No matter how you change the font
words stay the same
I know I am not your type, am I to blame?
I could be made of muscles with six pack and broad shoulder and arms of Steel
but I am not
I could be a scientist with a silver tongue eloquent or just very well hung
I am me there is only one version of myself
I can’t change
or rearrange
I realise my limitations
I won’t be able to perform and act as an imitation
I am who I am
Love me or let me go
for its you I love I know you know!
In the mirth of a daydream
time spent hiding from the world
whether you are a boy or a girl
don’t hide
arrive with eyes wide
opening to see your potential displayed
sway the people to see
sow the seed
make plans
Show your worth
this is the turf
where the birth
of thoughts and ideas meet
make your worth known.
Yes I lived
Walked amongst the trees
with the birds chirping
slurping my soup as it went down
tried not to wear an unbecoming frown
gazed in restless impatience
in the loud white noise of TV people
climbing church towers and steeples
and hills
taking bitter pills
but never losing the will
to hold on.
Yes sometimes, I lived to survive
if you don’t do anything you are not alive
I jet setted through my twenties
in my thirties now I am not prevented
from achieving my dreams and goals
despite my mental health bearing its soul
I am not always on the right track
but my heart I will not crack
I stay the course and live
for I am the many people I have become
and my curiosity I will never overcome
and I am the sum
of being ,seeing and feeling grace
and may grow wrinkles upon my face
and my tastes may change
for I still chiselling this life and soul from the rock
and time is ticking like the metaphorical clock.
Chemical brothers
Setting sun (setting – grave yard 2003)
Delusions sometimes come in the form of songs. This Chemical Brothers song “Setting sun” takes me back to the September of 2003. My father had been admitted into a psychiatric hospital after a painful (for all concerned) separation from my Mum. I have been facing my own battles as I had been diagnosed schizophrenic only 2 years before. it was a hugely stressful time for me and I had also fallen out with a friend and potential love interest.
In the early September the sun was still shining and is still warm but the leaves were starting to change to a brown tint the promise of autumn chill was on it’s way. All the stress of that and the fact I had with my Psychiatrist’s consent looked to come off my medication. Made me not only depressed but in a rapid cycling spiral like one of those leaves rising and falling with my mood like that leaf upon the wind. There was no way to escape the onset of psychosis and I hurtled towards my fate like a steam train with no brakes speeding towards a signal which was coloured neon red.
In those days I lodged with my boss Dave who had taken me in after my various troubles and dramas with my illness. Anyway he had his Mum staying I remember waking up to strange smells probably forms of smell that were delusions I believed i had heightened sense and my messiah or Jesus complex was rearing it’s ugly head. My Psychosis took me out on Sunday afternoon stroll to the graveyard on the hill by our old victorian gothic style church. Me being me decided in my psychotic state decided that me being Jesus should raise the dead from their graves. This was after I saw that some of the graves had been vandalised. I remember lifting one the head stones back on to it’s other piece I have no idea how I managed to do this. Maybe it was the adrenalin or the chemical imbalance in my brain and body.
I prayed to father God to restore these spirits to their bodies. It of course didn’t happen and made me feel even worse. When you are ill you cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Maybe I was being tested. After praying many times I gave up and laid myself in the corner of the graveyard out of the way from the passers by. I thought I was Jesus and that lead me down the path of being extremely paranoid of being found out and killed. I believed that anyone with the powers of God would be a threat to governments and the people and they would try to suppress or kill me!
I laid with my left arm clutching my stomach and my right arm holding a blade that I imagined in my mind. It felt like my world was ending and I wanted to die. Thats the type of mental pain psychosis brings. The cavernous lows of being buried in the cave of your mind so soon after thinking you have super powers and can raise the dead. I had real reasons to feel this way having seen my Dad struggling with psychosis as well and being medicated. There is nothing worse than being trapped in stressful situations only that of being trapped in your own unkind mind which vilifies you for not being good enough to be human let alone a god.
I had nothing left to give life and the people I loved but the sacrifice of my body and soul I would lay on the grass still dry from the summer sun and die…
However some one answered my prayers to God his dog was the first to come up to me and he gingerly followed. His name was Jon although I believed he was the devil come to tempt me. He asked me who I was and I swear to you even through the years that have passed one of the things I said was “That my body was young but my mind was very old” this was in line with what I had been taught mostly at Sunday school at my local church. Jesus was after all the word of god and had existed throughout time. Maybe if you read the lyrics at the bottom of this blog you will see that lyrics show the devil saying that rather than Jesus but maybe Jesus and the devil are in fact one and the same after all lucifer and Jesus both are bringers of light and gods favourite sons. Anyway I digress.
Me and John talked for a long time and I had visions like the song said. Maybe when you are mad or in madness there can be seen some truth in the insanity that is the world we live in. He I soon realised was very drunk and when he took me to his house down the road to get some help for me his partner who was a nurse and was very drunk also they offered me some alcohol. They didn’t know my back story and thought I was high on drugs.
Eventually Dave and Phil (my friend and neighbour arrived after they managed to get me to remember Dave’s home phone number but Jon and Liz thought there was something dodgy about my friends maybe it was the fact that I was acting so irrationally and that the situation was out of hand. But I am thankful that after an hour of speaking to Phil and Dave they let me go with them. I am also thankful to Jon the good samaritan for his help that day because If he hadn’t of found me I don’t know what would have happed later on with me in that state.
However this part is probably down to Jon being drunk but her swore that he saw a black blade in my hand when he found me and thought that with me clutching my stomach that I stabbed myself…
You’re the devil in me I brought in from the cold
You said your body was young but your mind was very old
You’re coming on strong and I like the way
The visions we had have faded away
You’re part of a life I’ve never had
I’ll tell you that it’s just too bad
You’re coming on strong
You’re showing your colour
Like a setting sun
Where do I begin
Sunday morning I’m waking up
Can’t even focus on a coffee cup
Don’t even know who’s bed I’m in
Where do I start
Where do I begin
Sunday morning I’m waking up
Can’t even focus on a coffee cup
Don’t even know who’s bed I’m in
Where do I start
Where do I begin
Where do I start
Where do I begin
Sunday morning I’m waking up
Can’t even focus on a coffee cup
Don’t even know who’s bed I’m in
Where do I start
Where do I begin
Where do I start
Where do I begin
In Stories written
I am smitten by hero or heroin
Life is stranger that the art we stare in
fairy tale romances underneath the surface glances
uncovers a setting
But I am betting you couldn’t of picked a better villain from your library book
But look,
and you will see
that there is a reason behind
their evil mentality.
It starts with there parents story
as it recycles on
Unhappiness detachment from love
is a somber song
sometimes played from a harp.
We are not the people who we thought
we are the stories we tell ourselves
the book our character is the one we tell ourselves we ought to play
but in the light of day
and in the night time
we hold onto the person we’ve told ourselves
we are,
whether we are lion king
or scar
we are not the character written on our forehead by god or the stars
we are the character fashioned and shaped by life our parents and ourselves
But do you know we can change our fortunes by changing the way we think
about ourselves in our own head
by burying the past and leaving it for dead.
Surrounded by opportunities
Which have been given
Laid at my feet but I need to be forgiven
Because I burn them as offerings
To my self for filling prophecy of pain
insane, I wonder whether I will receive them again
the world draws out the worst in me
If I am surrounded by arseholes cursing me
then won’t I can’t just give in.
Or is my life just a sin?
A tall tale of talent for sale
I move like a snail
when I should hunt like a bear
I stare at advertisers glare
at posters the only person who can change my life is me
I alone hold the key
But in the mirror the reflection I see
Is taunting the shy retiring me
and he keep my status quo
By keep taking the punches low
If I was boxer I be rocky
On the ropes
An eloquent man but also a joke…
Blood shot eyes
Awake in flashback nightmares
Screaming in silence
Lost in guilt ridden violence
Everyday is a brutal regime
There’s no distinguishing no changing
What I have done
Screaming victims is the war won?
A burning temper
A cold December
I try not to drink.
Realities torment I try not to think
Every time their faces come back to me
I stammer when I talk, I just can’t be
Screaming victim is the war won?
My family tries to support
My ravaged soul
I see the flames
They are burning out if control
In the distance a ray of light
Paralyzed by anxiety
I look to my family
Is the war won?
I am getting beaten
But I won’t back down
I forgive myself
I won’t back away
If there is a god
They’d forgive me I pray
I have let my war fade away…
Written in creative writing class.
Dear Diary
It’s 3 am and I still can’t sleep,
When I think of the bullies at school I weep.
In creeps the hunger to cut and purge again,
The cut of the knife hurts me, though it focuses the brain.
Droplets of blood drip onto the floor
Dull and red, one blood stain more.
In my heart loneliness slowly kills
Making me feel isolated and numbing my will.
My parents are caught in their own private war,
Unaware of what’s happening behind my bedroom door.
My parents are furious at my falling marks at school,
However they haven’t noticed the cuts on my arms at all.
I am left in this house which feels unsafe and unlike a home.
I panic when I am left to my own devices all alone.
My breaths come fast, uneven and I feel sick,
Sometimes I can’t breathe at all, my heart races too quick.
When I was at primary school I had good friends.
These days I feel let down, they’ve turned out to be dead ends.
It’s a shame they all left me and shot through,
now bullies flock around like vultures picking at all I say and do.
Last Tuesday I bunked school and spent it walking around town
people stared at me, making me feel even more down.
I was feeling as if no one understood
So I went to a river near a wood.
I made for my house when it was time to go home,
but the school had already contacted my Mum by phone
My furious Dad threatened me with grounding.
I said “I don’t care! I like my own surroundings!”
The truth is I don’t want to feel anything anymore,
So I pick up the knife to cut myself some more…