Mother

I have never been good at returning gifts.
In year five, mother, you gave me a pink, plastic iron,
for my dolls clothes, you said.
I didn't have the heart to tell you
that my doll had been lying in the shadows of my room
for the last year
and that every time I'd held her, it felt empty.
I smiled, I thanked you.
My doll didn't leave my arms for weeks,
so you would think I had meant it.
Then there were the watches,
you've given me three.
I wore each for years.
Until they inevitably paused, shuddered and died.
There was the too-bright beach towel.
There were the winter pyjamas and the bookmarks.

And to your credit,
you always offer to swap or return or resize
yet every time, I shake my head and swear I adore it
all pearly whites and whiter lies.
I have never wanted to disappoint you.
Mother, you raised a polite daughter, but not a truthful one.

So when you asked,
so tenderly,
if I had ever wanted to hurt myself.
I should have told you.
No, I have never wanted to hurt myself,
but when I was twelve I sat in the car on a lonely day and
sliced my hand with your pocket knife
while i waited for you to come out of the furniture shop.
I should have said,
no, I have never wanted to hurt
but sometimes I think there is a vampire living inside my head and he's eternally thirsty.
I should have said to you,
no, I have never wanted to
but sometimes i imagine stabbing myself in the throat with a carving knife
and it calms me down.
I should have said no,
I have never wanted to hurt myself because that would hurt you
but sometimes it feels like I'm craving something
there isn't a fix for.

I never wanted to kill myself
more than a drowning cat would want to be shot.
It was an option.
It was plan B.
It was meant to be release.

But mother, I could not tell you that,
anymore than I could tell you that I didn't like the first watch you gave me.

Because I don't know about God or religion,
but I know that you gave me my perfect arms,
and throat and beating heart.
And I could not bear to say: yes, Mother, I want return the first gift you gave me.

I know you did not want this for me.

Confession

Today,
you asked a question
I have not contemplated
for years.

Did I think my depression was glamourous?
Initially? Certainly,
when you don't care if you live or die
and you are at a party
with friends and acquaintances
getting too drunk on cheap vodka from cheap flasks
and smoking spliffs in darkened back-yards
it is easy to romanticise the sadness,
to compare it to your favourite tv character.

But after a few months,
I hated it.
Because most of the time
I wasn't dolled up and misunderstood
most of the time I was pathetic and miserable.

I was trying to understand how and why
I had ever been happy.
I was embarrassed that I felt this way for no good reason.
And I was afraid that I was going to feel this way forever.
I spent two years trying and failing to remember the person I was
and wondering if i would always be this way.
Most of the time,
I was fucking terrified
and hopeless
and exhausted
and anxious
and just very, very sad.

This is my best explanation.

Promise

Don't forget to look up once in a while.

photo.  

Force yourself to.

The Apiarist.

photo.  

there is
a storm of bees
swarming, forming
around her head
on days like this morning
people passing
pretending
they can not see
any bees, can not see
the honey
dripping from her
eyes
knees
thighs
there is no smoke, today

one young man
nears her
does not wear
a beekeeper suit
but still, leans in
and licks the honey
off her swollen chin
and licks the honey
off his velvet lips
i think, maybe,
he knows
today, she doesn't like honey
i think, maybe,
he knows
she doesn't like to be
a beekeeper
always.

she wonders
if he exists
to prove the bees
don't have to.

Meat.

photo.   

The other night:
The way your eyes
looked at mine
made me feel
sick, sad, alone.
Please please please
do not look
at me
that way.
The way the other boys have.
I chose
you because
your eyes
are different.

too much

photo.  

Broken

By P.s. I Am Me from Shades of Green and Grey

photo.  

It would be easy to fall apart.
Piece by tiny piece.
And it’s hard to be put back together again once this happens.
Because, like with all puzzles, pieces get lost.
Maybe you’ll never be whole again.

Excerpt #10

There is anger in her.

The kind that's been held for too long, and it is now spilling out of her.
There she is, kneeling on the wooden floor of her bedroom, rifling through a dark, wooden box. She keeps opening pieces of paper, reading them and then tearing them into confetti. Occasionally she burns things. One time she does both. She's trying to rid herself of all the things that have been destroying her.
Photos, quotes, poems, writing, ideas, plans and pills, bandaids, lyrics, memories.
She has a soundtrack playing loudly so she doesn't need to think. She keeps going until there are only three things left in the box. A neatly folded piece of paper. A photo. And a now-blank notepad.
She puts everything else into a glass jar. The jar is filled with paper and water and ash and ink. She thinks she is free.

In a few days she'll realise the jar is still in her room, she'll want to get rid of it, but she won't.

photos.

I don't know what happens next.

i can relate

photo.  



You would hate it.
There are good days, and bad days,
and you never know which it's going to be,
until it is.
Or, on those rare, unlucky occassions
when you realise the night before
that tomorrow is going to be a terrible,
terrible day
and you can't do anything about it,
except know.

Letterhead #12

photo.  



Dear Bella,
I feel so shit today.
It's like everything you said last night has seeped into me.
I meant it when I said
"You can't depress me, I've been there already.
I've thought all these things before"
But this morning it got into me,
(maybe it's because I was reminded of how i used to think)
I will not tell you.
Because I can let go of it now,
I can already feeling it sliding away
and I don't want you to think
you are hurting me.
Even if you are a bit.

don't ask

photo.   

She was Numb. Numb. Numb. Sometimes she whispers that word to herself, when she gets strange looks she smiles.

What is there to tell you about her? She drinks. She smokes. She starves herself. She does whatever it takes ease the numbness, or distract herself from it.

The other day she cut herself. Seventeen slits, on her left forearm. She used the razor from a pencil sharpener -just scratches, she tells herself. Today she accidentally let them show as she was taking off her jacket. Nobody saw, she doesn't know whether or not she's relieved.

She goes home and listens to music that gets in your head as she goes on Tumblr for hours. Around her, her friends are kissing boys and laughing and studying and growing. She writes things that are similar to the young Tim Burton's poetry. About girls who will grow up before their time. She is in a blur. When she looks around, all she can see is fog.

if you are sad

the good people don't make it worthwhile

but they sure make it easier

let them

photos.  

Waking



photo.   

The thing is, she had realised she was asleep. After more than 6 months, by an almost-year, she had realised and often consoled herself with the fact that all sleeping things must wake (and if not it is said to be the best way to go, dying in your sleep). And I know that when you realise it is a dream you are meant to be able to control what happens, and she tried -I swear she did- but she found the dream slowly fell into a nightmare around her. And a part of her relished the fact that she was slowly losing faith, that she had lost control. So she dreamt.
She dreamt she was running from something she couldn't escape
                               suffocating                              
                               being torn apart
                               lost in the wind                              
                               and the whole time falling, falling, falling,
and then, just before she hit the ground, she woke up.
                              
                         

Asleep

It's funny because the whole time she slept, she felt tired. 



photo.   

 I don't know why she fell asleep, or when, but she did.
At first it was sporadic, but as time wore on she would be unconscious for days at a time, and then one day, she didn't wake up. And it stayed like that for a long time.

Weeks passed. Months.
She was unaware of the exterior world, instead tuned in solely to this battle raging within her, these dreams and thoughts and emotions that swelled internally. And on the outside, people tried to wake her, first casually and then in frustration, by the end they could not hide their panic.
Eventually, she began to sleep-walk, and that eased their worries. Allowed her to sleep in peace.

Letterhead #10.5

Dear Bella
Last night
(at the mexican fiesta)
there was a moment,
when i looked at you and thought
"why is she doing this?"
and the only thing i could think was
-i know why i'm doing it.
but i didnt think you were unhappy.
what aren't you telling us?
are you okay?

Letterhead #11

photo.   

Dear Bella,
I've been listening to hurt by nine inch nails/johnny cash all night
you're right, it's incredible.

I just want to say, the times i've shown you writing and said
it was from another blog,
i lied. i don't know why, maybe you can relate.
i mean, you lie,
you lie all the time.
you say no one knows you're sad.
but you tell them, you tell me.
they just don't know what to do
when you say you want to die.
they're scared and (you're right) they don't want to believe it,
they want to believe in the bright, smiling bella,
not this hidden, broken, lonely person who we've never met
because you've never introduced us.
(can you blame them)
it's your fault.
it's their fault.
it's nobody's fault.

they do care,
we both know it, but they don't understand
they are innocent, unstained, happy fools
and you can't expect them to save you.
That is, if you even want saving.
I don't know if you do anymore,
I don't think you know either.

ideal

photo.  

face it



photo.   

i blame the days.
it's a bad day, i say
just wasn't a good day
how was your day? shit.

but it's not the day
it's my fault
it's me
it was always in me
sometimes it feels like it always will be

your story

photos.  

Watery sunlight leaks through your curtains, your eyelids.

It will become apparent to you, maybe wake you.
Gradually and then suddenly.
You will tug at your limbs, that lie dead against the thin, the white sheets.

It will be easier to give up.
To lie in half darkness, to let it wrap you up in it's consuming warmth. To let it smother you. To stay there all day, longer.
And so you will. You will lie and sleep and doze in a murky haze of reality.
You will lose track of time.
Family, then friends will worry. And -even though none of them are bright enough, and those that are will be too bright, too artificial- they will want you to wake up. But no, all the while you will drag your heavy curtians shut tighter.

You will choose darkness. Because there is a kind of comfort. A familiarity in it.

You will choose darkness. Because for as long as you can remember, that's how you knew it would be.

You will choose darkness. Because that's how the story goes.

fall from grace

photo.  

I have not changed
not in the way you think i have, anyway.
In truth I am just as happy now as I was then
My actions speak otherwise
Because it is a different sort of sadness
instead of the relentless numbness of last year
i now face a cacophony of emotions
each harder, sharper and more fleeting than the last
I behave differently
Because the last remedy was unsuccessful
Each day I assess what I am willing to give up, in order to keep going.