a birthday card i’ll never send

(context: it was my ex’s birthday yesterday, and i still can’t forget the date, as much as I’d like to. This is the birthday card I’ll never send him. Writing it last night was beautifully cathartic, even if it still made me shake with rage.)

HAPPY FUCKING BIRTHDAY
(I HOPE YOU ROT IN HELL ♥)

Oh, there’s no need to be so rude, is there?
People know, you know?
Maybe you thought I’d told everyone immediately, but I had a lot of therapy to get through first.
(Just let me know how best you’d like to pay. I’d take PayPal.)

No, but people know now.

I only told two people at first.
No, three.
No, actually, four.
But people talk. And a rumour like that isn’t going to stay a secret.
Guess it’s not a rumour though is it?

I mean, I had to give a reason for having you removed from that group chat so quickly.
And yes, I could have lied but
I have no interest in protecting you anymore.
I don’t give a fuck about your reputation.
You deserve what you get.

I hope it plagues you everyday.
I hope you lose sleep over it.
I hope you’re terrified of bumping into our old college friends.
I hope you’re wracked with guilt.
I hope it’s a secret that’s destroying you from the inside out. The way it did me.

I hope your new girlfriend finds out.

Raise a glass to the birthday boy!
And many
many
happy
returns.

a shit scrabble hand of mental health diagnoses

I don’t like to subscribe to micro-labels when it comes to mental health, i prefer to think of it as a sliding scale. like sexuality or gender. thankfully my therapist also shares the same opinion.

however, sometimes a diagnosis is necessary. sometimes putting a label on things can help you breathe a sigh of relief, or connect with those also suffering from the same branch of mental illness.

i have personally tiptoed around this diagnosis for a while, for almost a decade. but to have a therapist finally say “yes, that’s what i’ve thought from our very first meeting” is a relief. but it’s also a source of great upset because i have already been met with prejudiced attitudes from people who i thought were on my mental health “team”, if you will.

my diagnosis is bpd. and histrionic. as well as what i already knew; ocd, gad, and mdd. that looks like a shit scrabble hand of mental health diagnoses.

so there you go. a brief and unimaginative life update.

waiting

i wait.
because i’ve waited so many times before
stupidly
blindly
for a text, for you to come through the front door

you’re not like them, i know
but 8 years of being treated otherwise
obsolete
is hard to unlearn
harder to let go

years of
nights without texts
still,
mornings without texts
all the next day without texts
i guess i should’ve known this was a precursor
to my calling you “ex”

foolishly waiting like a puppy at the door
your absence
an abscess
i couldn’t ignore

i guess that’s because you’d lost all my trust
and i was right
these inklings
these nagging sensations in my gut
because two years ago i found out what i already knew
and i was just painting over rust

regardless of who it is
i still feel the same
i can’t sleep til they’re home
i won’t switch off that part of my brain
because i’ve lost this before
my sanity
and
this game.

how do you mend a trust universally broken?
i can’t say it out loud
“fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself”

best left unspoken.

i hope

Wishing for other people to be miserable won’t make me any happier.
But I’m nothing if not a trier.

I hope every time you look up and see a beautiful cloudy sky, or you watch a sunset, or you see a contrail streak across the blue – I hope you see me. There by your side, with my weather book, quickly looking up the classifications to check if I was right. Kissing you if I was. Kissing you anyway if I wasn’t.

I hope you can’t hear Taylor Swift without seeing me dance around our living room in your shirt and my underwear. I hope you see my face when you see hers. I hope you can never erase that image from your mind. I hope you have to skip the song or change the radio channel.

I hope going to the beach on stormy days brings back memories of Lyme Regis. I hope you taste Cornish Rattler and remember the night we skipped along the beach singing Coldplay to the stars. Amaretto burning on our tongues.

I hope every pair of blue eyes you gaze into pale in comparison to the ocean deep, golden-flecked, vast expanse of mine.

I hope you can’t see a pair of cowboy boots without thinking of the summers I spent never taking mine off. Summer dresses, skinny jeans, tight little skirts, nothing at all, always paired with my cowboy boots. I hope you remember the look of horror on my face as I hurled them across the room at you. One by one.

I hope you can’t go on a long run without remembering every run we had together. In the rain, side by side, stride for stride. Matching each other’s pace.

I hope you can’t watch i-robot, because it reminds you that it was playing in the background the night we both had sex for the first time. I hope you can’t unsee my i heart NY t-shirt, and the sight of my face as we came at the same time as each other.

I hope you do. Because I can’t unsee you too.

For me,
it’s plaid shirts and skinny jeans. Paolo Nutini songs and Dr Who references. The All-American Rejects and Adele. I still remember the gait of your walk, the flop of your boyband hair, the freckles on your shoulders constellations to me. Everything Everything’s first album. Then their second. The smell of your cologne.

It hurts, because I can’t unsee or undo any of it.
It’s on repeat in my head.
Like a broken cassette.
But the music is familiar,
and I’m not ready to stop listening just yet.

hospital flowers

This poem was born out of my complete frustration with the way mental health issues are dealt with, by friends, family and professionals. Bizarrely, or maybe not, i really enjoyed coming out of hospital after my appendix burst – i received cards and well-wishes, and i was cared for and looked after. I felt like it was making up for the previous 7 years of my life where i had no sympathy at all for my severe issues with mental illness. It might be twisted, but it makes sense to me.

break my leg and bring me flowers
let me be hit by a train
or car
not for the want of death
just pain
or diagnosed with some strange malady
or whatever will provoke your sympathy

take me to hospital and bring me cards
let there be
wounds on my body
casts on my limbs
hurt in my eyes
and pain when i breathe
and you will know my suffering when you see my scars

where is the proof of my sickness?
no marks are left by ocd
depression causes no limp
anxiety no wounds that you may see
or may grace with all your empathy

ocd leaves no marks unless
you class the skin worn
from my hands and wrists
from scrubbing with green scourers
and anti-septics

or the crack in my jaw
from grinding my teeth 49 repetitions at a time

depression doesn’t give me a limp
other than that when i attempt to
pull my unmade self from unmade sheets
to stagger downstairs
to try to eat
and it certainly leaves no marks
other than those you’ll find on my legs
and my arms

anxiety causes no open wounds
unless you see me shaking
in a crowded room
eyes frantic
hands clammy
and searching for you

“you’re faking it”
“there’s nothing wrong with you”
“snap out of it”
would you say the same had i’d a
bump on my head?

are the only sicknesses worth your sympathy those that leave scars?
if so,
then break my legs
take me to hospital
bring me hospital flowers and hospital cards.

c • r • e • a • t • i • v • i • t • y

I listened to an episode of The Guilty Feminist about creativity. Our lord and saviour Deborah got the audience to participate in an exercise of creativity. They simple had to make a sound and see what word came out of their mouth. Not planning the word, just trusting that the right thing (that being anything) would come out. So I did it myself. In alphabetical order, and I wrote it down.

apparently it’s difficult to come by
but maybe the problem is him, not you
could it be that maybe…
doesn’t matter anyway…
even if i tried to explain myself…
for fuck’s sake
get on with it
how about we start over again?

i never pictured any of this happening
just try and put yourself in my shoes
kids
let me get it out of my system, please
much of what i feel always comes back to that night
never a day when it doesn’t come to mind
oh, if i could go back and shake myself
perhaps things would have been different
questions like this always circle around my mind
radiating out from me
shall we go back to it?

text message. teens.
underpinning, undermining, undervaluing
visceral hatred and shivering skin
what happens now?

x‘s at the end of our messages still
you’ve won.

things i can’t say out loud

there was a box of my things,
that i completely forgot i was missing.

some thing didn’t make sense; a set of children’s animal pens.
some things did. my garmin watch.
and a bag of gold glitter.

you’d kept it all. neatly in a box. and as soon as i challenged you, called you out in the middle of the street, you just ran away and left it there.
like you didn’t even want it in the first place.

i can understand you keeping the useful things.
but why did you have to keep my sparkle for yourself too?

interlude / interruption

i watch teen romance
because i mourn the loss of an adolescence
i didn’t have
whilst i was busying trying to prove something
to somebody
i didn’t need
somebody who wasn’t good enough for me
even before i saw the contents of his laptop
is it possible to miss something you never had?
an idea of what might’ve been, but never quite was?
i miss awkwardly catching someone’s hand
and misplaced, mistimed kisses
hearts beating fast
first touches
drinking too much and making poor decisions
easy, naive heartache
clean breaks
with soft landings
not blood boiling, fists balled, skin crawling, retching fear.

there was a brief period at sixteen
an interlude
from mental illness
from the bird-cage where i was
hostage to compulsion
for too long

an interlude
where
for the blink of an eye
i was okay
i laughed, drank, flirted, played the sixteen year old
and as i climbed atop my pedestal
finally taking centre stage for the young protagonist i’d dreamt of whilst my brain had been wrapped in wires,
i fell
into your arms
and into the fire.

for a while i thought you’d saved me
oh knight in shining converse
but you’d done nothing more
than interrupt me
from saving myself

a 7 year interlude
of something i never deserved.

comfort in the clouds

I take comfort in the clouds
they can be thunderous and torrential, fuming, screaming through the trees

and fickle

bursts of bright blue, the wind drops,
the skies paint watercolours with the remnants of the tempest

i’ve felt like those skies today
the ones outside my window
rain followed by birdsong
thunder by calm
gales by whispering leaves

a dear friend once reminded me
there is always blue above the clouds
no matter how grey
how ominous
how oppressive
it must end
there must be clear skies somewhere
if not just now

but i like storms
i think it’s in my nature

i like to feel the sky darken
hear the pressure drop and the air shift
to witness nature loosen its reins
branches whip
rivers burst
the skies cry

blue skies may be lovely
but storms make beautiful sunsets

stop blaming women for how you chose to mistreat them

i saw the title quote embroidered on @kingsophiesworld instagram page. it struck a chord with me. and i started to write. if it sounds like i’m still hurting, it’s because i am.

do not blame me for how you chose to mistreat me.
i was crazy, obsessive, up-tight, emotional, needy.
or maybe you were a disloyal, manipulative, disingenuous, pathological liar? a using, cheating narcissist?

the words that came out of your mouth were
“this is your problem. the way you have reacted is your fault, not mine”

even my “friends” protected your behaviour. because you were the good guy. the sensitive one. “you totally over-reacted to the way he behaved.”

no.
you lied.
repeatedly.
to my face.
paraded her around in front of me a week after we’d broken up, like a fucking trophy and then lied. said “no she has a boyfriend” and “she’s staying in my spare room”.

YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE A SPARE ROOM.

you then pretended like i’d made that part up. said “why would I say that, my new house doesn’t have a spare room?”

WELL YOU’VE SUMMARISED MY BONE OF CONTENTION PERFECTLY THERE.

but no, you’re right, it was my fault.

you played the boyfriend card very well. you must be proud.
taking me out for dinner.
cooking for me.
inviting me round spontaneously but telling me i didn’t need to bother getting ready because i was beautiful in my leggings and big jumper.
telling me you missed me.
letting me cook for you.
watching harry potter with me.

but then,

refusing to show affection in public.
because you’re not
that type of person.
well, you were
that type of person
a week later when you couldn’t keep your hands off her.
i expect you didn’t think your boyfriend game would be so effective.

but sure. it was my fault for falling for it. my fault that i thought you cared. my bad. wrong end of the stick. crossed wires.

i was just tiding you over, wasn’t i? i walked straight into your trap and all you wanted was someone to fuck until you made the move on the girl you really wanted. isn’t she lucky.

don’t make me collateral damage in your endless quest to massage your augmented ego.

i should’ve known,
the moment
the word
“fuckable”
fell
from
your
lips
thinly veiled as a compliment.

Do not blame me
for how you chose
to mistreat me.