Thursday 25 September 2008

Different World, Different Life

I don't really write poetry anymore. Not because I don't want to or don't enjoy it Rather, simply because I seem to have had writers block for three years and can't seem to work out what to write at all. This was one of the last poems I wrote. It was inspired by a few other poems I had read, and I spent a lot of time thinking about the way of the western world. During the current financial climate, I guess it made a lot of sense. Yet still people (myself guiltily included) spend hundreds on clothes they do not need, on cars, on having the best gadget and the best types of found. Surely we've got our priorities all wrong...?

Different World, Different Life

Watching these people on our TV screens,
Individuals dying, from water unclean
So little to eat, people starving to deathS
truggling to take each and every breath

Watching in colour on our TV screens,
Conflicts all over, no one intervenes
Soldiers dying from the constant war
Watching, but still, we seem to ignore

Watching in colour on our TV screens,
Natural disasters, changing the world so green
Houses and lives destroyed by hurricanes
Bringing much sorrow, causing much pain

Watching these people on our TV screens
Then retreating back, to our daily routines
Switching off from this life outside
This consumerist world too pre-occupied

Tuesday 23 September 2008

Word Cloud...



So I saw this on a friends blog and decided to have a go myself. Basically you put a link to your blog in this application and it sorts out the words you use in your blog. The big ones are the ones that appear the most. I found it really interesting. I actually find it helpful that the bigger words are the slightly more positive words that appear on there. Kind of supports the whole idea of moving on from things, and working through stuff...

Saturday 20 September 2008

Please Hear What I Am Not Saying

This is ust part of a poem by Charles C. Finn. I've just taken out a bit of it. It's an amazing poem, and something I feel so often. I feel like I'm really struggling at the moment to let the gaurd down and show people my vulnerabilities. The real faces behind the farcade I so often choose to put on. Letting that down is scary. And I've still not quite fathomed out how to do it yet...


Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear
for I wear a mask, a thousand masks,
masks that I'm afraid to take off,
and none of them is me.
Pretending is an art that's second nature with me,
but don't be fooled,
for God's sake don't be fooled.
I give you the impression that I'm secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well
as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game,
that the water's calm and I'm in command
and that I need no one,
but don't believe me.
My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask,
ever-varying and ever-concealing.
Beneath lies no complacence.
Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed.
That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,
a nonchalant sophisticated facade,
to help me pretend,
to shield me from the glance that knows.
But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope,
and I know it.
That is, if it's followed by acceptance,
if it's followed by love.
It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself,
from my own self-built prison walls,
from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.
It's the only thing that will assure me
of what I can't assure myself,
that I'm really worth something.
But I don't tell you this. I don't dare to, I'm afraid to.
I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance,
will not be followed by love.
I'm afraid you'll think less of me,
that you'll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.
I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing
and that you will see this and reject me.

Charles C. Finn

Saturday 13 September 2008

It was residential this week. I think I've finally got to a point where I have to be willing to accept that I actually do have mental health issues. And that as much as I'd like to continue denying it, I've been doing that for the last 7-9 years of my life, and it's gotten me nowhere. Sooo. Instead of just trying to get on with life and denying the way I feel, and how to deal with it, I've decided it may just be best if I actually try and deal with the underlying issues. This is hard because so far I've just had a really negative response from counsellors etc, and have got to a point where I guess I'm genuinely scared of trustsing people fully.

However, this week at residential I kind of feel like I had to be willing to start working things through and putting systems in place to enable me to even think about breaking free from the chains that seem to be keeping me down. I have worked it with course tutors and we have arranged I'll speak to one of them on a regular basis, and as well as that I'll speak to my line manager for a short period of time once a week when possible, and then have contact with the doctor and therapist, and also have all my friends who genuinely seem to love and care for me.

i guess the thing that has been most hard is to accept that all of these people genuinely care for me, and genuinely want to see me get better. I realy want to do it, but I'm so scared that I just dont have the strength, and that if I don't manage it, it will seem like I am letting people down. My course have been absolutley amazing about everything, and they worked so hard with me last week. To finally totally admit I need help, and that I'm willing to try and do as much as I can with other people if they're willing to help was probably the hardest thing in my life. For so long I've been in denial, and then although I've accepted it recently, the last two months I have been too scared to even start thinking about thinking through ways forward. But I'm ready now. I dont know whether I'll ever be 'truly happy' whatever that maybe. Maybe I will... but when I've felt like this for so long I have to be willing to at least accept I MAY always suffer from some form of mental illness. But I guess I just have to trust that there is hope and that there is people that really care. And at least with them I can at least try and start working on a way of feeling better.