WallinginaWorrest: Fallinginaforrest's Wario

Rob Hall, He/Him, this is just a little journal type blog that i do for fun and to flex my creative writing muscles!

[writinginaforrest]

Anger

(31st July 2025)

Yesterday, I started HRT,

And, I recalled a distant memory

Of a Psychology class

A few years ago

And my Lecturer, who vaguely

Looked like Sara Bareilles

Telling us about the effects of testosterone 

On human behaviour

How it can make you more 

Aggressive

Prone to risk taking behaviour 

Amongst other things.

And, at that time i’d thought

That’s not nearly enough to make me

Question whether i’d go through with 

HRT, but at the same time

I don’t want to be a more aggressive person. 

Years before that class 

i’d come to the conclusion

That anger will do me no favours in life. 

And I maintained that conclusion

In that psychology class

And I maintained that conclusion

Up until the moment I applied 

The testosterone gel to the skin of my thigh

For the very first time

Wherein I had a moment of doubt. 

A moment of

Do I really want this? 

And that Memory of that psychology class

Came back in technicolour

To remind me of the risks. 

But the world in which I had decided

That anger would do me no favours

Was a world a lot brighter than the one i live in now

When genocides were, to my youthful mind

Things of the past. Things resigned

To period pieces and memorial services

And not contained in the beeping

Of pagers or the silent shifting

Of legislation to restrict my access 

To the very thing that will save my life

And in that world, the one where 

Anger would do me no good, people were

Always kind, and people were not 

Killed for no good reason and the world

Was not a simple game of chess

For those with the power to 

Buy the chess set. And my existence

Was not a radical act of protest

But rather a quiet and sacred thing

I could keep to myself. 

And in that world, anger would do me no good

But the cold gel on my leg reminded me

Perhaps in this world

Anger is the thing that will keep me alive. 

[writinginaforrest]

Pain Medication.

(14th July 2025)

I don’t quite remember when you broke your leg

I was there, in the crowd 

And I watched them miss you and the twist 

As you hit the ground

And I only know you twisted

Because you couldn’t have broken your leg

Any other way 

But i can’t conjure your descent in my mind

Though you remember it clear as day 

Perhaps it is because your pain is still hard for me

But even then, you had been living with it for so long. 

We sat at your bedside, your crumbling limb

Propped up in a sling

And you looked at me with sleep soaked eyes 

And you asked me where i was from 

And I was so confused because I could have sworn

That we’d talked about that before

And you told me that my accent sounded forced

And i wondered how i could name the street you were born on

But i had never spoken to you

In my native tongue 

You smiled, lazily and spent

The smile that reminded me of summer mornings

With the ac blasting and the covers thrown

To the side and I understood the warmth

That you must be feeling from 

Having all of your pain dulled for the first

Time in a long time and i knew it was the same

Because i had looked at you

On those mornings 

The same way 

Everything you had wanted to ask me, 

All those things that had gone unsaid 

Slowly started to fall in the air between us 

And your inebriation opened me to the world of being known

For i felt it unfair to retain my walls

When you were so flagrantly knocking

Down your own 

And i bared my soul like you had bared your bones 

Falling from a great height into the 

Grass below, and i couldn’t deny 

That I had hoped you would not remember

The conversation we had when you were as high as a kite

Because i had hoped that my pain was still foreign

Enough to be hard for you, but even then

I had been living with it for so long 

And perhaps, the next time you ask me where

I am from, you can elaborate and ask me

where do i call home

and i can answer, smiling lazily

That it is you.

[writinginaforrest]

The Southern Cemetery.

(24th May 2025)

A few weeks ago, I was on a coach. I was heading back home to Cornwall for a wedding, and though it was early in the evening, I was struggling to stay awake. The end of April turns into May with a whisper, and the briskness of spring melts into summery warmth before you realise it’s happening. On this coach with the sun beating down, I could feel the stifling warmth alongside the lurching of the coach lulling me into a doze. Still, I couldn’t afford to sleep. I’d only be on this coach for a few hours before I got to Birmingham, which was where I’d have an hour-long layover before the nine-hour long coach to the South. I did what one does when they’re looking for something to think about on a journey, turned my attention to the passing land outside the window. 

We passed football fields, and housing estates, and research institutes, all before leaving the Greater Manchester area. It’s a deceptively large area, and despite my having lived here for eight months, it’s scale and possibility still rendered me impressed. This is coming from a city that is essentially a glorified port town with a Cathedral. The road took us down, and as I was finally getting bored of my surroundings, something caught my attention. 

Southern Cemetery. It’s this massive, sprawling graveyard in South Manchester, thousands upon thousands of tombs and headstones in this plot of land that just seemed to keep going into the horizon. I watched it fly by and it kept going. On, and on, and on. 

I’ve talked previously on this blog about my relationship with death. I feel as though I am constantly outrunning it, that I am perhaps living on borrowed time. That, one way or another, I am one bad day from it catching up to me. Embarrassingly, this encounter with Southern Cemetery reminded me, of all things, of a Sara Bareilles song. One of those upbeat 2010s pop hits that you’re supposed to listen to on the radio while cleaning the kitchen and occasionally say a lyric to as you peripherally call to memory the contents of it. I’ve always been fond of Sara Bareilles, there’s a surprising delicacy and nuance and contemplation to her music, although that fact is not surprising if you’re at all familiar with her musical adaptation of the film Waitress. The song that I remembered on that coach is called Chasing the Sun. It’s this uplifting ballad about how you should live life to the fullest, it’s trite messaging sandwiched between her signature piano licks and era-dictated cinematic drumline. In the song, she speaks of sitting in a Cemetery in Queens and remembering what an associate said to her, “You said, remember that life is not meant to be wasted, we can always be chasing the sun. So, fill up your lungs and just run.” She speaks of the way the tombstones intersect and fade into the manhattan skyline behind them. The way the city is a place between the dead and the living. The city as in Manhattan? Or the city as in the Queens cemetery? I’m sure there’s an answer to that question somewhere, there’s reasonable explanations for both, and I think I prefer the latter. 

The cemetery may have been inanimate, but Sara Bareilles (or rather the friend that was jogging past the Queens cemetery, much like I was riding past the Southern Cemetery 3000 miles away) saw life there too. She felt the heartbeats under the ground. It was alive, because it had been touched by life. Because it had the momentum of the human experience behind it. 

I am unwell, of my unwellness I am certain, and my recently diagnosed Bipolar disorder has both validated my understanding that I am a) unwell and b) will not get better without intervention. And it is in times like these, these grey lucid days, where I am slightly embarrassed of my own obsession with death. It’s not that I particularly want to die, nor do I find the idea of it appealing, but even in my right mind I know that I am one slipping grip on reality away from feeling entirely opposite. How trivial a matter such as death seems when the echo of heartbeats from the ground beneath the graveyard feels more alive than I ever did. My obsession with death feels like a betrayal to my very essence as a living human person, and the part of me that revels in rationality is simply begging me to let it go. At the risk of sounding as trite as a 2010s pop hit, truly what is there to do with my time except live my life joyfully and be open to the love that the world has to offer. Of course, suffering is real, both on my part and on the part of millions of people, but as John Green once said, “So is Much Else.” 

[writinginaforrest]

Rose.

(16th May 2025)

I’m not a religious man. Not by any means. My relationship with spirituality and “God” has fluctuated more than my mood, and I will often arrive in the same place of not having any belief in a higher plane, a higher power. And yet, there are things that fly in the face of that posture. There is one thing that has reminded me again and again that although there may not be a God, there is a universe that is ever-present and works in ineffable ways. 

My friendship with Rose. 

The term friendship in fact does not cover the extent of our bond, but I suppose that it is another ineffable thing, much like the universe. And, much like the universe, I must come to terms with not being able to describe or comprehend its true extent. For that, I am somewhat grateful. If I cannot comprehend the true extent of my friendship with Rose, I cannot comprehend the boundaries in which it occupies, and that means I cannot comprehend, nor is there a need to comprehend, a universe in which I am not friends with Rose. 

Because why would I want to do that? 

I’m finding many things to be ineffable today. The Universe, My friendship with Rose, and now Rose herself who escapes textual capture by sheer virtue of how alive she is. And how alive she makes me feel. How loving she is, and how loved she makes me feel. You will truly never in your life meet someone so kind and forgiving. You’ll never meet someone so fiery and righteous. You’ll never meet someone Braver, who’s Bravery does not come from naivety or a lack of knowledge (by which metric it might then be dubbed foolishness) but rather it is the Bravery of someone who has been scared and who chooses to be Brave anyway. The strength she possesses is immeasurable. What a beautiful thing it is, to have struggled and been broken, and still end up kind. 

She will not call herself a hero, though. She’ll bashfully tell you to “fuck off” if ever the utterance of her strength fell upon her own ears. But she’s my hero, that’s for sure. She’s saved me more times than she’s needed to. She’s stuck by me when a worse friend might have walked away. She’s been my rock, steadfast and strong. Because that’s the kind of person she is. She gives so much of herself to the world around her, and I’m envious of her deep capacity for feeling. I am in awe of how charitable she can be with the very essence of her being, how deeply her affection for those around her runs. I mean, I keep using the word “Kind” but that’s hardly adequate, and the only thing close enough to describe her. 

She’s funny, too. Lord, I’ve never met someone so effortlessly rib-cracking. Who’s playful self-deprecation and silver lining comedy never fails to bring light into a dark place. Try going a day being upset around her, and you won’t go five minutes before she unintentionally blurts something that has you doubled over in stitches. And sure, she has spoken many sentences that have been surface-level profoundly unintelligent. But it’s another thing to be so blisteringly intelligent that those unintelligent phrases are met with a bemused and delighted stare. She’s one of the smartest and most talented people I've ever met. So quietly intelligent in a way that both takes you off guard and makes you feel incredibly seen. She’s far too humble about this fact, of course.  And I’ve known her for far too short a time in our lives to know if she’s always been this way, but I can only assume she has been because it takes nineteen years and then some to cultivate the fire that she has going on inside her mind. 

As much as I don’t want to think about it, there is a Universe, a timeline perhaps, where I did not meet Rose. Where I stayed on the path that I was on. Where the universe did not keep me alive so that I could get close to her. And what a bleak thought that is. Because, as we know, to be loved is to be changed, and to be loved by Rose is to see colour where there was only grey and to feel sunlight again for the first time in years. It’s calm and it’s centered and it’s grounded. She has introduced a gentle clarity to my life more times than I can count, and I will always be grateful, indebted to her, perhaps, for the fact that she chose to be my friend. 

Rose, I love you, Happy Birthday.

[writinginaforrest]

I suppose I'm taking it one day at a time.

(20th Mar 2025)

This Essay is about Suicide. Read at your own risk.

I think about Killing myself all the time. At least every evening. Sometimes during the day if the weather’s particularly nice and I’m thinking “I like to think i’d miss this When I Kill myself. I won’t miss this though. Because I’ll be dead”.  I know I wouldn’t actually do it in the state of mind where I’m able to go outside and look at the weather. Where I can rationally grasp the fact that I don’t actually want to die, I just don’t want to live like this anymore. So then I go outside. And I make my bed. And I do food shopping. And I think about Killing myself. When I’m at my friend’s flat and we’re playing a board game and we pick up the sunglasses I left here for the purposes of this specific game, I think “You’ll be playing this game with a dead guy’s glasses when I kill myself” but I know that it’s not a possibility enough if I’m sitting here playing board games with my friends but perhaps more of a possibility than the average person who does not think about suicide on a daily basis. It’s always there, hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles, burdening me with the understanding that in the case my extreme clinical depression strips me of my only persistent quality, my rationality, I may very well kill myself. For most who do not function on this level of depression, their brain may be 99% assorted things and 1% the tiny voice telling them they should die. For myself it’s the opposite. Maybe more of a 90-10 split. My brain is 90% geared towards demise at my own hand and maybe 10% gently knocking on the door and reminding me that the Artist’s death by suicide is ridiculously cliche and I must think of all the things I will miss If i were to kill myself, which genuinely makes me rather emotional. 

I’m dangerously mentally ill, to other people’s somewhat surprise and my own… chagrin, Like Kurt Cobain or Vincent Van Gogh. I think If I were more full of myself I might liken myself to Vincent Van Gogh, but there are key differences between myself and the renowned impressionist painter who supposedly shot himself in the wheat fields he so loved. For one, when I kill myself I’m going to leave a note. But for another thing what people forget about our friend Vincent is that he did not find comfort or solace in his mental illness. He was not a genius painter because he felt so much pain. He was a genius painter because he lived long enough to learn how to paint just how beautiful he saw the world to be and then did not live long enough to paint anymore. I think I have the terrible habit of finding comfort in my pain. Not satisfaction. I do not feel vindicated when the only emotion I can summon beyond the void is a grief beyond words that has no reason to exist besides my brain’s diabolical mis-dose of serotonin and oxytocin. No, I do not feel satisfied at that but I am used to it. It is my typical state of being. Ravenous Dissatisfaction. 

In fact, I would be so bold as to liken my dissatisfaction to an individual who has long since lost the love of their life. One who blithely approaches conversation about their dead lover to try and reinforce the fact that they are well and truly fine when in reality there is something so shapeless, so ineffable, so ununderstandable about the thing that crawls up their throat that they have no choice but to call it “Grief” as that is the only word that can come close to describing this feeling while still being miles off and miles smaller than this all-encompassing thing. However, the difference between myself and the widower is that I often tell myself that I have simply not lived enough of a life to feel this way. To experience the thing that is not quite grief. I have lost no one, and I am undeserving of carrying this with me, but I’m not sure how to be much else. I know how to be sad. I know how to be broken. I know how to be a young man with sorrowful eyes yowling into the cold empty night for a life that has not been granted to him. I hardly know how to be happy nor do I think I can actually experience the emotion to any particular extent. Like crossed wires In a radio, this is not something I can rationalise away. I can acknowledge the radio is broken. I can understand what Is happening is wrong, but until I uncross the wires, no amount of verbalising the issue into awareness will undo what has been done. And it is even more pressing of an issue when I look back well into my childhood and realise that the only things I can remember are the things where It was, to unfortunately quote Hamilton, “A grief too terrible to name” I was not simply a quiet child, I was a miserable one. And It makes sense with a rageful father who did not turn down the opportunity to strike and verbally abuse his children. It makes sense with a mother who was practically a child herself and unable to advocate for you in any meaningful capacity, no matter how much you resent her in the present for having not done it. It makes sense with a memory of being groomed so harrowing that you suppressed it for five years and when you began to remember you actually almost did kill yourself, and for which you continue to, wrongfully, blame yourself every time it appears into your nightmares when you dream about your parents finding out. And to that extent my quietness turned out to be misery, and my misery manifested as avoidance. 

I dealt with all of my issues in an extremely internal manner, it is perhaps why I learned to recognize my neuroses at face value by simply dissociating from them. I never asked for help. Not with my dyslexia, not with my Adhd, not with the Autism that I strongly suspect I have due to my inextricable sensory issues, verbal tics, affective flattening, intense interests, social struggles, persistent feelings of isolation, Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, and sensory seeking behaviours, and certainly not with my Depression. When I initially brought up ADHD and Dyslexia to my mother she tried to explain them away, and she belittled me so cripplingly that, although I don’t think she knew she did it, I think about it to this day. When I broke down to her about my depression after stealing her cigarettes and almost killing myself, she heard me out for the entirety of one conversation before never bringing it up with me again and, to my knowledge, forgetting all about it. I never even tried with my father. The one time I mentioned being scared of him he gaslit me to the point of recommending I seek professional mental help, not with my PTSD but rather my fear of him being caused by Psychosis as opposed to the very real, and at that point recent, memory of him picking me up by the scruff of the neck and throwing me onto the wooden back of a leather sofa. 

As a child, I was so deeply steeped in dissociation that to be miserable was to be fine. And I was always fine. I masked my learning difficulties so hard that they were not recognized until well into my teen years when a tutor at my college pointed them out. The Same tutor was the one who noticed my manic-depressive-cigarette-stealing-state and expressed concerns about my Excellent grades, cripplingly low social life, lifeless eyes and unwashed, uncut hair. I think she was the first person to be worried about me. The first person to extend an olive branch of understanding although she had, at that point, ascribed my misery to my transness (not in a transphobic sense but rather the hardship of living as something I could never align with my consciousness. She was a very accepting and open-minded woman) rather than much else. I think now she’d be a little more accurate but at that point it was so much more and so much else that I’d hardly factored my double life into the equation. Being a Transsexual at this point, two years after she first expressed her empathy, is far more bleak, and I’d be frankly far more inclined to kill myself at the current situation than I was back then. Being too poor to afford private healthcare has killed many before and I don’t doubt to a high extent that one day I will be a portion of a percentage in a statistic. 

Maybe I am dead. Maybe that Is why I walk around everyday with a looming sense of disbelief and derealisation. Because I have died and made my way to a Heaven, one that I do not believe in, where my one true wish has been granted: to live quietly among the masses as one of them, instead of being so bluntly separated and yet not important at all. And to that end, to live quietly among the masses is to feel your sorrow amongst them. To feel separated and not important at all and to live anyway, because to feel like this is to be one of many. To feel like I do not belong, or deserve to belong in amongst the other people of this earth, is to be one of the people on this earth as we are all simply children in the firmament throwing stones with the only anchors tying us to this plane being each other, and the isolation that we feel because of it. 

I can guarantee that tonight I won’t kill myself. I’m less sure of that certainty tomorrow, because tomorrow is the future and if there happens to be an apocalypse tomorrow I will probably end up killing myself for my own sake. However, if tomorrow proceeds not dissimilarly from today then I am almost certain that I will not kill myself tomorrow either. As the days go on and on into the future I can guarantee less and less that I will not end my own life. But when I am in tomorrow I may very well speak of today in the same manner and thus tomorrow’s tomorrow in a very similar light. And so on, and so on. And maybe one day that tomorrow’s tomorrow’s tomorrow may be a day where I don’t think about killing myself. Or where I can finally get into the radio and untangle the wires that distort the noise. Because no, I don’t want to live like this anymore. I doubt my body can hold in my manic-depressive state for much longer before it gives in entirely. But until the day where I do not have to feel like this anymore, I’m going to try my hardest to keep going and reach that goal. 

When my Suicidal ideation gets particularly nasty. When it verges into the territory of Suicidal thoughts. When my suicidalness is no longer a latent, passive, thing, I always try to make someone in my physical vicinity aware of the fact that I am depressed. Not a stranger. But a friend who I can trust. Or I at least consider the thought of me telling them and them having an empathetic and understanding reaction. Because if someone knows simply how miserable I am, it is as if I cannot give my depression the one thing it craves most, to go quietly. My whole life has been structured around my silence because if i’m quiet, well it’s obvious but if i’m quiet then nobody really knows how depressed I am. And that isolates me and it grants me some comfort that no one knows because I am so incredibly, irrationally, embarrassed by my own neuroses that talking about them amounts to incredible shame on my part. If I am silent I have nothing to be ashamed of. There is no reason to reject my Suicidal thoughts. There is no reason to write them off as ridiculous because they, at those times, seem like a very natural conclusion. If I tell someone, If there is someone out there who knows, then I can not kill myself because I can not go quietly. When someone else knows or there is the prospect of someone else knowing, suddenly my superhuman dissociative powers and rationality kick back in, remind me that obviously killing myself is less than ideal, and keep me on the right path for just one more day. And then on that day I can paint. Like Vincent Van Gogh. I can play my guitar like Kurt Cobain. I can watch the new Smosh Video. I can go outside. I can make my bed. I can do the food shopping. I can listen to a song I’ve listened to 1000 times but always want to listen to again. I can write four-page-essays about my Depression. I can make Theatre. I can sit and smoke in the afternoon sun and watch the trains go by within which are people who have all felt a bit like me at this point. I can read the review for a play I worked on. I can talk to my best friends, the people who make life worth living because to be dead without them instead of alive and loving them is an affront to all that is nature. I can do all the things that I would not be able to do if I killed myself. And I can do all of those things while thinking about Killing myself. Until the day, that is, I stop thinking about Killing myself, and start thinking about anything else instead. 

[writinginaforrest]

Space makes my tummy hurt.

(12th Jan 2025- Jesus it's been a minute)

I panic about the inevitable heat death of the universe and/or the universe’s theorised and, if so, inevitable collapse in on itself.  It sends dread through me at the inopportune moments it pops into my mind, A deep and cold fear that twists in my stomach. I’m not sure why I panic about this. Death is an inevitability and I do not panic about my own death. I’m rather morose in nature and my own death is something I have mulled over beyond belief. Yet, The end of the universe is a similarly unstoppable event. Something I will not be here to witness. And yet, it is my greatest anxiety. An arbitrary anxiety. A pointless one. It feels like a reflexive response to the concept, almost. That one day, all of this will end. 

It’s something I’ve become more aware of as I’ve aged, you see, time moves too quickly. Too quickly for me to find comfort in how quick it moves. I find myself wondering more and more “where did all the time go” (To quote my favourite composer: Matt Dahan) two years of knowing my favourite person, my baby sister’s 11th birthday, thirteen years of friendship with someone I can only call my twin spirit. All these things come upon me in a flash and I am left reeling with the sheer momentum of it all. It feels as though time moves quicker and quicker and the thing to which it amounts draws ever closer at an exponential pace. And I panic about that. 

When I was eight years old, or thereabouts, I used to have crippling anxiety about space. I had read in a Kurzgesagt-esque book of facts that one day all the stars in the universe would die out and it would be an endless void of blackness until it isn’t anymore. Until it reaches its end. I knew I was about eight because I was in Year 5 of Primary school, and I can distinctly remember the orrery painted on the display board for our module on space giving me that same immense anxiety. I’ve spent years trying to rationalise my way out of this fear and yet it still exists deep within me. And I wonder if it exists within everyone. We all know that impermanence is the only guarantee, and yet do we fear it all the same? Is it human nature to not fear the time passing, but the moment when it has passed? 

I want to know what’s beyond the universe. What exists outside it. If we’re even right about its impermanence or if it’s going to keep expanding as a void of nothingness forever. I want to know what will be there once it’s gone, if it does go. Because it can’t be nothing. Nothing is a paradox. Nothing is something. Paradoxes do not call into question reality in its entirety but rather our understanding of the entirety of our reality. Maybe it’s because I fear the after. After everything is gone. I fear the idea that there could be simply nothingness. I wonder if my fear comes from a place of pride. The feeling deep within my soul that cannot accept that everything amounts to nothing. That one day, even the universe from which you came and which you will become, all of it, is a blip. A fleeting moment. 

It makes me panic. Not because I want more time. But because I don’t want to be gone. And those are two different things. 

[writinginaforrest]

Guts (feat. a Journey to Bolton Film Festival)

(7th Oct 2024)

This is more like a diary entry than an essay. More anecdotal than what I've written previously. That being said, this is my blog, I can do what I want. In the following I talk about my experiences with my Eating Disorder (ARFID) in considerable detail, if that will make you uncomfortable or distressed, I'd say skip this one. We can catch each other next time around, look after yourself.

I’ve never been to Bolton before. And yet, perhaps I give off the energy of someone who has settled there. It wasn’t twenty minutes after my friend and I stepped off the train that two people asked us for directions, and all we could do was respond in a good-faith bewilderment that we were in fact not native to the area. It did remind me remarkably of a town in Cornwall though. Everything shuttered in the middle of a sunday. Bare streets. A little grey. One of those out-of-the-way places the Government has forgotten about. Still, I couldn’t deny walking down the high street that there were some gorgeous buildings dotted around. 

I walked into the shopping centre, my friend and I got some pictures of the posters for the films showing, and then we eventually found our way into the cinema. There were perhaps seven other people in there by the time the reel started. While I always encourage people to go to the cinema, I can’t help but feel a slight joy when I have a screen all to myself. Maybe it’s selfish. Either way, it was just me, my friend, and these seven other people sitting dotted around this theatre all having a love (or in my friend’s case, being brought by someone who loves) film. 

We saw five shorts:

Pavane (Pauline Gay, 2023, France)

Guts (Margaux Susi, 2023, United States)

Grill (Jade Hærem Aksnes, 2023, Norway)

Heap (Kyle Marchen, 2023, Canada)

An Orange From Jaffa (Mohammed Almughanni, 2024, Occupied Palestinian Territory)

I can’t stress enough how consistently good these shorts were. Dark, Funny, but also thought provoking and cathartic. It made me happy to see a Palestinian film in the mix-up, a small act of defiance against the forces trying to make them lose hope, it looked gorgeous and was written amazingly. Grill was bleak and relatable, Pavane made me think about my mother, and Heap was my favourite out of the group, a real mind-fuck kind of film, and aesthetically brilliant. A sort of shortened Black Mirror. 

But Guts. That stirred up a lot of feelings for me. It was the reason I went to see that particular block of films. I’m a fan of StarKid and Smosh and also Watched all (at the time) Sixteen seasons of Grey’s anatomy in a matter of weeks. Angela Giarratana and Kate Burton?? Opposite Each other?? In a Movie playing in a theatre near me?? Sign Me Up. 

I knew it was about a Girl in recovery. Specifically from an Eating Disorder. I knew Angela’s character was a girl who invited a stranger to dinner because eating with other people is easier than eating alone. I’ve been there. It was only semi-recently that my own eating disorder was brought to my attention. I confided in my friend (the selfsame who came with me to this screening) with a self deprecating chuckle that I’d been eating little other than a couple of slices of toast a day for Three or so weeks. Food has always (and continues to be) a source of anxiety for me. Just as one might be scared of what would happen if they put their hand on the stove (you stand there and imagine the searing pain, the blisters, the burns, it inevitably puts you off the action) I was scared of eating. I was scared of putting food in my body. I was scared of feeling the food in my mouth. Of chewing it. Of actually doing the act. The thought of eating made me feel sick. Fear would wrap an iron grip around my stomach to the point where I’d turn to my trusty loaf of bread and salted butter to get the job done. My friend pointed out with a face twisted with concern that eating that way isn’t normal. Being scared of food isn’t normal. I recounted that it had been this way for as long as I could remember and she informed me that it sounded like I had ARFID. 

Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. I won’t spout the facts at you but it’s pretty much what it says on the tin. Being aware of it has helped me in a way. But it’s so incredibly present. The other day I simply could not decide what I wanted to eat. I ran through the options in my head and the thought of consuming those things filled me with the familiar dread. There it was again. Instead of deciding what to eat, I let the wave of dread take me and I lay in my bed for an hour and a half, on top of the covers and staring at the ceiling. I had to self regulate. I had to calm down. It had been a good day, and then everything fell apart. 

Guts said so adequately what I had been struggling to verbalise. Hearing Angela speak the things that I needed to remind myself of (Jan Rosenberg’s writing perhaps is the direction I should be tipping my hat to in this regard) made my heart feel a certain way. 

And Jesus Christ that’s why I love movies. 

[writinginaforrest]

Anger

(2nd Oct 2024)

A short one today.

There's so much to be angry about, but I'm someone to whom that emotion does not come naturally and healthily. I'm slow to anger, but when I encounter it in my path it consumes me whole. (Usually because it must be a thing worth getting angry over for me to experience anything other than my trademark mental avoidance of the emotion altogether)

I have so much to say to so many people. so much dirty laundry to air. So many grievances to discuss. But I don't. There are people who read this blog who have wronged me in a vast gamut of ways and it's only my sheer desperation to cling onto the parts of me that make me decent that has stopped me from ripping them to shreds piece by piece. Sometimes I imagine it. Giving in and letting the rage consume me. Letting my outward apathy wash away and letting them see what they turned me into.

That would give me nothing.

I hate to see them think they're in the right. I hate to see them blissfully unaware. I hate to see them use my words as a way to feel like a victim.

But here we are.

And I do not let the feeling consume me.

Maybe I'm passive and apathetic. But I'd rather be passive and apathetic than feel too much to the point of absumption. Blind Anger does not make me useful. It makes me Angry. And I want to be useful.

[writinginaforrest]

You are here.

(16th Sept 2024)

As daunting as moving to a new place can be (Let alone the second biggest city in the U.K, from the small town in the middle of the countryside by the sea that I'm used to) there is something quietly invigorating about this new ecosystem.

The view from my bedroom window back home was very limited. If you looked down, you could see my garden. It has patio flooring desperately in need of a brush, and a wooden deck that's a bad rain storm from collapsing in on itself entirely. There are piles of junk where my parents haven't been able to take old or broken belongings to the skip, and to distract you from them is an array of potted plants and vegetables which were lovingly placed and cared for by my Mother. Before I left, she burst into our living room excitedly and brandished a singular, ripe, red Tomato at me. She looked so happy. She had spent all summer working arduously over her precious Tomato plants, and now she had something to show for it. I remember looking out one night and seeing the plants illuminated by the glow from my kitchen window, and one in particular struck my eye. The next day I went into our tiny garden to look at it further and it was a small thing. Wrapped around a piece of bamboo to which it clung desperately, trying to hold it's own against the unpredictable Cornish weather. Some flowers were beginning to bud but had not yet opened up to the world, and all I was left with were distinctive heart shaped leaves.

"They're morning glory" My Mother called out from the window.

Ipomoea.

She didn't know that I became overwhelmed with emotion at that moment. Ipomoea means a lot to me. But that's a story for another time.

When looking looking upwards instead of down at the struggling garden below, out of my bedroom window at home, you're left with something a little more scenic. The garden across from ours has a little shed nestled in amongst trees and plant life. It is not all the way constructed, and sometimes, when the wind becomes particularly violent, you can hear the sheets of waterproofing flapping in the wind. Looking further back, there are the old twisting trees that I climbed as a child in the play park. I'd only got so far before a Wasp nest forced me to retreat to the grass below. But the one thing I remember clearly about my bedroom window is the palm trees. You'd look out on a sunny day and see their leaves lit up with bright light. Their silhouettes would be imprinted against the dawns and dusks, their leaves would fold and fly in those angry winds, but they'd hold steadfast and true.

It was all so intimate. All so familiar. The things I could see were within reach. Things I could touch. Yes, it was very limited, but it was my world.

Now, my view is a little different.

There's a nursery outside my window, or at least the courtyard for one. The building I live in is rented out by a plethora of different companies, so in the wing of the building across from my window, the nursery is on the bottom floor. Toys and apparatus are scattered across the little concrete playground, a departure from what I am used to. When I look straight out, i'd be lucky to see a room empty or with the blinds drawn, I'd be unfortunate to accidentally catch the eye of a student much like myself.

And then, i look up, or to the side. Really it does not matter I simply just look beyond the walls of the building I am in out at the skyline. It's a city. A small slice of a huge city. I see people across the road heading to the pub and leaving again hours later. I see the train pass in the viaduct that's nestled in amongst bridges and red-brick buildings. I see the skyscrapers that aren't really skyscrapers but they're taller than any buildings I could see out of my window at home. I see a clocktower, tall and powerful, it's sign lit up with bright light. It's silhouette imprinted against dawns and dusks. It holds steadfast and true, a landmark in the next chapter of my life.

It's not familiar. It's not intimate. It's not within reach and I certainly cannot touch it. But Lord that is somehow the most comforting thing about it. It represents home. I can find comparisons and symbolism in what is here and what is there all I want. But I am here, and this is no longer limited. It's opportunity. It's not a tree, it's a skyline. It's a horizon. It's a boundary that does not exist.

I've made it. I'm finally here. And if I miss the garden that wrapped me in it's crooked fences and gave me a respite from the big wide world? I think of the Ipomoea.

[writinginaforrest]

Moving on. 

(7th Sept 2024)

“Kernow Bys Vyken” is something I could say with my whole chest. It means “Cornwall Eternally” in Kernewek, the language of the Cornish people. I am Cornish. I was born here, and I come from a Long line of Cornish Farmers, Miners and Labourers. I speak very little of the language, but the phonetics of it creep through in the way I speak. My generic Southern English accent (which, for those who are not from the UK, is the one you hear in most Non-British media) is often tinged with the same roughness and rhoticity that makes my Grandfather unintelligible to non-native speakers. I take pride in it. I take pride in my celtic heritage and I reject the label of English to pay homage to my colonised forefathers and the nation they lost. 

That being said, Kernow is a shit hole. This small part right at the end of the British Mainland Is known for it’s picturesque scenery. Abandoned wheelhouses from our tin mining days stand triumphantly on grassy knolls and tell stories of our past as an exporter of precious metals and agriculture. Our beaches are unique, nestled in between rugged cliff faces or  at the mouths of Rivers that built towns in their stead. It’s a place to relax. To feel connected to the earth. To marvel at what nature has to offer in its rawest form and to appreciate the ways it has provided for us. This is code for: Our economy is now built on tourism. Our mines are visitor attractions. Our cliff sides are caravan parks. We’re rammed with English tourists in the summer who have no respect for our beaches or our countryside or the people who live and work here. To them, Cornwall is a Holiday spot. One big play park. A gentrified, miserable play park with no money to provide infrastructure that could possibly support its residents. Many venues close their doors for the bitter winter months, and we Cornish people are left floundering with fuckall to do and a nasty headcold. 

I’d be the last to admit my life has not been particularly easy. But, it hasn’t. There’s a wall decoration in my kitchen, placed by my mother with love. It reads “This Home is a Happy Place” in thick black letters. I can’t say that’s true. Home holds weight to me. It’s not just the place but also everything I experienced here. Home is not just my culture but how I exist within it. I was groomed here. I had my first kiss here. I was thrown across a room by my father here. I met my best friends here. I remember the way the carpet in my primary school felt under my trainers. I remember the smell of seawater on Lemon Quay as the tide came in and the boats rose with it in my Port Hometown. I remember spending time at Crantock beach in the early hours of that whole summer that felt like a day, and nursing my blistering sunburn and developing scarring and freckles on my shoulders and upper back that I still have to this day. I remember the way my mother smacked me across the back of the head with a smug grin on her face, and I remember the way my own face crumpled into tears because she was supposed to be the safe one. I remember how much I longed to exit my childhood when I was in it, thinking i’d be in control when I was a grown up, and that feeling echoes in my grown up heart now, the heart of a man who has no control and mourns for a childhood he never had. 

The end result of this is not me returning to the sun-lit glow of a childhood that was not mine to miss, but rather me in a place that I do not recognize. A place where the signs do not have their Kernewek translations proudly stated underneath. A place where the water is dirty and contaminated with industrialism. A place where my father cannot reach me with his violent hands. A place where no one knows my old name. A place where I can live by my own rules, as my own man, emboldened and unafraid, but at the forfeit of every bit of comfort. Everything I knew to be true. 

But that’s the letting go. Cornwall is a Sinking ship, and I am not its captain. I can love it. I can mourn the idea of it, and I can understand when It’s time to move on. I can make peace with the fact that I will never be a child again. And I can grieve for the person I may have been if I was not weighed down by the immense burden of my trauma. Time is fleeting, and my past is so much pain. I have to keep moving, onward and onward. Go where my instincts take me and remember my home with pride, knowing full well that this will only be my home again when I return to it for the last time. It’s all I can do. 

Kernow bys Vyken

[writinginaforrest]

Yes, I’m Transgender, but I’m not “Trans”

(31st Aug 2024)

When I think about this too much, I always come to the conclusion that I have got some internalised Transphobia. I identify as Male. I use He/Him pronouns. I dress in a way that conforms to the Gendered Norms of my culture. I’m just a guy. When “Trans” is added as a descriptor, not only does that become a thing about me, but it also sets me aside from other men. I’m not a Man, I’m a Trans Man. I’m a pseudo-masculine thing. When people realise I’m Transgender, I feel Castrated. That sounds pretty dang transphobic, doesn’t it. 

The way people have expected me to be Trans often Superseded what Transness is to me. I had a lecturer in college who insisted that my depression was, In part, a result of my going home every day to a family who did not know I was Trans. She sat there and looked me in the eyes and I watched myself in the reflection of her eyes becoming an anecdote in real time. I’ll always be her “Trans Student” who did remarkably well in her class before dropping off in his second year when he got a different teacher. For reference, my family may not have known that I am Trans, but It’s very rare that my deadname is used in my home. I’m referred to by my Middle name almost exclusively. Jeff (Jeffrey). And in reality. Transness was not something that was always on my mind and even now, I can be sure that it was not fueling my depression. My Undealt with sexual trauma? That’s a different story. But my being Trans wasn’t it. I didn’t even think about it that much. I still don’t. It’s not something that is an integral part of me. I would be no different If I had been born Cisgender. 

And that’s the thing. “Trans” carries a lot of weight to it, doesn’t it? A lot of people really connect to it on a level beyond it being simply a descriptor. It’s a culture, an experience, a mindset, an ideology, and what can I say to those people? Well done? Thank you? I don’t really have much to say, and that’s part of my problem. A lot of Trans artists are, at least partly, inspired by their queer experiences. I’m an artist (I yell into the void) and yet nothing about being Queer inspires art within me. I have nothing to say. My art would be the same if I were Cisgender. If I were Allosexual. I would be the same because I am not these descriptors that have been decided for me based on the way I live my life. 

“Trans” has become a commodity that I can’t escape. It’s something I’m supposed to stick on my laptop. It’s something I’m supposed to pin on my wall. It’s a lifestyle. A trait. A Community. A Culture. An Ideology. A Concept. An Abstraction. It’s everything and it’s nothing. I’m supposed to disclose it with pride when I meet new people. I’m supposed to warn Littluns about the dangers of not expressing themselves and being comfortable in their identity when I can’t even deliver on that. I’m supposed to do all these things. 

But no one is asking me to. 

No one is telling me to be “Trans”. 

I’m looking around at all of my Trans brothers and sisters and wondering if that’s behaviour I should emulate because I  have a) no frame of reference and b) no connection to Transess as a concept. I feel like I’m doing a disservice to those who feel a connection to it as a concept, when I only see it as an adjective. When I try to remove myself from it as much as possible. And again here comes the internalised Transphobia knocking at my window.

I’m an artist, A filmmaker, and a writer. I’ve never felt compelled to tell Trans stories. Is it because I don’t want to be pigeonholed into this idea of Transness that again, supersedes my own, or is it because I’m ashamed of it? Am I acknowledging that I am more than a Trans artist or am I just not taking pride in the fact that I’m going to have to live with being Trans for the rest of my life? It’s not something that goes away. Trans doesn’t stop. I Will always be Transgender and I have to cope with that because I am male and I was not born that way. 

I don’t Identify with Queerness. I don’t identify as Transgender. It is something I am, a thing that I cannot help. I Identify as Male, Transgender was just something that came free in the post. I didn't understand the terms and conditions of it. I'm dyslexic, you expect me to read the fine print?

Where does this end? What’s the accumulation of all of this thinking? I do not know. It doesn’t end. The debate where I am my own interlocutor only ends with more questions that I must ask myself. 

[fallinginaforrest]

psst...pssst... I've started a writing Blog that I'm going to be updating semi-regularly in an effort to have practicing writing become a habit! It'll be a diary of sorts, a place for me to dump my musings and my feelings and if you see this, you're invited! It's all going to be very personal so if you really want a glimpse into how my brain works, check it out! I've only got one post on there at the moment but BOY It's a doozy so...

@writinginaforrest