depression

PAIN

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The pain accelerates
no stepping back, no brakes
heart and lungs deflate
no words can translate
this suffering and hate
it’s just inside
aggravate
agitate

I’ve had these wounds so long
They’re antiquated
so I keep it all bottled up
it’s the same old, same old
and I know what comes
The accusations are sung
‘You don’t wanna try’
‘you can’t let go’

I can’t let go
I don’t know
Any other feeling
but this gaping fucking hole
deep inside of me
the abyss swallowed me
long ago
there was never anything
that could be left of me
cause I was never ever whole

Darkness NaPoWriMo poem 17

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These feelings can’t be contained
in a sustained note
Or a melody you wrote
The music doesn’t filter them
like they were meant to
Like you say, maybe I hold on too tight
to this darkness inside.

People say that darkness is good
Because you can see light
but I guess I must be blind.
I’m always trying to empty
this hollow space of expanded nothing
But it’s like it goes too deep
and has become the roots within

I’m constantly deflated
while this depression bloats

Agony: Poetry 4 for NaPoWriMo

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The tears make bokeh of the headlights
Careening around this corner
This is the only time we felt alive
Our skeletons waiting to discard this flesh
And death didn’t half look dashin’
The way he danced and took our breath

And when your lips fall from their hinges
In shock and agony
When the anguish rolls across your face
And your lungs expand with empty space
Know this was the ferocity
That pulled us to our knees
And we were only ever sorry
We couldn’t make it to the other side
Of the storm

The savageness of being human

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A contortion of years
Pass by on faces
For milliseconds at a time

Frankenstein’s skeletons within
Gargoyles screaming
Through the pores of our skin

Stories running through the wrinkles
Harbouring humour
Creasing at the thought of those we’ve lost

Skin sagging with the baggage
Being human
Consciousness a savage

Wreaking havoc
On our mammalian brains

Music is sadness

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Music, apparently it has the power to make people feel emotions.
Happy, sad, angry, sentimental etc.

But for me it doesn’t matter if it’s a happy song or a sad song; it all sounds depressing to me.
Music either makes me sad or sentimental but never happy.

The happier the song often, the sadder I become.
Because it’s a sound so cut off from anything I’ve ever felt, it sounds to me like delusion and desperation rather than happy and fun times.
Happy songs seem like tears should always mark their endings.

Because that’s what music is to me, it’s audio wallpaper over changes.
I blame TV and films for this. You know those scenes where two characters say their goodbyes for the last time, and then the music plays as the camera shows one of them walking away, getting further and further away as the credits start to scroll over the screen.

Or the music plays as someone has an epiphany that will be good in the long run, but at that moment it’s tinged with sadness, goodbyes, change.

Music is a vehicle for emotion; it moves it through you, emphasizes feelings you already had but weren’t necessarily aware of.
For me, music is a chariot for my sadness, something I listen to when I need my sadness to have sound.

But otherwise, music is too overwhelming because my feelings even in the silence are already too much.
To put music on for me is like going full throttle, no breaks.
Speeding to the inevitable crash.

I blame myself.

Matt Johnson2 Comments

It’s not secret on this blog that Depression takes me over a lot.

That my depression is a chronic reoccurring nightmare that not only tires me, but the people around me too.

Perhaps last year and still through to this year one major reason for such severe blips lately is the delayed impact of losing my best friend in January 2020 .

Yes she was ‘only a little budgie’ but she wasn’t ‘only a little budgie’ to me.

It didn’t help that I didn’t lose her in the usual way either. I lost her due to my own mistake, and that is something I find very hard to live with.

As it is I’m already a person prone to guilt, never mind a mistake where a little innocent life was ruined, or ended because of a mistake I made in the first place.

I had a dream last night that she came back home and then I lost he all over again, and throughout the whole dream I just kept hearing her calls but yet never finding where the calls were coming from.
And I’ve done that in real life too. I’ve heard calls I thought were her.
I’ve sat in the bathroom brushing my teeth and heard a call that sounded like it was coming from behind the extractor fan grid.
I’ve heard calls when walking out into the corridor from my flat.
I’ve heard calls I thought sounded like her when outside but it was probably just another bird that sounded a bit like her. Or maybe she sounded like them.

I see feathers from different birds that have been either moulted or stripped off from a predator and I always stop in my tracks and look more closely, looking for her blue colour in the feather.
Sometimes I see the blue colour and then I look around and say, ‘Charlie?’ As if the feather is hers and she’s somewhere close by.

But she’s never there. She’s never here.

Sometimes I look down at a feather for a bit too long, in the way of someone trying to get past me while keeping a distance.
I look and look, and look some more till I convince myself I see blue, her blue. And it’s hers.
But it isn’t.

Sometimes I look at the feather, look around and then say aloud, ‘I’m sorry, Charlie.’

It might have been a mistake, but I still blame myself.

It might not have been purposeful, but I still blame myself.

And I don’t know if there will ever come a time I won’t blame myself.

I have a budgie I ended up rescuing, he has learnt some funny phrases. And it makes me laugh.


But I still

Blame

Myself.