I am broken into a thousand tiny pieces I cannot find. Time slides and a year slips. Balancing the books, the calendar aggressively points out I’m reaching or have already reached the milestone first birthday of the State mandated psychiatric care I now romanticise. There was pleasing soft set yellow custard every other day. I did, however, fracture my mind obliterating myself to apathy. To most, those deemed clinically healthy, it’s not worth the free dessert, I guess, but imagine being the guy in the ward who set himself on fire over a heartbreak. Wrapped to the elbow in gauze he couldn’t cut his own dinner. Custard is a one handed spoon food.

The story probably begins and ends with my wilful blindness of loving mediocre men, call it a family curse. I can tell you, it’s not a subconscious Saviour complex calling me to help the infantile man child. I am just an idiot. My true fault is not a fixation on ‘potential’. He ain’t shit. 

My dance card is full up negotiating the failure to meet everyone’s expectations. Sorry, you guyz will have to take the back seat. I’m riding shot gun. Tight squeeze but we can all fit. You good over there? Plenty of space next to my inflated sense of ego, crushed daily by the disappointment of the choices, I chose over and over again. I am the one that truly expects better of myself. Plot twist.

The real world, where I sell my labour for shelter and food, corners me. Panting and wild, I write and write and write and cannot free myself of the oppression. Talent, once so reliable and assured, now replaced by dedication and determination tests my patience. I am worn to shreds. I run words through and produce sentence whispers. Fixation and frustration tremors through the core of this petite writers sense of self. Help! I’m in here. Overhead, the dark cloud, the suffocation of living, ruins all the days. Whoops, my suicidal ideation is showing. It’s ok, it’s not unfounded. It fucking sucks re-entering society after addiction to the point of mental collapse. 

I am a nuclear vessel of rage. An atomic bomb of split atoms fireworking into light destroying rays. The shadows of men, women and children burnt into the walls of silly little concrete cities bear witness to the words I unleash. I am so angry the implosion will kill me. Better yet, let the mushroom cloud murder them all. Let me explode.

The whites of my eyes are sharing secrets. The fine cracks of red spider web veins tell the observant I do not sleep. The slathered makeup on my face provides a magicians slight of hand protecting the pretty insomniac’s secret. Complimented for my face, vanity does not protect from bitterness. 

They will worry if they know, and when they worry, the custard dessert will follow. I am careful. I walk unnoticed, a weapon of mass destruction. A threat to myself and others. 

This is the loser’s game. He cheats and lies and steals and I do not retaliate. 

I am lost without my words.