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Non-fiction moods
Jul. 3rd, 2013 10:56 pmI haven't been paying much attention to this blog at all and I'm sorry about that, for however many of you are actually reading! Life takes over. In particular, it's amazing how completely a mental illness can take over your life. I have GAD and depression (also pretty generalised!), and sometimes it's all I can do in a week to keep staggering out of bed. Sometimes it's all I can do to make myself get into bed in the first place.
The fact is, I'm never sure how much of my identity to reveal here and how much to hold back; ideally, I don't want to hold back, but if that's the case, then why use a pen name? But I've decided, at least, that my mental illness is going to be out there. It doesn't want that -- these things hide from scrutiny, from consideration, and hate being held up to the light. And society doesn't really want that either, because we so often fall into thinking of Us vs. Them, and mentally ill people are usually among "Them". But I'm a normal person. I'm no stranger than any of you. That person you admire, who is always smiling, always perfectly put together? Maybe she cries as soon as she locks the door on the world at night. Maybe she's gone past knowing how to cry. That person who embarrasses you by talking to themselves in public might be CEO of a company in a few years time. There's no easy division.
So, I'm not willing to hide or let myself be hidden. For the next week, or as long as I can, I'm going to post every day about something related to mental illness. A book review, a personal piece, fiction, non-fiction. Links to other people's posts about the same.
All of it will be posted under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA: you're free to share or remix this work, with attribution.
The first post in this series is a poem. I'm not sure how much explanation-sauce you like with your poetry (and there's some pun on sauce and source in there, too...), so I've placed some thoughts on what I wrote under the cut at the bottom.
Non-Fiction Mood
You know what that means.
Things close in.
There's no world beyond the wardrobe,
no rainbow road to take me away,
no fairy ring in the woods.
Friends are blank,
incurious,
go on their adventures alone.
Simile, metaphor, a perfect adjective,
all dry as a shrivelled heart
of someone who has never loved.
Tell me about wars,
the methylation of DNA,
the long slow excavation of a single tomb.
In the wonders of this world,
let me glimpse another.
( Explanation )
The fact is, I'm never sure how much of my identity to reveal here and how much to hold back; ideally, I don't want to hold back, but if that's the case, then why use a pen name? But I've decided, at least, that my mental illness is going to be out there. It doesn't want that -- these things hide from scrutiny, from consideration, and hate being held up to the light. And society doesn't really want that either, because we so often fall into thinking of Us vs. Them, and mentally ill people are usually among "Them". But I'm a normal person. I'm no stranger than any of you. That person you admire, who is always smiling, always perfectly put together? Maybe she cries as soon as she locks the door on the world at night. Maybe she's gone past knowing how to cry. That person who embarrasses you by talking to themselves in public might be CEO of a company in a few years time. There's no easy division.
So, I'm not willing to hide or let myself be hidden. For the next week, or as long as I can, I'm going to post every day about something related to mental illness. A book review, a personal piece, fiction, non-fiction. Links to other people's posts about the same.
All of it will be posted under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA: you're free to share or remix this work, with attribution.
The first post in this series is a poem. I'm not sure how much explanation-sauce you like with your poetry (and there's some pun on sauce and source in there, too...), so I've placed some thoughts on what I wrote under the cut at the bottom.
Non-Fiction Mood
You know what that means.
Things close in.
There's no world beyond the wardrobe,
no rainbow road to take me away,
no fairy ring in the woods.
Friends are blank,
incurious,
go on their adventures alone.
Simile, metaphor, a perfect adjective,
all dry as a shrivelled heart
of someone who has never loved.
Tell me about wars,
the methylation of DNA,
the long slow excavation of a single tomb.
In the wonders of this world,
let me glimpse another.
( Explanation )
