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. 

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. 

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

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.

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 

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. 

Eating Disorder.

It is a little late, but this is for Eating Disorders Awareness Week, which was February 20th - 27th.

Today.

Today I feel sad.

In fact, I feel really sad.
That hopeless kind of sad, 
where everything feels awful,
where your whole body feels heavy,
where your mind is clogged with darkness.
The kind where you hide under your sheets,
with the lights off and the curtains drawn,
and wish that the world would disappear,
or better still,
that you would disappear. 

Fire.

The new layer of paint on the wall is cracking,
and those all too familiar bursts of despair are seeping through the gaps.
Hopelessness courses through my body like a poison, 
turning my thoughts black,
forcing open my mouth whilst my brain screams silently inside of my skull.

It rains in the morning,
and I don’t want to get out of bed.

I am incarcerated in this body, and trapped in this mind,
and they follow me everywhere,
and there is no escape.

I am fire, 
and I am burning him alive. 

2.39am

Underneath my skin
like a pin prick
growing to a clawing at my insides

I'm thick like tar and
everything is always wrong
words are wrong and
all the bruises collect and collaborate
to hurt me further

Just be perfect
just for a little while
an undirected request
but I need it


The house smells like Christmas
but I feel the cold seeping in
and the lights turning off


I'm like embers;
smouldering but dying


You're doing so well 
but there's cracks
and they look like chasms to me
where I can confirm my own worthlessness
and spit venom
whilst I hollow out my soul

You,
and I,
we just need to be perfect for a while.