02/12/11 (2)

People think the nights are the worst,
and yes, they are terrible;
I can feel the absence of you in the space next to me,
and the deafening silence of you not breathing,
and the cold where your limbs should be wrapped around mine,
and I reach with my foot to find yours, but of course, it isn’t there.
But the worst, the absolute worst moment,
is just after that second where I wake up and the pain has been smoothed over in the relief of sleep; 
where dreams of reconciliation play out, or maybe no dreams at all,
where suddenly consciousness opens the doorway for realisation, which comes flying in at such a pace that it actually smacks me full on in the chest,
a huge wall of unrelenting misery, unbearable pain, aching loneliness, overwhelming longing, and unforgiving anguish, 
filling up my body, pulsing through my veins, weighing down my chest with the knowledge that I am left with a cavernous hole in my life, a gaping wound in my heart, and the screaming of every fibre of my being yearning for you.

02/12/12

I absolutely will survive
but I’d rather it be by your side
so we can face the world cheek to cheek
instead of staring at our feet
and forgetting the world which we knew
and letting it all go askew
because we could move forward together
and not be overcome by bad weather
and every second I would treasure
whether it be just for now or forever.
we gave it each other bits of sunshine
please come back and again be mine
you could not give a good reason to leave
but I would not stand there and beg and plead
even though I kind of wish I had
especially now that I’m so sad
but memory and pride would not let me
and so you left and so I bleed
inside mostly and sometimes out
and sit here crying in fear and doubt
I think you didn’t think this through
I think that this is not us, but you
I think you came to the wrong conclusions
I think you are wrapped up in your own confusion
I think that we are happiest together
than facing the world alone and hoping for better
because there is no better love than us
but there is a better life for you, its just
that you have to face up to your problems and fears
before you can be happy in life, my dear
it’s not us that needed to be changed, you see
it’s the rest of your life that you need to change to succeed
your dissatisfaction has been blamed on us
when you need to see the bigger picture, you must
because without you I’m unbearably alone
and wherever I’m with you, I feel like I’m home.
so please, take a moment, to assess how you feel
to re-evaluate, and think, and see what is real
maybe I am wrong, but at least tell me so
sort out your mind and then please let me know
because nothing makes sense, if we both lose
especially when we were so happy together, too.
I hope you know, I will be waiting on you
I cannot let you go, it’s not our time, its too soon.

27/11/12

I am hovering on the border between life and death. 
I am not living, but merely existing in darkness; in misery.
I want to make the feelings end, for the pain to stop, for this unbearable anguish to dissipate. Only one person can do that for me, and since they won’t, then living is not an option.

But I don’t want to die: I fear the nothingness of death, and I fear missing the possible change of events that could mean our reconciliation. Death would also mean causing the unbearable grief that I feel now on many others, yet they would not have the hope of a reunion that I do, since there would be no bringing me back.

And so I live in limbo, which is more of an existence than a life: breathing, carrying out a few daily tasks that I can manage, moving through life with no attention paid to time, for time has no meaning when you are carrying the thick, crushing waves of loneliness, loss, and longing inside of you.

It should not be this way when two people love each other so, when two people care and share as we did, when two people carry around a part of each other within their hearts. It is not right, and the decision was messy, unprepared, confused, and an entanglement of misdirected emotions. Open your eyes, whilst I am still waiting (I will always be waiting).

22/11/12 (2)

I really want to talk to you now,
and tell you,
how my day has been and how the rain keeps making my feet cold,
to ask you what have you been up to,
and to tell you what I am thinking of baking next
and how you’d love the mince pies my dad has bought for us,
and how I will save you one,
and how I cannot wait, to see you next 
to hold you, to kiss you, and to tell you that I love you,
but,
although I love you more than anyone could ever love anyone,
and although you love me too,
you let me go and,
I cannot tell you, how much I miss you, how much I need you,
how I long for your touch, and your voice, and your love,
every second of every hour of every day,
and how it is killing me inside, 
every second of every hour of ever day. 

22/11/12

3.39am and I’m too scared to sleep because the room is so deafeningly silent and my bed is so obviously empty on your side.

The warmth of your body and the steady inhale and exhale of your breath is missing and I lie alone at night, craving your presence and feeling the cavernous hole inside me that is fraught with misery, 
expand even farther with an explosion of unbearable pain, 
leaving me to ache, all night long, 
until sleep numbs me, 
just for me to wake up in the morning to find you gone again, 
and with that realisation, 
resume my suffering.

20/11/12

My experience of the world has numbed; become blurred, like I myself am not really here, just going through the motions of being alive, but carrying around a heavy, heavy misery within me. Then there are the frequent bursts of white hot pain in my chest, under my skin, inside my skull, some that I push forcefully back inside, and others that escape me in drawn out cries and anguish that I cannot bear, until my body shuts down my mind again and returns me to that hollow, aching state that allows me to exist in my misery (I don’t want to exist in this misery).

18/11/12

Even the air smells like you and you’re everywhere in the atmosphere: in the sunlight coming through the trees, in the walk from mine into town, in the warmth of my bedroom, in the empty space in my bed. 

I feel like you belong in them, and you ripped yourself away. Now all that is left is a pressure in my chest that reminds me that you were, such a short time ago, here. 

This is unbearable anguish.

My life feels empty. How do you move on from someone when all you want is to be with them; when the only reason to move on from them is because they ended it with you, even when they didn’t even seem to want to do that 100% anyway, and that is was, in their eyes, only the “least worst option”, not actually something they wanted?

I feel like I am breaking. He is everything that I want, except that seed of a doubt that he snowballed into something that it didn’t need to be. As someone said, it seems like he can’t take a risk with anything, can’t just see how things go, probably because he’s seen people he loves end after a long time of being together.

He has made both of us miserable over a seed of doubt. He has ended a great relationship over something that doesn’t seem coherent. “I’m happiest when I’m with you,” he said. Then why make us both unhappy? 

“I just know I wouldn’t have these doubts if you were the one,” he said. But how does he know that he didn’t just create those feelings out of his own worries and fears? 

Maybe he’s right. I mean, he did end it with me. It must have been a big enough problem for him to end such love, trust, intimacy, loyalty, and friendship. I must have not been what he wanted if he could end it with me over such feelings. Although last week he was saying that I was what he wanted, and that he wishes he had never written it down and that I had never read it, so that we could be how we were before. Surely that shows that he didn’t want to end it then, so how could it change so much within a week? 

I will probably never have these answers. I will probably drive myself crazy wondering about it for years. Wondering if things could have been different, wondering that if we had stayed together would he have changed his mind and learned that there is no such thing as perfect? A friend said that the Western idea of love is so glorified that people have unrealistic expectations, and I think he has that problem. That thought makes it harder to bear because if only he could have viewed it all more clearly then maybe he would have seen things differently. But then again I will never know. Maybe he wouldn’t have. Maybe I was not the one for him, even if he was for me. 

And here we are, an amazing two-year relationship ended over a thought that snowballed. 

Our relationship worked so fucking well. It was just that seed of doubt: a seed of doubt caused by his tendency to over-think. That and the fact that he’s afraid of commitment because his parents broke up and his dad and step-mum broke up after that too. What he’s looking for is unattainable and its horrible because he will find that out and then it will be too late for us. He said our relationship was great and i said “so why?!”, and he said, “because it is not PERFECT.” Everyone with more experience knows that perfect doesn’t exist, and that when you have something really great you don’t let it go for your vision of perfect, because that’s a glorified Western idea that doesn’t exist. Or maybe, maybe it was not right for him and never would have been. I just don’t know.

Every day is so meaningless. I keep thinking that I could so easily end this excruciating pain with a bottle of pills or a blade to the wrists. I probably wouldn’t but it’s tempting sometimes.

Every moment of every day I need him. Only he can make me feel better, but only he can’t, unless he changed his mind, which I don’t think he will. All I want to do is have him hold me, stroke my hair, love me, tell me it’s going to be okay, but he’s chosen to never do that again. 

I just want him, with every fibre of my being I love him, everything about him, every part of me is screaming for his touch, his voice, his words of comfort that he cannot give me. 

I love him, I trust him, I want him, I need him; my best friend, my love, my world.

Please, come back.

The silence is deafening; unbearable
all the gaps you have left behind cannot be filled:
a gaping chasm inside me
pain pushing me apart from the inside out
anguish ripping through me every second, every moment
tearing me to pieces
exploding through my veins

The deepest longing
for your touch
for your voice
for only you can make the pain subside

but you won't.

Limbs
made up of
undesirable flesh
and blood that leaks
through the skin.
drowning in cells
absent euphoria
dysmorphia
distorting glass and
laying scars over skin. 

desire taught me how to
measure my life in numbers;
testing the boundaries of the body 
and the mind.
cotton wool clothing
and skies always darkening
peeling my eyes open
in the hairdressers mirror.

Insides crumbling
trash cans fed with fear
inescapably inescapable
I am totally incapable
of making up my mind. 

I am flesh and bones and blood and muscles and organs. I am scars and tattoos and piercings and make-up and hair dye and scabs and skin. I am pain and anger and love and trust and misery and honesty and fear. I am fire and edges and thunderstorms and whispers and bite-marks and lust and the second the shutter snaps down. I am tired and energised and head and heart and old and new and life and death. 
I am able to carry the world on my shoulders but even a leaf could crush me where I stand.

The rain followed her home every night and squeezed through the cracks in her eyes and found its way into her bloodstream and coursed through her veins. Quite frequently it would turn to fire and burn its way almost to the surface to boil beneath her skin and draw blood from flesh. The screams that echoed continually in every fibre of her being somehow were contained within and only rarely broke free, and even then it just made it worse. Every breath just made her more aware of her excess. Every movement made her conscious of the uncomfortable sensations of being. Every line, curve, and contour must be perfect. It must be, or the world will collapse.

Tell Me.

Tell me how to quieten my mind without emptying my body,
how to walk through the trees without counting the time,
tell me how to feel like I’m not just so normal
without watching the numbers decrease, yes I’m trying

Tell me how to taste without feeling guilty,
teach me how to feel full without wanting to gag,
pull me to my feet when I fall down on bruised knees,
rub my soul back into my skin, trace lines down my back 

The darkness is calling but the light wants me closer,
though the numbness and bruises are beckoning me home,
I’m nothing without it, I can’t trust the brightness,
it may stay for a while but it always leaves me alone 

Open my mouth and force in seeds full of sunshine,
listen to me whisper, watch blood fall from my lips,
watch me twist, and morph into monsters,
hear me cry over razor-sharp hips

Elusive memories flutter around my eyelids,
fingers dancing across jutting bones,
it’s time to start smiling, a voice breathing gently,
but just as I said, darkness is calling me home. 

Fear,
scratching,
a tiny little piece of glass,
stuck,
under my skin,
a constant ache,
making me heavier,
digging nails,
hopeless,
drowning,
doubt,
longing,
skin crawling,
shiver,
my brain shudders,
sadness,
the sunshine just makes me feel worse
about not wanting to go outside,
and I can't think of a way to remove the boulders
blocking the path to the light.

21/06/12

I am crumbling walls
and dusty stone
painted with silent rain 
and tired eyes
I am a darkened way of looking
a freshly opened wound
a worn out smile and
a tattered notebook
read too many times over for the story inside 
to be worth it any more
I am a failed musician
who played his tunes so many times
that people got bored and walked away
I am damaged machinery
clunking angrily every time someone tries to
make me work
I am wilting flowers
once beautiful but now decaying
and the world cries at what a shame it is
and then throws me into the trash
I am broken, and it is everyone’s fault but mine,
and no one’s fault but my own.

The Truth About Eating Disorders. (16th June)

Eating disorders are not beautiful, fragile rays of sunshine floating inside you as you weightlessly take each step, delicately refusing food with a tinkle of laughter, effortlessly avoiding thoughts of calories whilst engaging in a conversation with a friend over a cup of green tea, cigarette in hand, tendrils of smoke drifting above your head, dazzling everyone with your frailty, proudly showing off your bones with a smile on your face.

No, eating disorders are fingers dancing nervously across collarbones and dark circles under your eyelids. Eating disorders are waking up and realising they you have been feeling your hipbones in your sleep. They are the constant and never-ending thoughts of food, weight, exercise, and calories. They are the persistent temptations that you have to work at every second not to give in to. They are insomnia, or sleep plagued with nightmares about binging, anxiety about food, or dreams of being as thin as you wish to be. They are waking up and finding that you are not. They are tidal waves of self-deprecating insults. They are emotional, verbal, and physical abuse, by yourself to yourself. They are bruises appearing with every slight knock. They are glassy-eyed walks to the cupboards, stuffing yourself full with everything that you can find. They are the returning soul, suddenly realising how much you have eaten. They are being bent over the toilet, fingers down throat, spewing vomit into water that gets splashed back into your own face. They are chest pains. They are a raw, burning throat. They are burst blood vessels, and streaming eyes. They are shaking legs. They are having part of you taken away bit by bit until you can enjoy nothing, until there is nothing left to you but numbers and darkness and misery. They are obsession. They are having your relationships destroyed because you are a walking eating disorder who can no longer enjoy or engage in anything else because your mind is too consumed by thoughts to do with food. They are not being able to focus on a conversation because you are either too hungry or you are looking at how your legs look when you are sat down, when they are crossed, when they are apart. They are the development of dissociation, anxiety, obsessive and compulsive tendencies, and depression in one go. They are viewing yourself as fat in every item of clothing that you own. They are daily routines that you cannot and will not change. They are weighing yourself at least every morning and having your mood depend on the number shown. They are weighing out every item of food that you eat so you know the exact calorie content. They are tears and razorblades and despair.
Eating disorders are the idea that you will be able to stop and be happy when you are thin. They are never seeing yourself as that thin even when you are. They are are never, ever, being thin enough. They are the wanting to be happy but having the manipulative “Voice” tell you that recovery would mean “getting fat” and being more miserable. They are the not wanting to die but finding it unbearable to live. They are utter hopelessness and self-loathing when you fail at keeping within your calorie limit- and believe me, you will fail, many times over. They are the endless self-punishments. They are dizziness and nausea. They are fainting and falling. They are living like a zombie: barely getting through each day just so you can go back to bed and attempt to sleep again. They are the feeling of worthlessness, and hate, and anger, and misery. They are the fear of each coming day, and of each coming night. They are the looking in the mirror and only seeing a huge, hideous, disgusting, repulsive, large mound of fat - even when bones jut from every part of your body.
Eating disorders are having your hair thin and maybe even fall out in clumps into the shower or when you brush your hair. They can be lanugo; fine, downy hair that covers emaciated bodies in an attempt to keep them warm. They can be heart murmers, or muscle atrophy, tearing of the oesophagus, gastric rupture, reflux, fatigue, low blood pressure, anaemia, kidney infection or even failure, amenorrhoea (loss of periods), gum disease, tooth decay, infertility, constipation, diarrhoea, seizures, malnutrition, dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, impaired neuromuscular function, paralysis, and even death - those aren’t even all the risks.

So if you don’t have an eating disorder and you have looked at someone who does and envied them, I hope this has changed your perspective. Eating disorders are not a choice or a lifestyle; they are life-destroying diseases.

5/6/12

Numbness and
that stony cold silence
that is so much better than
the rage and deafening noise
of the warm sickening tightness
in the belly and 
I forgot how much I love 
emptiness 
and shrinking 
not expanding
and being able to lie down and know that
I may want to disappear
but I am doing so
instead of lying there 
knowing that I failed and
wanting to tear off my skin and fly away
as a weightless soul
at least, at least,
at least I am getting there by
denying myself
instead of filling myself up and then helplessly watching the expansion
instead of feeling so conspicuous and stretched outwards
but denying is really rewarding
because in the morning
when there is flatness instead of bloating
it may not be flat enough
but it is flatter than before 

15/05/12

I try to find textures like sunshine
and patterns like summer
and pretty little things that can open up my heart to light
the only times when I can feel a slight glowing within
before it is quickly replaced with cold, dark hands that clutch at my insides
and turn my mind in on itself before I can cry out.
I try to find solace in cigarettes,
cups of steaming tea,
good books,
a warm bed,
photographs, 
and other souls
but
sometimes I take refuge in 
too much of a good thing and then
the bottom of a toilet,
exhaustion,
or lonely fast walks in the middle of the night,
and each good thing fades away in my memory 
until all I am is a build up of numbers, and that is all that is left of me.

15/05/12

I am scratches
and holes in tights
and numbers
and many steps in the dark
I am sweat, blood, and tears
I am heart pumping
knees up
I am long red lines 
and vomit in the bottom of toilets
I am scars and bones
and the lack of prominence
I am dark circles 
bloodshot eyes
and angry black thoughts
I am misery and longing
and a certain sense of forgetfulness
I am aching limbs
blisters
closed lips
and many hot cups of tea
I am cigarette smoke and bleary eyes
I am veins and emptiness, tinged with death.
I am endless.
 

15/05/12

Sometimes I long to
forget and be whipped up
in laughter and lights 
with bodies moving in warm loud rooms
blurring each image together as one
singing to songs that I don’t even like
but do tonight
and taste ice cold sweet but bitter 
and blow clouds of smoke into the dark sky
but there are too many numbers
for me to count
and so I don’t 

Some of us live
lives so hollow 
that our minds are sewn together by
frail little thoughts of
sun rays and green tea
fragile tiny hopeful glimmers that
appear for only a short time
but they are all that keeps us here

Cut me free
from this cage
this monstrosity
that binds my weightless soul
and keeps me here
heavy and chained
hurting
in misery
sometimes I think it may be fire that burns within
but I fear that all it is
is darkness
eating up all the light
inside of me
and the lights
have almost gone out

I need sunlight and
short walks 
and daffodils greeting my step
soft green grass
daisies and bumblebees
wooden beams
laughter
warm mattresses
and a clear head

but what I really have is
cold dark days
hard concrete
boxed in rooms
hollow words
and a blackness where my thoughts should be

I feel a soft warm
sickly feeling in my belly and
it’s not what I wanted at all
but I did it anyway
like always but then 
never at all

Almost.

I feel like it's almost the end. I feel the last threads of myself hanging onto my soul but soon they will blow away with the wind, never to be seen again. I feel a presence, like a black shadow, hanging over my shoulder, watching, waiting. I think it is death.

When I shut the door to you this morning, it felt almost like goodbye: I feel as if I am going somewhere that you cannot follow. My soul is stripped of everything that it used to be. It is nearly raw and blank and untouched; my presence barely lingers on in it any more. I am not here, I am somewhere else. My insides are frozen, my eyes made of glass, and my tears are nothing more than a brief memory passing through me, and on, and out. I do not feel enough to keep you hoping, wishing, dreaming of a past that is hardly even a whisper. I cannot be enough to let you stay. When the last remnants of myself are gone, I will let you go. I myself will then fade into nothingness, and soon after, that presence that I feel; that darkness gathering behind me, will step forward and take me away from this ghostly, grey existence.

I don't know how soon it is coming, but I can scarcely feel myself here. My mind is misty and I don't really see things, they just pass me by, mostly unnoticed. I don't want company. I am alone, and even myself has left me. I have no interests, except a faint enjoyment of photography – some stronger part of my personality clinging on – and every day is made up of time: of counting down hours, of minutes going past, every second of my inconsequential existence wasted.

I should not be here.

Ugly.

I am ugly on the outside and
ugly on the inside
I am ugly to me and
I am ugly to you 


I am a ghost or a shadow
lost inside myself
caught in a web that I have become  
horribly comfortable sitting in and
I’m almost smiling as I’m being eaten alive
I feel empty you see, but so full of that emptiness 

I love you when you’re gone
but I can’t cough it up when you’re around
and it’s not fair because I know it’s there
but I can’t push it from my core outwards
it’s burning in me but my lips are like ice and my body is cold 

and when I’m alone I want you
but when you’re beside me I crave solitude and silence
and I hate myself for every time I flinch and push away
and I despise myself for having no suggestions
for feeling everything and nothing
for not having anything to say
for the hardness in me where I was once gentle
and for the way that I am no longer much of myself
and instead I am endless numbers and fears and anger


I am ugly on the outside and
ugly on the inside
I am ugly to me and
I am ugly to you 
and I am so numb to it all but
I know my heart is breaking
you are everything that I need
but I don’t know what to do

30/03/12

Sometimes
I wonder
what it would have been like
how things would have gone
but the pieces never fit and
I didn’t feel exactly
how I felt it should feel
I never have

but observations
sewn together
in small, kind words 
got me thinking 
about movies
and cigarettes
and phonecalls
and most importantly, texts sent too late

if I had felt how I felt it should feel
then
it seems likely that
it would all be different now
and
that’s not what I want:
I found my most precious moments
and a bright shining star
and I would never give that up

but
all I’m saying is
that I’m grateful that there is still something
and I’m grateful that there are still words. 

Spring Walk.

With cameras we strolled
up to the woods and back again
with me pausing 
every now and again
to capture spring at its finest;
the blossom and the berries 
the trees and the bumblebees 
and the blue, blue sky

The sunshine makes me feel carefree
as we amble down the lanes
exchanging stories and gossip
and you pine over the girl that you bake cakes with
the girl you go shopping with
and write song lyrics with
the girl that you have fallen for
but don't know how to tell
or even if you should say anything at all

We come to the bench and
we sit and I smoke and
we talk more about girls and boys
and how young it all starts now
and I realise how much older you have become all of a sudden
as if it happened overnight and I missed the bit in between 
and you are even taller than me now when I always expect you to be shorter

It's nice, you know, to walk with you
and to talk with you
and to be able to say things that I have wanted to say for a long time
but couldn't because you were young
but now we can talk about things, real things, and you are old enough to hear them
and old enough to answer to them too
and it's wonderful 
really wonderful
that we finally have so much to say 

We walk in silence and
the daffodils have started to come out

the birds are singing
and today the sun has decided to make an appearance

you ask me what I am thinking
and it is hard to ever answer now because
I am always thinking the same thing
and my mind is not itself any more

you think of things that I do not care for
and I think with a brain of shadows and darkness
yet we both push past the murky clouds between us and
you hold my hand
you hold my hand with yours 

Light
empty
weightless
pain

I feel my
synapses starting to stutter
my 
brain disconnecting
my mind is all
air
and 
space

My eyelids are heavy 
and so is my 
skull
but
my thoughts are so
light
that they float around without being held by
anything
at all. 

Apologies.

I want to apologise, if I may,
for the silences,
for the fire,
for the suffocating darkness,
for the marks on my body,
for the marks on my mind,
and for the burden of all of my years that you are shouldering with me.
I want to say that I didn't know that it would return,
and that I would not have wanted to drag you into the dirty ground with me,
and that I am torn between pushing you back up into the sunshine where I cannot follow and letting you have your way.
It's only that there are only a few things left that I enjoy:
the scent of my different types of tea; peppermint, chai, and blackcurrant, amongst others,
cigarettes,
your kisses,
and, the long talks we sometimes have,
sunshine,
and the long talks with my friends.
I find it hard to keep checking the clock to see if it is time to sleep yet,
to breathe a sigh of relief that I have made it through another day,
and that I can escape into nightmares,
which aren't nice either but it is better than being awake.
I never meant to sink,
and it makes it harder knowing that I may sink you too, and again,
I am sorry.