The heavy heart

There are times when life gets you down and it feels like you're walking around reacting like normal but still feel dead on the inside. All the time we are asked to put aside how we feel, to be professional, and deal with what is going on now but it can be very difficult and can leave people feeling very alone. So the heavy heart is the unseen problem.



The heavy heart it walks amongst us
it passes by unnoticed
it smiles and laughs
takes part in life like nothing’s wrong
then hides away to cry alone
to moan in pain, to try and heal the wounds
than never seem to fade.


The heavy heart it yearns to feel light
to dance and sing and reach the sky
where the warming sun shines
but for now it does not feel the heat
it senses more of what might be
and hopes for better times to come.


The heavy heart endures
it beats, slow and laboured
it’s painful rhythm pushing life to places
that long since abandoned hope
reminding that life might change and sometime soon
the light will come, the sun will shine
and it will skip and race again.

Know thy self

There are times when I consider where I have gotten too and how it might have been different had my life not been what it has. I think most people could say the same although I can see that many may not have so much they may wish to change. I guess the thing is that we carry on with life when we're young not really considering things or considering them too much and it can lead to a sense that we don't really know ourselves at all well. That we are in fact very far from where we might want to be in terms of careers or family/relationships and not really have any idea how it happened. Maybe you haven't but I certainly have. So this one is about feeling completely divorced from who we really are and how it can lead to not choosing to do anything with your life.


If I could only reach you
only know what you want
I could be so much more.
I could rule the world
or start a business.
I could do so much more, be so much more.

But alas I know what it is that you want
what you are passionate about.
And so I slip from one thing to the next
never really doing anything
for I fear that it will not be what you want;
not what you would like
and I fear I have failed you because
I do not know what to do.

And how to rejoin the soul that split at birth
to find a better way, far away from all that hurt
from all that demanded I be I know not what
for now I am lost not knowing you
and do not know how to change it

I feel the loss the empty space
the place of certainty that says
this is me and I am proud of her
for all of her mistakes, her missed opportunities
for all those miss steps I am who I am
and I am still proud of her
but oh how I wish I knew who that was

The answers lie within

As with many people I watched my mad fat Diary and unusually I watched them all. I say unusually as most of the time I find depictions of any kind of mental health problem to be either a bit insipid or so way off the mark I want to put my fist through the screen. But as I watched the first episode I became uncomfortable and intrigued because in a way there was that bittersweet moment that you see/saw yourself so very long ago and wonder whether this might give you some answers to the questions and unresolved emotions that you have without really wanting it too. And yes I did see myself as Rae, I heard the things my parents said in her mother too. There were things I didn’t like but the most memorable scene of the series for me was when Tixy and Jester are in the toilets and he says after some lead in ‘in my job I just slowly torture people’ or something like that and it reminded me of how I saw therapy. So this poem is about therapy but also about those answers we all seek but are unlikely to ever have, and how the come and go and sometimes we see how the fit but often don’t. So

The Answers lie within

The tortured mind of the child within
does shout and scream and bawl in pain
it writhes in agony trying not to feel what it does.
It runs like the wind from person to person
skittering about so flighty, the storm clouds
from which the lightening comes,
the memories of times gone by in perfect Technicolor
they slice through as scalpel to skin
and shoot and burn along the nerves
to freeze the heart and leave the body aching.
So intangible and unreal
yet destructive to the soul, they rip this world apart
then jump out of reach as if it never was,
to leave this mind in pieces grasping for it’s life
stability and solace, without a reason.
The memories they slot in place
chaotic random acts that tortured this soul
still move around inside, still cause the pain they did
but now so much has changed that some are not so bad
nor so much your fault that things move on at last.

Disconnected from life

So it has been a very long time and although I've had plenty of ideas they've all been very difficult to actually write and this one is a bit of an odd one too. There are times I think when everyone feels a bit distracted from the present, away with the fairies and everyone assumes that it's a nice day dream they're having. Well for some I guess that is the case or just staring into space but sometimes I wonder what if it's not, what if the distraction is something you wished would disappear from your life completely. Or what if it was something that seemed real but wasn't. Well working with this theme I started to write this piece about being disconnected.

Here I am curled up on the floor in the dark again. It’s not cold but then it’s not hot or airy or anything much; can’t tell where I am it’s just here. It’s almost like I’m suspended in a warm air flow except that nothings moving and it feels like I’m lying on something, yet I can’t tell what. I hate it and I’m scared. It feels like I’ve been crying and I’m rocking back and forth like a baby trying to comfort myself, it’s almost like I’ve been beaten and yet I don’t’ feel bruised. I feel sore like I was bruised and then they healed in seconds and I am left with this after sense that I should be bruised and swollen and not able to move, yet when I do I feel fine.

I can’t hear anything much, no birds, no cars or trains and no one moving around close to me. I cry again, why can’t I stop, it’s not like I’m even hurt or am I? I just can’t tell. What was that? …Not sure it was there at all and now it is gone like the sound just evaporated: like it was never there to start with and yet I can remember hearing it. This place is weird it’s like all I ever hear are echoes, that disappear so quickly, sound that has no source or substance. Even the beatings are like the never happened. They start and end without warning as flashes in the dark and then there are gone, so unreal yet I can remember them. Am I drugged? It feels real and I feel awake but I’m not sure. Oh it is so confusing I feel so disconnected from myself. Was that something? Oh God what if he comes back…?

And who is he I don’t remember anyone. Oowww…ahhhh. Don’t hit me, don’t hit me, what did I do?

I rock back and forth, cuddled up stroking my top arm trying to sooth myself and melting into the floor, yet not sinking: moulded into air yet lying still and crying silently. Why will this not end and what happened did they beat me or rape me, are they starving me or just drugging me and why oh why do I always feel that they have done something and yet never know what.

 

The sunshine is beautiful and warming to my skin, I could sit here all day just soaking it up.

“Hey there…lovely day isn’t it?”

I smile. “It is indeed.” I sit back lifting my face to the sun and closing my eyes. Humm this is lovely. However better get on, there are things to be done like work unfortunately. Back to the grind stone and back inside to the paperwork.

As walk in Sarah looks up from her desk. “How was lunch?”

I walk across the office towards my desk. “Too short!”

Sarah laughs. “Yeah, know what you mean.” She turns back to her computer. “Can’t wait for four o’clock, then I’m out of here. Home to the garden and a bottle of wine.”

“As if.”

She shrugs. “Should have got in earlier then you could go too.”

Yeah she was right this flexible working was great but it still required me to get in earlier enough to do all of my hours if I was going to leave at four. I sigh. “Oh well there’s always tomorrow.” But for now there was a mountain of data entry to get through. Damn shame no one ever filled the paperwork in legibly. The hardest part was working out what people had written the rest was a cinch.

Everything was blurry, oh I need a break, only three, oh dear. I rub my eyes; they feel so gravelly I need a break.

Sarah was shuffling files.

“Want a coffee?”

She looks up and shakes her head. “No thanks.” She turns to the window, a smile playing at her lips and then she looks down to the files again.

Right just me then. Soon be break time.

“Arr Bev, glad I caught you.”
Great Dave, this can mean only one thing; he’s trying to palm something else off onto me, wonderful.

“Oh you’re looking tired. Can I have a word?” He motions to the wall

“Yeah sure; I was just going to get a drink.” And I move away from my desk and head towards the office door.

“Taking a break, it’s not that time already is it?”

I stop at the door and plaster a smile on my face before turning around to face him. “No sadly not, just needed to give my eyes a rest from the screen.” I point towards my computer screen.

I have never worked out why I always feel so guilty about getting a drink when I’ve been staring at the computer for well over an hour and health and safety say I need to give my eyes a rest every hour for five minutes. Look at something in the distance they say, change the distance at which you’re trying to focus and let your eyes relax. Yeah great idea and wonderful for them, however every single time I actually do this the boss comes along and says something like ‘oh taking a break blimey didn’t know it was that time’ and I feel like I’m skiving off. It’s not like they couldn’t give me something to do that didn’t involve using a computer so I could vary my work but hey they’re the boss’s. Damn pains.

“Oh right. So have you finished the routine samples?”

I sigh. “No not quite.” There were thousands and when you can’t even be sure they’ve put a one instead of seven it really doesn’t make the process go any faster.

“Really.” He raised his eye brows. “Well we need you to get on to the extra sets on today. We have a client who wants some and if they’re not on the system then we’re in trouble.”
I smile, not an unusual occurrence they were always wanting things done like tomorrow. “Yes well I could just skip onto them.”

He shook his head. “No, no, we need them all on there.”

Like I didn’t know that. “Well there’s still, maybe thirty sets to go and if they’re all so badly written it’ll take what… maybe three hours but I have bloods to spin tomorrow and that will take all morning and then enter them, another couple of hours so…” I’d lost him; he was staring straight at my chest. A bad habit at the best of times but right now I could do without it.

“Right well just get them on there will you Durmstrung want their samples in two days.” He walked off.

I lean against the door to push it open and close my eyes.

The floor is cold and I want to cry, there’s no one here, there’s nothing here. I need this to stop I can’t take it anymore. I just want to die. Tears start to roll; I just want to not be here anymore.

Eyes flash open; no I don’t need that now. I look round and see Dave walking away from me and remember.

Yes sir, of course sir and when exactly am I supposed to do that….this evening maybe. Now I know why I don’t come in early, they’d be far too much room to ask me to stay late. At least this way I have to leave when the building shuts and I’ll have done my hours and no more.

 

Think of good mental health

It strikes me as odd that usually it is a period of poor health that makes me think about what it's like to have good health. It's not something many people actually think about either but occasionally it might be a good idea if people did as it might highlight to them how little they consider how to help those who don't. Anyway this is another look at what's it like to come from poor mental health and recover, it's called my world within. The idea was to express emotions as something that could be seen and understood by all as generally people don't.

My World within

Today the world within has temperate days, with warming sun and calming rain.
And down below there’s growth in plains where once,
great swaths of land were burnt by fires, fanned
by nervous fearful winds, that spread too far too fast,


Forests were felled by cyclone winds of change
and left to rot in disappointed wretchedness.
There were glaciers of painful ice so deep they numbed the core,
where life expired in tortured silence, as ice consumed it whole
and the thaw brought only desolate, barren land.


This world was troubled by its weather, once extreme and changeable.
Frustrated mega storms charged around in jealous rage, feeding upon themselves
until finally they had dissipated, discharged and blown out,
leaving the land demolished with little time between to rest and rebuild.
This world; it never stood a chance to grow.


But now it seems the angry storms have passed.
The depressive ice ages are at an end
and the scorching disaffected summers have gone.
A time of balance now resounds, where winter meets the summer,
and seasons last for months, not years, and storms blow out in days.


This world now swells and grows in contented cheerfulness
As springs draw forth enthusiastic change that lift the clouds of doubt
From land now ready to regrow, to start what once it couldn’t.
And once again people come to be a part of what’s there.


This world now shines as it was meant to do with sun kissed happiness.
There is harmony where lightning was so fierce,
and soothing rain where once great storms erupted.
And though the winds still whip and sting they blow away the clouds of damp despair
that life will not improve, and then leave the land to thrive.


And though the winter and the storms still come, this world is full of hope.
The growing season is much greater, the weather is less extreme.
There’s time to grow and reap and store it all away.
Shielded from the weather’s destructive forces, life survives on this
until spring returns once more.

The Show is over

Right well having submitted my poems to a comp they wrote back saying that I am excluded because they don't meet their criterion for a positive focus on mental health. So I thought I'd post one of them here instead. As mentioned they were for a competition and it asked that you draw your inspiration from the sentence. 'With good mental health I have..'
Well as I like to use metaphors a lot I decided to do something not quite so obvious. It's called the show is over and focuses on what happens after you get well.


The Show is over

The show is over so turn the spot light off, this villain is no more
and let me interact without a script or direction from the floor
now let me move and touch and speak as I wish to be
The show is over so let me take this costume off, that points me out as mad
let me remove this face you plastered on , the clothes that made me bad
now let me choose my look, the one that is so me

The show is over so let the audience in, It’s time for us to meet
for them to see the real me, the one that took such a back seat
the one that hid afraid of them, afraid of what they would see

The show is over so let me go home to live my life once more
to shape and mould and fill it with what I wish for
a life of ups and downs where I am free to be me

It's been a while

Oh my word it has been an age since I've posted anything. Well don't think that I haven't been writing althought it hasn't all be creative. I've been concentrating on a some poetry about what it's like to have good mental health. It's been a bit of a challenge and sadly not complete yet so instead I thought I'd revisit an old poem.

This one is called Slide show and the idea was to depict a person sitting down  to a slide show of the different faces they put on when they around other people and see themselves as others do. To ask why we do that, why we play so many roles and how exhausting it can be. Not sure I managed it.


Slide Show

Whirr... click clunk
it’s me
youthful, energetic
confident and sexy
lover and partner

Whirr...click, clunk
me as a mother
tower of strength
decisive, understanding

Whirr...click, clunk
me at work
clever, capable

Click clunk
with friends
witty and charming

Click, clunk
with relatives
tense, cowed,

Clunk
with strangers
clunk
with school teachers
clunk,
with other mothers

Whirr... click
whirr...click
whirr... click
whirr... click, clunk
eyes wide, staring back at me
questioning
whirr...