d find myself bored.
I wish I’d not spent so long crying in bed
I fear too much
To quantify the rest
To feel the beat
With flat palms on my chest
I fear too much
To think back to
When I wanted less
I fear too much
To see the m
ess
Of how much time I wasted
When I had plenty left.
rapid cycling
You put stars in my shoes
And clouds in my head
I’d chase the moon
If I could get out of bed
If I could slap my feet flat
On the floor
And walk towards
What you allotted yesterday
You hand me my fleeting allowance
Of disgruntled energy
So I can feel the thick winter air
Like a cold second skin
That blows through the splinters in the trees
And the cracks you’ve chiseled within
The fluctuating curves of bowing branches
Are the sunken eyes nestled under furrowed arches
You gift a still minute
And then gallop off with it
Always a step ahead
And just a scant visit.
funny
I feel funny.
Not like when – the light bounces from the sky
And you feel heat stroke from the sunny
Days of closing in on jokes
That girl is intelligently witty she’s so funny
I feel done in
Funny ‘ha ha’s speak no fun
In the language I have learnt
Funny feelings aren’t the taste of a jovial summer’s eve descending burn
A funny feeling is a feeling of a leaf I’m scared to turn
A funny feeling is me seething at a friend
Who didn’t mean to hurt
Me, I’m a bit funny that way
Funny isn’t laughing at a joke I heard you say
Funny is me cramping in the lungs and wincing
I’m okay
Funny is the last thought before I sleep
Funny is the impression of me that you’ll keep
Funny is the unexplained, self-contained
Anxiety of breathing
Grabbing my coat before closing
Because I feel funny as I’m leaving
That’s why I’m leaving
I feel strange
A finger couldn’t pinpoint it and words cannot explain
The curse of feeling funny
And knowing you’ve got yourself to blame
And still being unaware.
I took my pills this morning, I promise you I swear
The capsules grin at you in blister packs
And eyeless they still stare
They laugh at you
Like you’ve said something funny
There’s no lies that you can throw at them
There’s no amount of money
No words you can scream
Out
Bluntly.
I’ve tried
Feeling so funny that funny isn’t hysterical
So why am I crying hysterical tears?
Funny was something I’d always liked
So why does this funny feeling punch me with spite?
A funny feeling used to be the swig of a third pint
So why does feeling funny swing the last throw in my own fight?
If I stopped feeling funny maybe I’d get some sleep at night
I wish someone had shown me left when funny started to feel right
And I suppose the funny thing is that in life
First we laugh
And then we cope
First we mould aching into satire
And then claw our way into a hope
That the lumps in our throats, the inhalers tucked in pockets of coats
The fraying yarns on the tether of our metaphorical ropes
Don’t really exist
But they do, I know they do.
And I think they deserve a more raucous applause
Than the monotonous bang of therapists’ doors
Or the bedlam screams on bedroom floors
Or the wincing pinches of scissor scores
Funny no longer feels right
Because there is no comedy show in sight
This is real life
And the word is depression
The medical phrases should be shouted in succession
Because for all the days they’ve made my face nameless
It would help in abundance for them to be shamed less
For me to call them out for who they are
And I know it’s wonderful that we’ve come this far
Forgive me
But
It’s unhealthy for us to stick with
Dancing around a denial that nicks its
Legitimacy from camouflaging its pain
Even though I’m the one who picked it
Saying ‘I feel Funny’ just isn’t the same
But I didn’t pick this
I was my own brain before this
And that, as a human, I deserve to reclaim
In whatever funny sort of way I can.
I prescribe you this
The best sort of revenge is to be kind to yourself
To burden yourself with living another day
With nourishing yourself when it feels like you’re not worthy
Sabotage the saboteur
Poison the punisher
With positivity
I try and anger unhappy me
With good thoughts
With slow breathing
I cut my teeth on seething
Searing hot flash panics
It’s become so familiar
I feel uncomfortable when things aren’t bad
It’s
Complex
I want the darkness to know it’s wanted
But I want my soul to feel less haunted
So I open up
And double bluff
Until synapses sizzle
And confuse self-harm
With self-love.
I know that truth is always beautiful
But this is something else
These are the chronicles
Written out from hell
These are the minutes we keep secret
The times we wished we were someone else
I know that truth is always beautiful
But this is something else
These are the smudged wings of angels
That we’d erase with second chances
These are the fleeting second glances
That led to the stale and baneful
Excuses for not feeling the same
I know that truth is always beautiful
But this is something else
This is a slice of honest living
I wish I could have dressed up for myself.
all I wanted was some toast
I got a fork stuck in the dishwasher
And now I can’t stop crying
Whoever said depression was glamorous
Had clearly never considered dying
Over a peanut butter covered utensil
And that’s not the worst of all
The wet clothes hanger fell over
So I punched my fist into a wall
I’d rather smell than have a shower
The thought of socialising is scary
I can’t even binge on chocolate
Because ‘happy me’ cut out dairy
This is boring, I feel knackered,
All I wanted was some toast
But if I can’t even handle that
I’m obviously going to die alone.
a voice I know
My thoughts run through unpredictable themes
Sometimes it’s two conscious streams at once
Sounds fun, huh?
Sounds a bit like drugs, no?
Sounds like in a predominantly losing game of tapping in on our own brains
I’ve accidentally genetically placed my bets and won
Sometimes I don’t shun
It
Sometimes there’s some fun in it
S
ometimes it’s nice to look in from the outside
And still stay warm
But other times it’s like being one in a team of screaming aggressors
And trying to bat away the swarm
That I’ve assembled
Sometimes it’s like punching confidently bare-knuckled
And still being the one that falls down and trembles
Sometimes I don’t know who I am
Most of the time I don’t know where I stand
And it’s in that exact spotlight
It all comes rushing in:
‘You don’t deserve him!’
‘… Wait no, you’re cooler!’
‘What is this fatty casing around your limbs?’
‘… Stop prodding it, you’re much smaller
Than you believe!’
‘You’ve got no point in this world!’
‘… Shut up, that’s your confidence thief!’
‘You should stay in bed!’
‘… You should take on the world!’
‘You look silly in this dress!’
‘… When did I become this beautiful girl?’
‘You don’t know your facts!’
‘… Oh my god, you’re on fire!’
‘He was looking at her not you.’