Tag: mental health
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The Algorithm
How do you beat the algorithm?How do you fight a reflection that’s been distorted?Pixelated by cyber forces that convince our daughters that they’re not enough?How do you deflect the million voices that affect their choices and drown out us telling them it’s too much?My daughter tells me she’s ugly,Doesn’t hear me when I tell her…
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Broken Toy
I accidentally introduced my colleagues to the real me, and now, apparently, they’re scared of me. I have become a monster in their eyes, and I suppose it should come as no surprise, When I’ve been wearing a disguise for the past five years, They were scared by the raised voice and puffed chest, And…
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To the Syndrome in my Head
You don’t belong here She said She said You are in the wrong place You are a disgrace A face that doesn’t fit You don’t belong here and you need to quit She said QUIT!! Let me be clear You aren’t even meant to be near this table Let alone sat here at this table…
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Confetti
Taken in.Scattered vim,Like confetti to the wind,Empty palmof sallow skin,Cold and thinfrom a tiredness that’s hunkered inthe very core of everything.What is this thing?Ephemera.Magician’s sin.No hint of paper left withinthis hollow tin.This wraith in skinand boneand two-bit grinis spirallingwhile the tricksy djinnwith Keyser Söze’s tricksy limbdances inthe coloursdancingonthewind.
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Mike Hotel – World Mental Health Day and Black History Month
I was diagnosed with Clinical Depression when I was 11 years old. I was then diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder aged 35 years, but really I had been living with it for many, many years. Looking back, all the signs were all there, but my friends and family just put them down to moodiness, quirkiness,…
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Hollow
In a clearing stands a hollow treethat has long since lost its crown of leaves,Its bark is cracked from weathered storms,Its brittle branches – gnarled, forlorn –lay battered, scattered all around,And when they fell they made no sound,For this broken tree stands all alone,Splintered, fractured, stripped to bone,No more birds to nest, nor squirrels to…
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Battery Pack
As I sit on the top floor of my work building, back nestled against the safety door that leads to the roof, I try to ignore the pulse in my forehead, the result of a morning of pretending. Pretending is hard. It’s like turning one of those new-fangled cordless vacuum cleaners up to maximum and…
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Pachyderm Fight Club
Sharing something a little different today: It shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone who knows me, but there is an elephant in the room. An enormous, fuck-off elephant, and nobody is talking about it. Seriously?! It’s like Pachyderm Fight Club. First rule of Pachyderm Fight Club? Well, you know. This particular elephant is…
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Insomniac
Night sweats, Sheets wet as cruel scenes stretch across my inner eyes, A gnarled and fetid pantomime of phantom frets ties silken binds across my neck and chokes me to the brink of life, Splits my mind; Half is here and half is on the other side, I’m both alive and not alive in this…
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Knots
Anxiety. It’s never a mere stomach knot. It’s like a coarse frayed entanglement of rope that’s devoured as it sinks into a molten metal mire deep deep deep inside, Fires fly and gases rise, Beastly belching bubbles that swell and explode like fireworks of fury, All the while an angry tremor bellows through the scalloped…
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Dysmorphic
It’s a dark, dark road that you venture down when you can’t even look yourself in the eye, When the words ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’ explode like landmines in your mind every time you look in the mirror, When you’d rather rip your flesh and gouge out your eyes than have to look a second more…
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Brain Storm
It’s raining inside my head. Pouring. I can feel each drop as it cascades through my mind forming translucent sheets of icy coldness, sharp as knives, that flood the echoes of my consciousness while a cackling clap of thunder drowns out every rational thought. Then a sudden bolt of lightning illuminates a cavern in the…
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Lost {mind dump}
I am lost. Not like the TV series… although the parallels are undeniable; I am a viewer, a mere spectator, of my life. I’m watching the confusing twists and baffling turns of the plot, trying to figure out what has led to this point, and what else is in store. I start each episode with…
Serena Malcolm 