mental health

Hope.

I hope
You can be
The lightness
To my dark
Because it feels like
You could be.

© More Than
Just a Tinder Girl

So, bizarrely I never have any reluctance sharing dark, depressing poetry, but I’ve found myself holding this one back.

I think it’s because often I’m not the one that sees the softness in this harsh world, but I think I’m starting to find ways to allow it to be in my life more, particularly through therapy and learning to be vulnerable (something I’ve struggled to do since a child).

As such, I’m often not one to write sweet, cute poems about men, but… I’m hoping this one will be the start of some change, both in me and my view of how relationships can be. I hope this is the start of something new.

Far away from the home of me

January 2019

I’ve avoided writing for a long time now, I’ve been scared of myself and my own mind, and some days I still am- more than I let on.

What is it I’m scared of, you may wonder, well in short everything. It’s why I fill my life with so many things, so many things all around me and I’m none of them and yet they contain me because sometimes I can’t do that for myself anymore. And that crushes me.

So many things, the clutter of me, to distract me from the gaping hole inside me. The vast emptiness that swallowed the pain and the heartbreak so that I never had to feel it or face it. I’ve orchestrated this picture perfect life so that I’d never have to feel, and most days I still don’t, or if I do it’s terror.

But, maybe writing was what I needed? A piece by piece way to feel and to hold the things and parts of me that feel like they’re breaking by merely looking at them. It’s just hard to hold and feel that unending emptiness and sorrow, because as soon as I do my mind goes to them. All of those that I have lost along the way, but also the slow realisation that with each and every one of them since James I’ve never been able to be my true self. I’ve become such a skilled chameleon that I even fool myself, because I’ve got it all, right?

Everything I’ve worked for, years of work and dedication, just unfortunately it seems to have cost me a great deal of my sanity so far. I guess everything has a price, I just never knew this would be mine… I’m not sure I’d take this offer if I’d known that all along. I know people say to value who you are and the journey that brought you there, I mean I say it to people myself too… I’m just not sure I buy into it right now.

Who I am. Who I could have been. All the people that marked me emotionally and physically, either never quite realising they did, or just not having the capacity or the care to do any differently. Some of them I’m glad have gone, but some… I miss them.

I miss me. I know they’ll never come back; I just hope that I will, because I don’t think I’ve ever been this far away from the home of me. One thing’s for certain, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Jack o’lantern

I felt hollow
No, I felt like I’d been
Hollowed out.
I used to be whole
Something inside me.

Now I was just
The outer shell
My insides scraped out
And thrown aside
A human jack o’lantern.

But this jack o’lantern
Couldn’t carve even a smile
Onto her face.
There was nothing inside
Anymore.

 © More Than
Just a Tinder Girl

It knows my name

It knows my name
It’s on my skin
It permeates…
The first sin.
 
In the garden
The apple’s bite
The penetrating look…
The wrathful smite.
 
Known to all
Though not a friend
Once again
This façade I mend.
 
It knows my name
It’s on my skin
This is my shame
It knows my sin.
 
How to escape
I cannot find
A way for me
To flee my mind.
 
I feel as though
I’ve dug this grave
I plummet down
Never to leave.
 
Yet still, I try
To find a way
In hope that I’ll
Succeed one day.
 
Until that day
I shall remain
Deep within
This pit of pain.
 
It has a name
For it is me
I was so foolish
To never see.
 
For it is I
I am the sin
I permeate
I mark your skin.

© More Than
Just a Tinder Girl