The two most enchanting things you can do for me
are to use a semi-colon correctly
and to understand mine.
Written on Saturday 27th December, 2014 at 21:02
Tag: lynch syndrome (Page 5 of 6)
I am walking by a dark building
What’s inside is bad news.
Why must I always go in?
Self-exploration ensues.
What’s inside is bad news
But I can never just walk past.
Self-exploration ensues
But I don’t have all the answers.
I can never just walk past.
Why must I always go in?
I don’t have all the answers.
I am walking by a dark building.
Written on Tuesday 23rd December, 2014 at 23:01
OH MY GOD
I started off this poem asking why I always go inside the metaphorical dark building even though I know it’s awful inside, and saying I don’t know why I do this and that I don’t have all the answers to my questions about myself… and I ended the poem by answering myself – why must I always go in? because I don’t have all the answers, so I keep going back in until I find them. Holy crap, I’ve just accidentally figured out something about myself by writing a poem. I love that. I adore trying to psychoanalyse myself!
[This isn’t the best thing I’ve ever written, but I thought I’d have a go at writing a pantoum for a change, and I’m so happy with the result, not because it’s well-written, but because having some kind of revelation about myself through poetry is one of the best feelings ever!]
#1
“Are you okay? You’re wearing that look
you sometimes wear when you’re
listening to My Chemical Romance’s
The Black Parade album. ”
#2
“Worse things have happened but it’s
okay if you don’t always remember that.
Nothing bad will happen just because
you sometimes forget to be grateful.”
#3
“I understand you wholly – I know why
you feel and act the way you do, and
I feel the same way.”
#4
“Now you know I feel the same, you
can take a break from being emo.
You have to try.”
#5
“You do this to yourself.”
[because I can’t put this on anyone. I can’t
expect anything from other people;
it’s only fair to rely on myself.]
Written on Monday 22nd December, 2014 at 20:55
Further to my last post, this is my attempt at writing something cheerful. It’s kind of happy and unhappy at the same time, but at least it’s some sort of transition, and I’m happy with it. I love being able to be so honest in my writing and share it with whoever comes across it.
Happiness can come out of bad things,
you just have to squeeze the bad thing really hard
and look really carefully at the mess that’s been made.
It might be hard to find the happiness,
but if you don’t at least try to look
then you’ll never have a chance of seeing it at all.
Since I was given my bad thing I’ve spent a long time
turning it over in my hands, putting it down,
picking it back up, staring at it from all angles,
so now when I look at my good things they look
even better than they ever have, and I feel extra glad
that I have them, but at the same time extra scared
that one day I won’t have them anymore.
My appreciation is love, wrapped up in terror,
wrapped in a heightened sense of the mortality
of everything and everyone, but essentially
it’s very warm and soft with a hard, tough centre
made up of too much knowledge of the world.
And I say I feel 17 instead of 27, but sometimes
I feel wise beyond my years in ways I never wanted
but at the same time am grateful for,
like I’m grateful for [you].
Written on Saturday 20th September, 2014 at 23:54
The printer beeps with every
button pushed and I know it’s
the printer but that steady sound
makes me feel like I’m in a hospital.
No –
I don’t feel like I’m in a hospital,
I feel like I’m in hospital
and now I’m trapped and bound
by a memory,
so severe it rips me from here
and deposit me elsewhere
where medical machinery beeps.
Written on Friday 19th December 2014 at 22:44
I have nothing to write about.
Everything is going right. I am alive.
Nobody died today, not in my world.
I haven’t been thinking about it,
and if I’m not thinking about it,
I’m generally not feeling tortured,
so what is there to do?
I cope with life’s mundane problems
by repeating to myself
“worse things have happened,
worse things have happened”
and so even if I think I’m not
thinking about it, I’m still
sort of thinking about it.
But that’s okay.
Worse things have happened.
We’re still alive.
Written on Tuesday 9th December, 2014 at 23:19
I’m not allowed to have regrets
but if I could go back in time
I would tell my 22 year old self
that it’s okay to cry and to be scared.
If I could go into the future
I would tell my 30 year old self
to go back in time and tell my 26 year old self
that it’s okay to have regrets, actually.
Sitting in hospital waiting for my CT scan today, I wondered to myself whether I write too much about one particular thing. Maybe I should write poetry about something else, because it will get boring writing about the same thing all the time and people will get bored of reading it.
But considering I don’t even know if anyone is reading anyway, there’s little point in pandering to an imaginary audience! And if I have to force myself to write about something that I’m not really feeling, it’s not going to be fun, it’s just going to be a chore. Writing is difficult enough sometimes without turning it into a chore. (It’s okay to admit it’s difficult to feel motivated to write sometimes, isn’t it? Yes.)
So scratch that. I think I have to just write what I feel like I need to write. Because writing isn’t just for enjoyment, for developing a craft or for entertaining other people – it’s for self-expression as well. I cant just forbid myself to write about something. So I think I’ll continue to write whatever I want to, until I’ve got everything out of my system and feel like writing about something else. There’s no point in compromising – first and foremost, we should write for ourselves.
Cannula:
Cannulook?
Not when they put it in
Not when it pierces the skin
Not when you know this is just the beginning.
Cannula:
Cannulaugh?
There must be something funny here.
But no; affix that blank expression to your face,
remove all trace of human. No-one must know
you’re actually feeling something.
Cannula:
Cannuleave?
Not without getting rid of this
and even then, you never really leave
this place, this bed, this mess
inside your head.
Cannula:
Cannulive?
Not with this,
not without remembering,
not without wincing and covering
the crooks of your elbows
(was it the crook of the elbow?
It is hard to remember, my brain is
trying to protect me that much.
Not enough.)
Cannula:
Cannulament?
Always, and probably too much.
Cannula:
Cannunot
give me another cannula, please?
I had to go for a CT scan today. So, that’s what this was. (Written yesterday in “anticipation”.)
I found a rap I wrote two years ago! The only rap I’ve ever written, in fact. So I thought I’d edit it and post it here – edit it because it was a bit rough, and post it because even though it was written two years ago I still feel more or less the same. Talk about lack of progress!
The rap is about something that I write about quite a lot – more for my own sanity than for anything else. The extremely short summary is that in 2010 I had my bowel removed due to bowel cancer, and since then I’ve found out that there is something in my family called Lynch syndrome, which is a hereditary condition that makes it more likely that a person will get certain types of cancer at some point in their lives. Cue plenty of screening. On the face of it, reading this potted summary, maybe it sounds like it should be no big deal – I had the offending organ whipped out, everything has been okay since, and the whole genetics situation is being monitored. It’s not that simple. Sometimes – not all the time – it’s really hard to deal with, and I struggle with fear, anxiety, flashbacks, and on top of all that, judging myself for it. I’m trying to work on that last one. So, I write.
I’ve gotten to a point where I’ve been wrestling with whether to shut up and try to forget about it and avoid thinking or talking about it, or to accept that it’s now a part of me and the way I define myself as a person, and be okay with that. I’m trying to do the latter, because it’s going to stay with me whether I like it or not, so better to control it and own it than to make myself feel bad about the way I feel. Yes, I feel like this. Yes, this is me now, and yes, this is how I express it. So here’s the rap:
I’m a little bit more Santa’s grotto than ghetto,
‘Til you see the thoughts in my head I find so hard to let go,
So many feelings I can’t control in my mind’s shadow,
The darkest crevices are reserved for those dark demons
That raise their heads, race out, take over, there’s no freedom
For anything else to enter when everything else is devoured,
All peace of mind eaten even after all this time,
Maybe I exaggerate, maybe I just want people to know,
Maybe if other people think about it too – maybe then I’ll let go.
It’s taken all this time just to open up and own it,
I’ve had all the encouragement in the world to clam up and not show it,
I don’t know what people think, maybe I should have outgrown it,
But I gotta talk about it cuz I don’t know what else to do with it,
Where I do put this thing, put it in a box, hide it out the way?
I’d just get up and open it, stare at it every day,
Well what would you expect, if you went through what I did?
Would you just pick yourself up, say ok, never mind, or would you hide?
Would you try so desperately to get rid of all these thoughts,
Wear your body out, I don’t know, take up sports?
I don’t punish my body enough for what it did to me,
Get up on the treadmill and sometimes just feel like screaming,
“You did this to me”, these scars, although I learn to love them,
I really wish they were gone, wish they had never come to be,
Wish you had never visited me,
I wasn’t expecting this, one in three but never happening to me,
First you take my brother, if you think you’re gonna take me too you’re wrong,
Rid me of a sibling I’d never even known, never will know, will never understand
All the pain of my family like I’m just an outsider,
Do you remember when – no
He always used to say – no
Shut up, I can’t hear this, all the things they know, I can’t listen to,
So come on and tell me what I’m supposed to do when you try coming for me too,
I just punish myself, punish my body for failing me,
Even though I dig these scars eventually, they make me me,
On second thought, I don’t always mind this, gotta say I’m getting used to it,
Found my cross to bear, sure makes me angry but I’ll take the hit,
Don’t know what I’d do if it happened again, the same I did the first time round,
People say I’ve been so strong and brave, I didn’t let it drive me underground,
But what else do you do? I didn’t do a thing you wouldn’t,
I don’t see what other options there were, I couldn’t
Imagine it going down any other way
I don’t have super human powers, it just ended up this way,
Just by luck, by chance, there’s no fate or destiny,
No miracles or oh, this was all just meant to be,
I’ll take my pride and walk away, take this as a part of me,
Show everyone what I’ve been through and I don’t care who sees,
Maybe it’s attention seeking, maybe I need an outlet,
But since it’s sticking with me I won’t let anyone else forget.
