you are that *****
you are the girl that wakes up every morning and does everything for everyone
straightening their collars and wiping their tears making sure they’re good for the day

you are that *****
that checks everyone has eaten, bathed and has somewhere to sleep if they need
you put the pieces of people back together even when they thought it was broken

you are that *****
the ***** who warms peoples hearts with the coldest of conversations and topics
the one who makes us wish we could hate you because you’re such a ******* realist

you are the *****
who has no idea what she is capable of
you are that *****
that cannot see your worth in a telescope
you are the *****
that we need to give the boss *** back to

Did you love me like I love you?
Do you miss me like I miss you?

Are all of the things that you hated, the things you miss the most?
Are you still kicking yourself for thinking of me as soon as you wake up and as soon as you get into bed?

Will I ever not see shimmers of your absence everywhere I look?
Will I ever find someone as exhilarating as you?

Am I going to ever stop wondering if you’re going to message me saying you regret it?
Am I ever going to stop loving you?

When will this get easier?
When will it become me and not us?

I grew up in a chaotic household you see
seemed like the only means to silence

here we are now
10 or so years down the line
the chaos is in my head
the silence is buried in my scars
my regrets more present than they were in the past
love has never even seen my bed
i am wired like a time bomb

funny
I always imagined
that by this point
the silence would be in my head
the chaos buried in my scars
the regrets forgotten like high school rumours
love prominent in my veins like electricity in wires
and a hindrance of joy

but as it would seem
life isn’t at all simple
and you were the fuel on my drive to insanity

Everything I do hurts a little without you
I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel now
I feel like I need one last cuddle where you embrace me and make me feel safe
I wish I could have one last night where I’m laid by your side and you pattern my spine with your finger tips
I want one more night of smoking and takeaways when we pretend that we are the only people on the planet that matter and exist
I need you to look at me the way you did after you hadn’t seen me in a while, one last time because I’m longing for that sense of belonging
I’m convincing myself that maybe if I could relive all of these precious moments with you
Maybe I could relive my time spent with you
And it would never really have to end
Soon I will be used to doing things on my own
And you will too
But I will forever hold the times we shared close

You and me, never together but with each other forever

i am so in love
with no idea how to love

where i should leave trails of roses
i leave trails of destruction

today is the day i stop asking myself
why people leave me

because if i could
i’d leave me too

i feel lost in the pieces of you that i adore
it’s like im consumed in the fact that
i am liable to hold onto things, and i’ll hoard you forever

you make me feel warm up and down the inside of my chest
when with you, i feel safe and secure and my mind is free to rest

i wish that i could love you
because you are more than i could have desired
but my heart is so tired
and i don’t want you to have any of me
if it isn’t the best of me

dear past me
I’m sorry I was so ******* you
I didn’t know it was going to turn out this way
you made things really difficult for me
it took me a long time to forgive you for that
but I think I’m ready
I’ve accepted that what happened to you
wasn’t your fault
the way the system failed you
wasn’t your fault

dear present me
I’m so grateful for all that you’ve done
the way you’ve turned life around and strived
I’m proud of you I know you need to hear that
you’re amaze me and you’re not perfect yet
but you’re healing and you’re trying to get there
what happened to you shaped you and I hope
even if it takes you your whole life or being
you will flip the script and use it constructively

dear future me
I hope you’re happy and secure
if money is still a struggle for you don’t lose hope
hold on to every little thing you have
because in the end they are what matter most

I am changing.
But the idea of me that I want to put out into the world isn’t.
Who I want to be and the parts of myself that I don’t like are conflicting.
I stand firm on foundations that feel crumbly at the fact my morals feel proud.
I worry that I think too much about what others think.
Other times I worry I don’t think enough about that at all.
I’m scared that if I’m honest about how I feel I’ll be met with judgement.
For no real reason, other than what I feel is anxiety.
My feelings have no solid ground, so of course they are easy to judge.
Does that really mean that they are judging me though?
By that logic, are my morals really mine or just my anxieties of what people will think?
The few things I used to take pride in being, I might not be anymore.
So who am I?
Will the people who loved me then, love me now?
Anxiety is a feral hungry beast.
Pacing and pattering through my veins.
Thumping and crashing in my heart like a misplaced 808.
“I’m really not an anxious person.”
Shakily fall from between my lips, reluctantly.
As I realise, I’m anxious to even admit that im anxious.
Am I supposed to have life figured out in my almost mid twenties?
Probably not.
Do I feel like I should have a vague sense of direction about it?
Maybe.
Although I’m battling with the idea that no one ever really knows what they want to do and people just get stuck.
So maybe I’m the lucky free thinker.
Or maybe I’m the delusional directionless unemployed rambler that people avoid at pubs.
Good job I avoid pubs.
I thought I was a powerful, political, before my time, feminist.
Who was just “too awake for the world before me”.
Miserable because my eyes are open too wide, that sort of thing.
Identifying as a realist.
But maybe, just maybe, I’m just a miserable old *******.
Creaky kneed, bleak thoughted.
I never used to think that much.
Well I did, I just never categorised myself as an overthinker.
I was wrong.
I just overthought about irrelevant things, out of my control.
Unimportant to spiral over.
Now that I and the people I love are centre to my anxious internal ramblings, i realise just how wrong.
I thought growing up would entail control of your mind.
Coping mechanisms.
Maybe growing up is realising coping is just getting on with it.
That prospect has never sat right with me.
“Queen of holding on to things” my mother often refers to me as.
Hoping to god I’ll learn to one day “park”, as she would say, just one of the things that make me miserable.
On any of the number of days I choose to let it pop back up.
Which would feel like everyday.
If you catch me on a “everything is bothering me day” I’d tell you I’m playing whack a mole with everything bad that’s ever happened in my life.
And although I know how it goes, I lose every time.
Maybe that’s because I’m so dedicated to my hobby.
Not a healthy one, I have none of those.
I’m referring to my insane ability to play basketball with chucking my feelings into my **** it bucket.
Until of course I realise that the **** it bucket isn’t looking so **** it anymore.
When you’ve felt so much for so long does contentness ever feel less like emptiness?
Does the peace ever get quieter?
Do the problems get realer or do we just stop creating them?
The questions I’d have asked myself a decade ago take a soul-wrenchingly, starkly, different tone.
So am I ungrateful?
Am I ungrateful that my biggest problem is anxiety?
My biggest problem is fake problems.
How 13 year old me would laugh in my face and spit venom with the tone.
I went through so much to get to where I am now.
To feel like I cheated?
Like I somehow don’t deserve it?
Not to say I earned it, but why would I deserve it less than anyone else?
I am aware.
I always have been.
I see the flaws in my thinking
The excruciatingly humane flaws in my self.
People fault me on seeing every one of their flaws, and pointing it out.
But how do I stop thinking them?
“Being aware is the first step.”
Yes.
Everyone finishes there.
Is there a second step?
Me and a few other million people are wondering.
Nothing else in life is like that.
You’re given an equation.
It’s explained, you get an answer.
It’s right, or it’s wrong.
Mentally we are left exhausting all the options.
Flaw after flaw, fault after fault, lapse after lapse.
For what?
No closer to answers just an opportunity to do it wrong differently next time.
Exhausted from thinking
The thoughts are chaotic like 5 point round abouts.
I am terrified to verbalise them.
I don’t know what I want.
Being heard isn’t enough anymore.
I don’t want solutions.
What are we left with?
Nothing practical.
Just a wish and a dream of one day feeling differently.
Being content with being content.
Accepting serenity as peace, not a moment to be ruined.
There is a paradise out there, I just haven’t met her and neither has anyone I know.
Does that make me sound like a believer?
Like actualisation is tiered with heaven?
As I get older, the more I realise that it just might be exactly that, for atheists.
Try as you might, I don’t believe it’s possible in life.
I’m upset that in my realism and internalised honesty, that I forced my brain to block out so much of my life.
I focused on the negative things and considered myself to be being true to history and my past.
Remembering is important.
Yes.
I wish I remembered the name of my favourite song on the dance mat.
Not how upset I was when I found out it had been thrown away.
I wish instead of getting so hung up on how people left, why people left or how terrible they are for leaving, that I remembered how good it was to know them.
I’m worried that my brain is not who I want it to be.
I’m scared that everything I hate in this word is an externalisation of everything I hate in myself.
I’m anxious that all of my darkest thoughts, are the truest testament to who I am as a person.

you took from me
something i will never get back
you took my life
but you left me living

it ended
but it never finished
from the second it started
i began surviving

from that moment
i never really lived again

people say “recovery is a long road”
there is nothing long about the road
because the road doesn’t exist
sometimes you can’t recover
and from that moment
you’re living with

sometimes your heart will hurt
and you will have no idea why
but it’s not important why, it’s just you do everything you need to for yourself when it does

sometimes people will do really ****** things
for no reason at all
and it doesn’t matter how many time you explain your point of view, they will never let you feel like you’re right for feeling how you feel

people have no obligation to love you
and it hurts a lot when you first encounter this being acted out
but there’s many more of these scenarios to come, so plenty of time to get used to it

people just leave your life
sometimes they drift
and sometimes they up and go
but either way, if they’re not there they don’t deserve to be
and you’ll make it either way

the worst thing that can possibly happen in every situation, is that you die
and to be honest, do you think you know when you’re dead?
so every risk, is an opportunity
every boundary, is a point to be reached

live fiercely, because you only live for you

and in the same way trees bloom, only to wither a season of two later
she steals your heart, to hold it and drop it a week or two later
and in the same way the sun permanently positions on you, only to shine on someone else
she left me empty

now I am overflowing, she could take and take and take; that I would still be so full

I met you in my dreams
you said “baby, what’re you doing here?”
I said “I came for you.”

From the distance I see your face drop
Was I not supposed to miss you?
Is expecting to kiss you, wrong?

I expected the darkness to fade when my eyes opened
but the darkness is my life without you
this is my reality now

i can’t help falling in love with you

you hold my heart in your hand
and you chose to protect it

i want to feel you grip me tight
making sure i feel, just how right it is

together we unite
to create our own solidarity

if we don’t end up together
destiny is a lie

Parts of my brain killed themselves as a survival tactic and I had no idea why. I woke up one day and I was less than myself, parts of me missing with no subsequence. I know I will grow again but I will never be the same. There are nights when things I cannot even remember, paralyse me in tears and fears on my bedroom floor. These are the nights I realised I was wrong about where the monsters lay, I was lead to believe they live underneath our beds. To my surprise, they are the ones who enter our beds; uninvited. I am jumping from breakdown to breakdown. It’s like playing the floor is lava, just with my sanity. Sometimes, I am struck with full awareness of all my adolescent traumas and a lifetime of wounds cut me all at once.

you’re a shapeshifting demon
and you fooled me for too long
but i’ve ran out of reason
to justify all you’ve done wrong

there was a time that we were friends
sadly there comes a time that everything ends
and you are something i’m glad to leave behind
i truly hope, you look but never find
someone who looks after you like I did

deflated
but still somehow filled to the brim with self hatred
i love you
three words that were once so heavy
that now just feel so empty

selfish as a lover
and selfish in pain
i wish you knew i still mean it all the same

i don’t love you any less
just because my head is a mess

sabotaging anything good
because i’m scared to love someone this much
i can only apologise

but even in that i’m selfish
because who am i sorry for
me or you

i want you to hate me
i deserve it all
leave me in my pain
because i deserve to feel it

I’ve been told recently that I’m psychotic because I don’t want people who aren’t good for me around anymore

I’ve been called selfish because I’ve put myself first in only the most detrimental of situations

I’ve learnt that even people who have fooled me into thinking are really good people for years, are actually not

I’ve been told I’m going to lose everyone because I have not been afraid to tell people when they’ve upset me

I’ve been called the runt of the family for speaking loudly and proudly about how our opinions differ

I’ve learnt that I am a hell of a lot stronger
Than I ever wanted to learn
I’ve learnt that only from beneath the ground do flowers grow
Thank you for burying me  
And giving me this opportunity to blossom

times spent with you
are times I wish stood still
every second precious
wishing it to was never ending

patterning your spine with my fingertips
delicately because I know you’ve been broken
people have taken all you were willing to give
and offered nothing in return

so all I ask is that you hold me
just the way that you do
until I can return
all of your goodness to you

I will right all of the wrongs of the past
and treasure you like you will be my last
If you need someone to sacrifice oxygen
because you are suffocating
I will hold you
until you catch your breath

i’m walking through hell
but trying my best to be an angel

the ever lasting struggle that is
trying to be a good person
in a bad place

Simplicity in easy things
And peace in the flutter of the leaves
Spring has sprung
The sun kisses my cheeks
Worries fall from my shoulders

How I revel in the blossom
The bloom and the growth
The persistence and perseverance
Season after season
Century after century
They continue to flourish

With the warmth comes an comforting gratitude
I’m not jealous of the flowers
I am taking a leaf out of their book
Admiring their petals
Accepting that their growth
Doesn’t make mine less phenomenal
In fact
I’m glad we weathered these seasons together
An alikeness in nature

it’s strange to be happy
for the first time in as long as you can remember
helplessly optimistic making everyday sunny

surrounded by good vibes
and only the kindest most selfless people
remembering what it’s all about

truly absorbing the goodness of life
the love of family members
and the feeling of security

i’ve never been here before
in this building where there’s safety on the shelves
consistent happiness hanging in the halls
breathtaking moments you wish you could frame

i’ve never been here before
but i’d love to stay if i could
i’m content here
people are kind
and understanding

i am a stranger to the village of happiness
but this cottage i’ve built
is one i hope to keep forever

I adore him
and that is the beginning and end of everything

he is the greatest thing
I never planned

he feels warm and familiar
when I feel most lost

he feels solid and safe
when I’m most vulnerable

he came without warning
and had my heart before I could say no

I promise to trust him
because he always helps me gasp for air
when someone has left me drowning

I will always treasure him
because anywhere that I am held in his arms
feels more like home than any house ever could

it is no surprise I get lost in his blue eyes
I have always feared deep waters
but I long to drown in his ocean eyes

on the day he turns and looks at me
to say “after all this time?”
I will simply gaze back and reply “always”

when I met him
he was easy on the eyes
and by no surprise
his heart had me mesmerised

I adore him
and that is the beginning and end of everything

im living in euphoria
and i don’t want it to end
magic is seeping from my pores
dazzling everyone around me
with the best version of myself

im all the way up on cloud nine
all i can do is pray i don’t fall
helplessly hoping
i haven’t confused the cloud
for a high horse
because the fall from one
will hurt more than the other

im feeling the happiness flutter in my tummy
it’s pulsating around my veins
i don’t think anyone
could take this feeling away

im happy to announce
i am finally
falling in love with my life
all over again

it seems i always play the wrong move
like my life is a chessboard
my peers are somehow always ahead of me

convincing myself I can’t hate the player
only the game
so without working my way around the board
I will lose every time

I have lived my whole life
believing I was going in heavy with a queen
to wake up one day
and realise I was just another pawn

I lay in bed
Eyes wide
Heart racing
Mouth dry
Struggling to catch my breath
As my mind conspires against me

Will I live to see the day
That it isn’t true to say
This will always be the way?

Probably not
With that my hope rots

I wish my mind could pause for a minute
Let me gather myself
Make a plan
And get my **** together
The slither of hope that remains
Does nothing
But breed eternal misery

Why do you stay?
Why do you stay to hear the shakes in my breath at 4am, why do you pattern your fingertips so delicately around the dimples in my back as I literally attack you as if you are my demons in flesh and blood.
Why do you stay?
Through all of that why do you still want me to hug you to sleep, why do you want to laugh and joke with me on car journeys while we both recite all of the songs we’ve learnt over the past two years that we’re not bored of yet.

Not that I care why, but just that I don’t understand why you go about hurting yourself, for literally nothing.
Am I missing something?

And why
For the love of ******* god do you love to make me feel bad.
When I’m done crying and being an emotional wreck you’re there to cuddle me and put me back together as if you think I deserve it.
What the **** did I do to deserve this?
I didn’t ask for any of it and I sure as hell don’t want it.

Please care about someone that has it in them to care about you.
Because you deserve to be cared about properly.
And I am not that girl.
I wish I could let you love me,
But I can’t.
Because I’m not sure how to love you.