Self worth is knowing
History is not the rent people pay to remain in your life
Self worth is knowing
Toxic people don’t deserve you
Self worth is knowing
If they’re not helping you grow, they’re stunting you
Self worth is knowing
You’re better than situations that make you feel like you’re not worth it
Self worth is knowing
Your feelings are valid and true

Accepting self worth is
Believing and acting on all of the above

deflated
but still somehow filled to the brim with self hatred
i love you
three words that were once so heavy
that now just feel so empty

selfish as a lover
and selfish in pain
i wish you knew i still mean it all the same

i don’t love you any less
just because my head is a mess

sabotaging anything good
because i’m scared to love someone this much
i can only apologise

but even in that i’m selfish
because who am i sorry for
me or you

i want you to hate me
i deserve it all
leave me in my pain
because i deserve to feel it

You didn't love her** because if you did you would have cherished her like she was the most beautiful and rarest of flowers you'd ever seen. You would have looked at her each and everyday with the same shine in your eyes and love in your smile as the first time your eyes met.
You didn't love her because things like "you're my gem" and "I couldn't imagine a second with out you" should have just stumbled out from between your lips as you laid beside her. When she did her makeup a little different, you would have noticed.
You didn't love her because when she met you her eyes lit up and her hips swayed to the harmony your hearts made but a few months down the line her eyes were lifeless and she didn't feel pretty enough to sway her hips. When you met her, you nearly fooled everyone that you were serious about this one.
You didn't love her because you couldn't see she needed to be spoiled with attention, compliments, love, care and time but instead you spoiled her love filled heart.
You didn't love her because you don't destroy things you love. You don't give people you love a temporary false reality to fuel your needs. You would not have jumped all over flower beds just to see them die so why did you jump all over her fragile heart just to see it break?
You didn't love her, you just didn't want to be alone.

there’s comfort in the sadness
and there’s bliss in the madness
peace and serenity is all that i need

Simplicity in easy things
And peace in the flutter of the leaves
Spring has sprung
The sun kisses my cheeks
Worries fall from my shoulders

How I revel in the blossom
The bloom and the growth
The persistence and perseverance
Season after season
Century after century
They continue to flourish

With the warmth comes an comforting gratitude
I’m not jealous of the flowers
I am taking a leaf out of their book
Admiring their petals
Accepting that their growth
Doesn’t make mine less phenomenal
In fact
I’m glad we weathered these seasons together
An alikeness in nature

it seems i always play the wrong move
like my life is a chessboard
my peers are somehow always ahead of me

convincing myself I can’t hate the player
only the game
so without working my way around the board
I will lose every time

I have lived my whole life
believing I was going in heavy with a queen
to wake up one day
and realise I was just another pawn

I lay in bed
Eyes wide
Heart racing
Mouth dry
Struggling to catch my breath
As my mind conspires against me

Will I live to see the day
That it isn’t true to say
This will always be the way?

Probably not
With that my hope rots

I wish my mind could pause for a minute
Let me gather myself
Make a plan
And get my **** together
The slither of hope that remains
Does nothing
But breed eternal misery

dear past me
I’m sorry I was so ******* you
I didn’t know it was going to turn out this way
you made things really difficult for me
it took me a long time to forgive you for that
but I think I’m ready
I’ve accepted that what happened to you
wasn’t your fault
the way the system failed you
wasn’t your fault

dear present me
I’m so grateful for all that you’ve done
the way you’ve turned life around and strived
I’m proud of you I know you need to hear that
you’re amaze me and you’re not perfect yet
but you’re healing and you’re trying to get there
what happened to you shaped you and I hope
even if it takes you your whole life or being
you will flip the script and use it constructively

dear future me
I hope you’re happy and secure
if money is still a struggle for you don’t lose hope
hold on to every little thing you have
because in the end they are what matter most

I met you in my dreams
you said “baby, what’re you doing here?”
I said “I came for you.”

From the distance I see your face drop
Was I not supposed to miss you?
Is expecting to kiss you, wrong?

I expected the darkness to fade when my eyes opened
but the darkness is my life without you
this is my reality now

i still see you in my dreams
and it would hurt less to be asleep with you
than to be awake without you

i hope the blue in your eyes
haven’t lost the twinkle
i pray the dimples in your spine
still feel like home to my fingertips

in naive optimism
i hold onto hope
that maybe nothings changed

i don’t know what this means
though i can tell you i love you
and i promise you it’s true

I am infatuated by the fact that I should be ignoring these feelings
but they are simply too strong to put aside

Even though I know it is hopelessly and unjustifiably wrong
I am so drawn to taking the risk
obviously I know I never would

Doesn’t make me feel like less of a ****
For considering it in the first place

Hello
I have known you five minutes and you already trivalise sunsets because I would much rather stare at the chaotically confusing combustion of gorgeously warm orange and yellow tones that is you
Hello
I am already head over heels for the way my fingertips feel as they run across the so beautifully situated indentations in your silky soft cheeks
Hello
I already crave the homely feeling you bring to my heart when you're around, so delicately and innocently embracing everything I so hate about myself in the palm that is yours carelessly without an intention whatsoever
Hello
You are the kindest and sweetest soul I have ever come so near and so close to catching, so kind it has already revived things in myself I thought had died
Hello
When I am with you I feel the stars collide in my stomach, I feel like running through the rain and singing snow patrol if I just lay here, because there is no one I'd rather forget the world with
Hello
There are more things I enjoy about you, than there are stars in the night sky. I hope this sounds somewhat like a film, because that's what it feels like
Hello
I think about us a lot even though us doesn't really exist yet
Hello
I have never looked at anyone the way I look at you. My eyes lock onto you as if you are the most beautiful piece of art I have ever seen. Which is ironic, because I've always lacked the expected ability to appreciate the finest paintings in the finest galleries but somehow you are my Pablo Picasso and where ever we are together is our Tate Modern
Hello
I think you bring out the most beautiful poet I have hidden deep within, burried by years of melancholy and pent up anger. But when I met you that slowly subsided, as I was delicately filled with love and harmony
Hello
Please never leave me lingering in the unknown because you have made me weak.
Weak for the touch of your hand on my inner thigh as we drive
Weak for the sound of your heart agressively palpitating in my ear, distracting my only from the beauty that is you
Weak for the way you make me feel like I belong somewhere
Weak for the way you hold me close and make my problems feel as small as I am next to you
Weak for the way I already have so much to thank you for
Weak for the way you have been nothing but sweet, and I'm a sucker for cake
Hello
You are artwork and I could admire you forever
Hello
Please don't break my heart
Because you're the first person
To have the power to do so
And that is not how
I want this poem to end

He's not you, no one is.
But I will still look for the pieces of myself that I lost in you,
in anyone who will give me so much as a chance.
Because there is no one who can fill the hole that you left in my soul,
there is no one that can make my chest feel less hollow
but there are so many people who can help me forget
and even more people willing to fill the space you left vacant on the left hand side of my bed.

He's not you
but when I needed you, you had gone
when all I needed was some loving
he was there and you wasn't.
No one will ever be able to take away what you gave to me.
You gave me the power to be a better person,
but I only ever wanted to be a better person for you
I only ever wanted to be this weak version of myself
if there was someone to hold me together when the glue comes unstuck.
And maybe that's unfair, and maybe that's selfish
that I genuinely needed your presence in my life to feel safe and to feel wanted.
But I only ever wanted it to be you.

He's not you
but he has that same effect on me that you did.
The power to make me feel like a person again,
the power to help me forget the shitstorm that is reality
and only focus on us and what we had in that second.
The difference is
he was just someone I went to bed with.
You were always there when I woke up.

He's not you
but he still breaks my heart just the same.
Although this time I don't even want him to, I still feel a slight tightening in my chest when he looks at me with the "I can't love you" look in his eyes.
You used to look at me with this pure "I can't love you" look in your eyes,
and when I'd look back at you and say "what baby?" with my eyes
you'd just say "well at least not now, not yet, not like this" just with a softly spoken moment of eye contact.
I'd just look into the distance and try and find faults because even when there was nothing perfect about us,
I'd still look at you with all the love in my eyes
I'd still tell everyone "it's nothing, she will come back".
And every time you did.
Every time I was right.
Only the last time you came back, you told me you were going for good.

He's not you
because to him I am just a ****
and I know that.
But to you I was something more
only I hope that.

He's not you
because we spend a lot of time together.
Whereas I hardly saw you.
I preferred that, I never told you
but I loved how we did things.
I loved that we didn't speak all the time,
and when we spent time together each others presence was enough .
I have never been so content with something as simple as a finger through my hair,
I have never looked at someone in such awe.

He's not you
because he doesn't have the power to break my heart.
And even if he did
he wouldn't.
Only you did,
and you did.

He's not you
because when I'm off my face at 3am
lonely, drunk and confused
he's there
and you're not

and in the same way trees bloom, only to wither a season of two later
she steals your heart, to hold it and drop it a week or two later
and in the same way the sun permanently positions on you, only to shine on someone else
she left me empty

now I am overflowing, she could take and take and take; that I would still be so full

A sadness so heavy
It's worn like a winter coat
It makes your chest tight
Until feel like your dragging it along
Is this where it belongs?

It sits on your eyelids in the mornings
Desperately trying to cling them shut
Only to sit on the lashes later that night
To stretch them wide

It consumes your spirit
Until you feel like flesh an blood
As if your skeleton
Was eaten by your sadness
Making it nearly impossible to get out of bed

It clings to your finger tips
Making you shake constantly
As if you're anxious
Or fragile
But that only confuses them more

It lays on your appetite
Until you're running dry on energy
And no explanation
Because no one can see the demons
Dancing on your stomach lining

It re-wires your thoughts
Until you're no longer yourself
Making you think you're lost
And completely self absorbed
Into your own sorrow

It climbs into your skin
Making you itch like an addict
Feeling uncomfortable
And paraiod in the comfiest of places

It hides behind your eyes
No matter how good you are at hiding it
Regardless of how much you smile
It doesn't matter if you're bubbly
One look in your eyes
And the truth is told

Once you take your sadness somewhere
It embeds itself in the location
When you go back the demons
Will scream at you rhymically
As you drag yourself through the door
Like the church bells chiming on Sunday morning

The problem with sadness is
It becomes comfortable
Somehow it writes itself into your personality
It prints itself to your skin
And it clings on to you forever more

The depressive thoughts will stop
But the profuse shaking
Battle wounds
Bags under your eyes
The memories in your favourite places
The way you think
The foods you eat
And the weight on your shoulders
Become a part of you

Not only does the sadness follow you
you follow it

I wrote the pages of my diary on your skin
With every touch
you drew something from within
It isn’t much
to think you mean something to someone
until you realise
you never really meant anything at all

soon you’ll be another stranger with all my secrets

emptiness is what bleeds you to death when it cuts you
but if you run around with a blade in your hands
you can’t put the blame on anyone but yourself
when you find the blame driving the blade into your chest

human beings are desperately destructive
and although i long for the honour of
being collateral damage
it just isn’t to you anymore

i think about you a lot
not just in the night when im alone
or on the bus on the way home from work
i think about you when i shouldn’t
when i should be thinking about him
or when i should have forgotten you

people that make impressions tend to leave impressions
where you make me remember you, you also make sure the patches of my skin that you caressed, could never forget you

your silky vibrant smile
lit up my world in ecstasy
your velvet flowy hair
completed the spaces between my fingers

sometimes you meet someone
and you’re really not sure why
other than to remember them
because their soul matched the beauty
that their face held
and what on gods green earth
is more precious than that

i can’t help falling in love with you

you hold my heart in your hand
and you chose to protect it

i want to feel you grip me tight
making sure i feel, just how right it is

together we unite
to create our own solidarity

if we don’t end up together
destiny is a lie

i would do anything to go back to mediocre misery on a daily basis
because without you i am drowning in depression

I met someone once, right for me
The only problem was
He wasn’t ready to settle down for me

I met someone once, cute as can be
The catch was
Nothing about it was the way we wanted it to be

I met someone once, who made me feel safe
The fault was
I couldn’t prove I felt safe

I met someone once, I got along with him great
The downfall was
Together, we couldn’t figure out how to be great

I met someone once, he held me close
The dilemma was
He just never knew how to stay close

I met someone once, now I’m scared
The fact might be
I might not love anyone the same again. I’m scared

I don’t want to get in over my head
and I definitely don’t want to sound cliché
but you know them summer vibes
when you’re making new friends
and that one
that just really makes a print on you

every time you see them you flood with euphoria
their laugh is like ecstasy intoxicating with every giggle
and you find yourself thinking about them
maybe a little more than you should

you’re not sure why
but you can’t deny it
why would you?
it’s clearer than a blue sky

you intoxicate me with happiness
you dance with my heart
and you are so pure

I adore you
I’m not sure in what way
all I know is I want you to stay

i am growing a garden
i tell my therapist
one with no gates or guard
one where people can come and go as they please

a garden where love is no where to be seen
just over flowing with want and need
and people with no regards for others

a garden where solitude and sanity are things people prefer not to have
and everyone is tired and sad

a garden where the flowers are used to violation and disrespect
and it's all they've ever known

a garden that is actually not beautiful at all
it is used and abused
but still looks beautiful to everyone else

a garden that is my body
now do you see?

dusk and dawn
are closely connected
in the same way as the sun and the moon

they are like ships in the night
crossing paths but never intertwining
so closely related
yet so separate in turn

you and I
we’re not too different
from dusk and dawn
or the sun and the moon

perfectly compatible
only when in separate rooms

there’s no freedom in perfection
which is why we’re living in liberty

lost in chaos
lost in space
lost in confusion
lost in your face

all i want is to only need you
but it seems i wasn’t built that way
when everything seems blue
it’s only you that can take it away

lay my head on the hay
lay my head on any other man
lay my spirit down
and my heart in your hands

you own me
without owning me
because it’s the ownership
that’ll take you away from me

i drank so much alcohol i forgot where i was
but i couldn't forget where i wanted to be

it’s strange to be happy
for the first time in as long as you can remember
helplessly optimistic making everyday sunny

surrounded by good vibes
and only the kindest most selfless people
remembering what it’s all about

truly absorbing the goodness of life
the love of family members
and the feeling of security

i’ve never been here before
in this building where there’s safety on the shelves
consistent happiness hanging in the halls
breathtaking moments you wish you could frame

i’ve never been here before
but i’d love to stay if i could
i’m content here
people are kind
and understanding

i am a stranger to the village of happiness
but this cottage i’ve built
is one i hope to keep forever

loneliness
will bleed you to death
when it cuts you

Do you know what it feels like
To feel so alone surrounded by people
Not just any people
People you love
People that are your family

Walking around and only hearing the solemn sound of your feet talking to you
Because no one else makes the effort
To say something as simple as hello

The loneliness is so intense
It is like you are literally invisible

The ugly truth that is coming home for nothing more than to wash, eat and sleep
But even when you don’t come home to do those things
No one bats an eyelid

Do you know what it feels like
To feel like a lodger in your own home

bad men
will treat you like you mean nothing to them
but want you enough to have you

troubled men
will know you’re everything to them
but not enough to want you

good men
will give you everything
and want you forever

you will attract the kind of man
the man man is drawn to your type
with the aim of fulfilling your prophecy

vulnerable women get bad men
sad women get troubled men
great women get good men

and i guess i’m the sucker
because well
i’m the saddest woman i know

the wrong one
will find you in peace
and end up leaving you in pieces

only the right one
can find you in pieces
and guide you to peace

the cold breeze
that is your absence
wakes me like a shake
in the middle of the afternoon
on a December day
the emptiness is so loud
when I wake up hungover
having drunk all night
to forget the mistakes I make
calling out to you
praying you respond
from the left side of my bed
the pain of turning
realising you aren’t there
smelling you on my pillow
shaking my head
and the pound falls
I have no right to want you

words echo emptily
I’ve only got myself to blame
for the reasons I can’t love you
when I made decisions that hurt you
I have all the reasons to need you
but no grounds when I can’t make you stay
I have no right to miss you
when I pushed you so far away
all night I’m wide awake
fighting the urge to call you
I long to hear your voice
but I have only me to blame
for the choices I made

the night breaks to dawn
and the cold hugs me
comforted by the regret
sleeping in my pain
in my unmade a bed of roses

the times that i hate myself the most
are the times i wish i could be my best

i wish that for you
i could be a better me

the moment it shatters
is when i see how beautiful it was

it wasn’t supposed to happen like this
everything is going so wrong

i am hard to love
and i am broken inside

but all of my pieces are loving you
loving you with all that they are

Parts of my brain killed themselves as a survival tactic and I had no idea why. I woke up one day and I was less than myself, parts of me missing with no subsequence. I know I will grow again but I will never be the same. There are nights when things I cannot even remember, paralyse me in tears and fears on my bedroom floor. These are the nights I realised I was wrong about where the monsters lay, I was lead to believe they live underneath our beds. To my surprise, they are the ones who enter our beds; uninvited. I am jumping from breakdown to breakdown. It’s like playing the floor is lava, just with my sanity. Sometimes, I am struck with full awareness of all my adolescent traumas and a lifetime of wounds cut me all at once.

I am changing.
But the idea of me that I want to put out into the world isn’t.
Who I want to be and the parts of myself that I don’t like are conflicting.
I stand firm on foundations that feel crumbly at the fact my morals feel proud.
I worry that I think too much about what others think.
Other times I worry I don’t think enough about that at all.
I’m scared that if I’m honest about how I feel I’ll be met with judgement.
For no real reason, other than what I feel is anxiety.
My feelings have no solid ground, so of course they are easy to judge.
Does that really mean that they are judging me though?
By that logic, are my morals really mine or just my anxieties of what people will think?
The few things I used to take pride in being, I might not be anymore.
So who am I?
Will the people who loved me then, love me now?
Anxiety is a feral hungry beast.
Pacing and pattering through my veins.
Thumping and crashing in my heart like a misplaced 808.
“I’m really not an anxious person.”
Shakily fall from between my lips, reluctantly.
As I realise, I’m anxious to even admit that im anxious.
Am I supposed to have life figured out in my almost mid twenties?
Probably not.
Do I feel like I should have a vague sense of direction about it?
Maybe.
Although I’m battling with the idea that no one ever really knows what they want to do and people just get stuck.
So maybe I’m the lucky free thinker.
Or maybe I’m the delusional directionless unemployed rambler that people avoid at pubs.
Good job I avoid pubs.
I thought I was a powerful, political, before my time, feminist.
Who was just “too awake for the world before me”.
Miserable because my eyes are open too wide, that sort of thing.
Identifying as a realist.
But maybe, just maybe, I’m just a miserable old *******.
Creaky kneed, bleak thoughted.
I never used to think that much.
Well I did, I just never categorised myself as an overthinker.
I was wrong.
I just overthought about irrelevant things, out of my control.
Unimportant to spiral over.
Now that I and the people I love are centre to my anxious internal ramblings, i realise just how wrong.
I thought growing up would entail control of your mind.
Coping mechanisms.
Maybe growing up is realising coping is just getting on with it.
That prospect has never sat right with me.
“Queen of holding on to things” my mother often refers to me as.
Hoping to god I’ll learn to one day “park”, as she would say, just one of the things that make me miserable.
On any of the number of days I choose to let it pop back up.
Which would feel like everyday.
If you catch me on a “everything is bothering me day” I’d tell you I’m playing whack a mole with everything bad that’s ever happened in my life.
And although I know how it goes, I lose every time.
Maybe that’s because I’m so dedicated to my hobby.
Not a healthy one, I have none of those.
I’m referring to my insane ability to play basketball with chucking my feelings into my **** it bucket.
Until of course I realise that the **** it bucket isn’t looking so **** it anymore.
When you’ve felt so much for so long does contentness ever feel less like emptiness?
Does the peace ever get quieter?
Do the problems get realer or do we just stop creating them?
The questions I’d have asked myself a decade ago take a soul-wrenchingly, starkly, different tone.
So am I ungrateful?
Am I ungrateful that my biggest problem is anxiety?
My biggest problem is fake problems.
How 13 year old me would laugh in my face and spit venom with the tone.
I went through so much to get to where I am now.
To feel like I cheated?
Like I somehow don’t deserve it?
Not to say I earned it, but why would I deserve it less than anyone else?
I am aware.
I always have been.
I see the flaws in my thinking
The excruciatingly humane flaws in my self.
People fault me on seeing every one of their flaws, and pointing it out.
But how do I stop thinking them?
“Being aware is the first step.”
Yes.
Everyone finishes there.
Is there a second step?
Me and a few other million people are wondering.
Nothing else in life is like that.
You’re given an equation.
It’s explained, you get an answer.
It’s right, or it’s wrong.
Mentally we are left exhausting all the options.
Flaw after flaw, fault after fault, lapse after lapse.
For what?
No closer to answers just an opportunity to do it wrong differently next time.
Exhausted from thinking
The thoughts are chaotic like 5 point round abouts.
I am terrified to verbalise them.
I don’t know what I want.
Being heard isn’t enough anymore.
I don’t want solutions.
What are we left with?
Nothing practical.
Just a wish and a dream of one day feeling differently.
Being content with being content.
Accepting serenity as peace, not a moment to be ruined.
There is a paradise out there, I just haven’t met her and neither has anyone I know.
Does that make me sound like a believer?
Like actualisation is tiered with heaven?
As I get older, the more I realise that it just might be exactly that, for atheists.
Try as you might, I don’t believe it’s possible in life.
I’m upset that in my realism and internalised honesty, that I forced my brain to block out so much of my life.
I focused on the negative things and considered myself to be being true to history and my past.
Remembering is important.
Yes.
I wish I remembered the name of my favourite song on the dance mat.
Not how upset I was when I found out it had been thrown away.
I wish instead of getting so hung up on how people left, why people left or how terrible they are for leaving, that I remembered how good it was to know them.
I’m worried that my brain is not who I want it to be.
I’m scared that everything I hate in this word is an externalisation of everything I hate in myself.
I’m anxious that all of my darkest thoughts, are the truest testament to who I am as a person.

Only in the madness
do you realise the sadness
is a part of you
with it without it, life seems blue

Only in the mist of loving yourself
do you see the importance of your health
whether it’s physical or mental
always be gentle

Only in the uncontrollable frustration
do you forget about the causation
don’t get caught up in the displacement
the anger doesn’t pay rent

Only when you are satisfied
do you realise you could have died
your mental health isn’t a joke
and it’s not as replaceable as oak

I’ve watched my wildest dreams
disappear from in front of me

feelings I thought were solid
are melting through my fingertips

I’m trying desperately to hold on
take me back to when

we were living in freedom
falling helplessly in love

these memories at times seem so hard to find
and at others so hard to blind

to love
and be loved
are not the same
but they can look awful similar

you can love
and not know how to love

and you can be loved
but not know how to love

neither one
is more painful than the other

both will damage
your heart
mind
and soul
beyond repair

i guess in the end
we start thinking about
the beginning

when a flower is cut from its stem
it longs to remember the day it rooted itself

however at that time, on that day
that was the hardest thing the flower had ever had to do

flowers
they don’t chose
they are just born with this resilience

and as a result
they grow from the dirt they’re left in

so can you

I grew up in a chaotic household you see
seemed like the only means to silence

here we are now
10 or so years down the line
the chaos is in my head
the silence is buried in my scars
my regrets more present than they were in the past
love has never even seen my bed
i am wired like a time bomb

funny
I always imagined
that by this point
the silence would be in my head
the chaos buried in my scars
the regrets forgotten like high school rumours
love prominent in my veins like electricity in wires
and a hindrance of joy

but as it would seem
life isn’t at all simple
and you were the fuel on my drive to insanity

there was a time
when we’d just laugh
and let happiness radiate

the reality that is adult life
is just disappointing
and not as thrilling as I’d hoped

I’m just trying to
fall in love with
my life again