September 2015
So if someone told you to ‘open up your mind’
I wonder just what we’d find
If all our musings and our memories were spread out onto a page,
If all our inner passions and our fears were free from their cage,
If all the love that we hold so dear-
And all the hidden darkness
And all the rage
Were carved into the earth
Tattooed onto the dirt,
The pain that we conceal
And the plastered up hurt
The days we spend indoors
And the comfort of silence re-learnt,
What would we see?
I’d see a cyclical pattern of peaks and troughs-
Like energy and happiness
Is switched on and off
Tampered with
And thrown onto the rocks,
Hit by the crashing tide
Or the gentle breeze,
So soft.
The nature of my mood wired into a box-
The voltage too high,
The surge of panic attacks and shock.
The suddenness with which my mania strikes,
Like a lightning bolt focused on me from the sky,
Like my whole life is a child playing
‘Operation’
But they keep buzzing all the metal bits on purpose.
Sirens sound in my head,
The anxiety rises,
I can feel it in my legs.
The rush of power-
Feeling so inspired,
I can feel it in my chest.
It makes me think
‘I need to run’
‘I need to go’
‘I need to do something- anything’.
Anything.
Anything.
Anything.
But all that does, outwardly,
Is lead to conversations going at 100mph-
I’m bouncing off the walls,
Standing on chairs in cafes, tall,
Phonecall after phonecall,
An urgency to do things,
Feeling constantly on edge,
Signing up to a million different societies,
Taking a charity pledge.
The toxic state of conversations with my parents-
Everything leading to an explosive argument,
And tears wept.
Truly, it feels like highs and lows-
But both episodes are dark times
Plagued with an itching to roam-
Depression calls its listeners to disappear-
Fading into nothingness,
Matching their capabilities and sense of worth.
While manic episodes demand that we inherit the Earth-
An energy unlike anything else is birthed.
That we seize every opportunity,
Without thinking it through first.
But this fleeting high gives way to an unstable path
Of recklessness and panic-
In hopeless anticipation,
I wait for that inevitable surge –
The natural,
caffeinated,
kick
in my brain,
Telling me that Home Time has come early again.
But the part about it all which hurt the most-
Was that no one else was seeing what I was seeing.
With rose-tinted glasses,
And an unending feel of hope-
Over-inspired and unable to cope.
Reality hit like a knife in the back,
Reminding me of the sense of calm that I lacked.
So I pressed pause on my degree,
And sought to fix up for a year.
And now I’m back on my feet,
The clutter in my mind is finally clear.
I can take a step back from it all,
And look on as an observer,
And say that there is a calm
After the passing of the storms
And a day when it will all be over.
When you’re in the belly of the beast-
Anxiety closing in from every direction,
It can be so easy to let hope cease.
But ride it out until you’re standing on that shore,
And the crashing tides no longer bother you anymore.
So if someone told you to ‘open up your mind’,
I wonder just what we’d find.
Let the calming sight of the setting sun
Guide you home,
And may you find peace within your bones.
These throbbing pulses within our veins
Remind us that we are human,
And the vastness of the emotion which we contain.
