a sad poem and a happy conclusion x
It’s Mental Health Awareness week this week, and while that might be a trite and kind of reductive initiative that ultimately serves to distract us from the underlying issue that it is our broken society that’s truly fucking up our minds, like how you distract a child who has grazed their knee with a sweet (retro, right?!), it’s also massively and perpetually important to talk about mental health, and mental illness, and what that means and looks like and manifests. It’s important, and it’s also freeing. There’s safety in sharing - it’s a cliché and it’s cheesy (I am nothing if not cheesy, tysm), but it is true. Text ur friends and ur family, tell them you’re on their side and you love them. Love urself when you can too. It all matters.
I watched a show by Brigitte Aphrodite about 5 years ago, at a tiny theatre pub in I think Hackney? somewhere, titled My Beautiful Black Dog (I saw that it was on in Crack magazine, cause I’m hip n happenin u know, and went cause they’d described it as ‘The Mighty Boosh on acid’) and it fucking destroyed me. It was about depression, and love, and it was the first time I’d ever even known I felt like that too. I cried so much, and I was on my own, that the older couple next to me on the front row of plastic school chairs gently touched my arm and said “Are you ok?” I cried because Brigitte Aphrodite was expressing feelings I hadn’t understood and still couldn’t understand and because it touched me somewhere deep deep in my heart. I feel everything in my chest - I still do, even 5 years on. When I get upset, it feels like my chest is collapsing. Like it’s being hollowed out, excavated. Maybe it means something in a culture, or a tradition, or a fable I don’t know of? Maybe your soul is deep in the centre of your chest, and maybe mine is more exposed to the elements. Like a lil oyster, shell open and soft centre on show. I didn’t know there was a reason, or a rhyme, for that feeling. We’re all still learning it, I guess.
I’m sharing here a poem I wrote a long time ago - 2019, which feels even longer ago because we have all been caged up for a million years at the mercy of a relentless virus. It’s rly sad, because I was rly sad. The happy bit is, though: I’m not sad anymore - I’d go as far as to say I’m happy, even (that was a lil joke as actually, I am walking on a cloud every day of my goddamn life!!!! Because I am so lucky and so loved and I love so much <3). I feel like 2019 was a dream for me and not in a good way, and now, right now, it’s like a dream but in a good way. Finally!!!! When I wrote this poem, I don’t think I could see any light anywhere. I was trapped underwater, like a budget myth. Now there is light all around. I promise it gets better. It’s always ok in the end - and if it’s not ok, it’s not the end. Keep moving, I’ve got ur back xxx
This was a quick 1 cause I just wanted to drop in n share!! I’ll be back ASAP with some high quality content on either tarot or restaurant outfits - lemme know if u have a preference in the comments or on email or on insta <3 big love & here are some MH resources if u want or need xxxxxxxx