The Diary of a Young Adult

I work in mental health and write about my own. .

[heather-still]

Let Me Grieve For Fucks Sake

These tomcats of toxic positivity

Keep pissing up my wall of sorrow.

It's my civic duty

To neuter these animals.

[heather-still]

I wish I was sin.

At least I'd be filled with something

everyone wants

to some extent.

[heather-still]

Good therapy

I come to you as bruise

and lacklustre.

You ask me how I feel today

and I say "a twinkle without

the glitter ".

You said "well at least you

see yourself as a star and not

as a black hole this week. "

[heather-still]

Is it Truth When You Talk?

I’m Ok but I’m lying I’m lying but I’m OK. I get out of bed. I’m lying but I’m fine I’m fine but I’m lying. I’m me but I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be me but I am. Why am I me? I’m at work now. Why am I me? I’m me but I don’t want to be. I ask if they feel like shadow and they say no I’m OK but I’m lying. I’m lying but I’m Ok. Am I? I’m crying but I don’t want to. I don’t want to but I’m crying. They ask what is wrong and I reply “what is right?” they don’t understand because to understand is to undersit and undercrawl and underlie underneath my canopy of fuck. Ain’t no stars underneath my canopy of fuck just dark thoughts. Pot holes. Statistics about problem childhoods and problem children and problem adolescents and problem adulthood and all of the consequent hoods and problemed problems I’m a problem, but I’m Ok I’m OK but I’m a problem. What am I? Am I me? I am me, but why am I a problem? I’m at home now. I rub a flannel over my face. I don’t have a flannel, but if I did, I would rub it over my face right now. I would rub dirt over my face and then rub my face with that flannel I don’t own but if I did own I would use after throwing my face in the dirt. Clean start Pass go Collect £200 If only I got that chance to problem issue Ok.

[heather-still]

Rationality

Doesn’t it just devour you and render you to carcass?

[heather-still]

[heather-still]

Average

I take forever to get dressed, and when I leave the house, I’m still a mess. 

[heather-still]

I Own Nothing

Sometimes I feel like the one thing I have above my peers is suffering,

they'll say "but you've experienced a lot and that's made you who you are"

I ask you,

why is who they are not based on suffering?

Why are they based on personal achievement and career and friends?

Why is what I have indicative of pain?

Can't I have humour because I'm a funny person

not because it's a defense mechanism?

Can't I have a religion because I have faith

not because it's a crutch against austerity?

Can't I have an aggressive attitude because I'm an absolute bitch

not because I am metaphorically standing up to the fists that forced me down?

Can't I think critically because I'm a genius

not because my terrible little life turned me cynical?

Can't I write with passion because I like writing passionately

not because writing is an escape from the hostile world I once had?

Is nothing I've become my own?

To them, suffering has taken everything from me, everything except my mental health since they say

"oh you're stable, despite, the suffering -

Well then, how do they expect this stability to stay with me when they've handed everything over I have,

to a concept that does nothing but destroy?

[heather-still]

I want to make my mark.

My stomach is now a butterfly conservation but this habitat is not equipped  for all this larvae. I tell you I want to drive a knife through the soft pouch of abdomen I have you recoil in horror, but I simply wish to empty myself of the bugs overcrowding the damp I am inside. That’s not self harm that’s self care why is it I can never do anything right according to you? When the surgeons cut me open -again and again and again and- I was told they’d fix me up normal but that never happened they let the caterpillars crawl into open cavities.  Then they sewed me up good.

Men’s signatures are scribbled all over me.  Sometimes I feel like these men own me and I don’t really like that. Do you know what it’s like to be an autograph book? Why is it if I want to put my own signature over me suddenly that’s mental? 

Fix me up normal. Fucked me up special. 

[heather-still]

Punched By Boredom.

I was hit by Boredom.  Occasionally Boredom bites its victims,  venom slowly creeps into the nervous system paralysing the spine  and the thoughts it holds up. That’s for those who are knowingly entering territory where Boredom bugs lie. The city of Routine is overpopulated and leaves unhygienic conditions. I got smacked in the car ride.  I usually love our car rides. Duller than a slap from Reality - I give you that -  but it’s pretty fucking nasty because before you got all bloody nosed by Boredom I thought I was safe. Was Happy. Was? Am. Am I?  Questions come and settle in me.  Unwelcome guest.  I left the door open.

[heather-still]

I found this in an old notebook

Two Twix in

And I'm like

"what the fuck

am I doing

with my life? "

[heather-still]

He wants what he can't have.

"why can't I have that?" he asks. I dunno what he's talking about. I carry on picking the cheese off my chips. "what would you do if you found out your partner was cheating on you?"

I pushed my body forwards and replied instantly "I would ruin the woman who chose to ruin me"

"that!" he says and points at me "I want to love someone so much I'd say crazy shit like that."

[heather-still]

Pity The Privileged

I brought him to the broken

and he cried at how whole they looked

He brought me to the privileged

and I cried at how fragile they were.

[heather-still]

When We Was Woke

We speaking about "when we was woke"

... Listening to the twenty somethings

say something about how their work/ university

became the tea light to their lantern,

and now they float amongst the adulthood.

I wait my turn.

Folding some lukewarm sweet potato fries into my gob.

I wonder when this fad will end,

I feel like a fad.

I wonder when I will end.

My turn turned up, I speak in Fad "was woke well young"

She is nodding whilst tearing focaccia and dipping it into this modernity,

The other, cutting into his steak,

The third, vegan, twirls mushroom soup with a spoon.

I narrate a purge

begin with an age and

work from there

"- I was thirteen, fourteen -

when this injustice

curled its thumb into a passive fist

pressing realisation

push pins into my conscious.

My thoughts tangleweeded

into a topknot.

Couldn't make sense of what was and was not.

My head hot

My hurt raw.

And I had a dialect so thick

that the subtitles gave up and shrugged my character off to the next scene.

It made me louder. I will be heard. " My declaration felt a bit defibrillator followed by the 70bpm. I got embarrassed.

...

Trainee psychologists feeding their middle class pantries agree that I was well woke before most.

Trainee psychologists sympathise.

" you sound like you lived a life before your life was liveable"

Only it was something less obnoxious like

"sounds lonely"

And I replied with something like

"it was".

Maybe I sighed.

I was eating quinoa.

I hated it.

But I hate myself more and I ate it as punishment.

We talk about baked brows before a silence bakes us.

I ask amongst the silent cooking: "do you ever feel like you're a fad?"

They never have.

It must be nice to always be on trend.

[heather-still]

What are we?

I said that I think we are dandelion fluff.

We connect and tumble and float

in the hope of placing roots down

Somewhere. Anywhere.

You said why can't you just say we're lost souls?

[heather-still]

[heather-still]

We carry on existing

and it pisses me off.

To run, to escape,

strap myself in neon

and jog in a pack

away from death.

I hurt. But I don’t want to.

I cope. But I don’t want to.

Grit teeth. Fuck that.

Let’s cut canals into

my arms and give my suffering

to a pain worth my attention.

Let’s feast on hurt and give

my worth to somebody else

because I’m sick of having

to be OK.

I’m not.

I’m not OK.

And to tell me I cannot cry

because I’m the “strong one”

disables my ability to ever

feel what you’re able to have:

Healing.