tea poem

On a come down you were so sweet and kind
Drip Drop honey on my soul.

Sleep scattered eyes with crumble corners in early mornings
you cupped your hands around my heart and squeezed with quicken beats.
But not too quick like coffee caffeine hits.

Crisis slams ugly punches on my chest so I clutch you
stand with you. Suck life from you.

Between pages You're with me.
Tea

I talk over your steam about healing
feelings.

Smoke cigarettes and laugh-not with you-near you.
But tea, you're always there.

Recharge from your hot breath
pumping and warmth like bath tubs after storms.

Tea.
I'm sure I owe you a slither of my sanity.
If I had any.
Instead you have this poem from me. 

reunited

I’m told the ratio of recovery is 3 to 1 by a man at a Sunday evening meeting ‘one person dies, one person is in a relapse, one person is in recovery’, he says this with a sadness and smile that tells me ‘you’re doing okay’, but he sees needles and public toilets and pain in his mind. And I am tense in anticipation. Because nothing in that ratio is solid, but death. This is the reality. Although I think the real statistic is 1-10 chance of recovery.  Sadly, neither feel wrong, and that makes me ache. And so, I go, back to rehab for the day, the annual reunion. My first trip back.

We listen to music, talk loudly, silly singing and laughing, and bubbles in our tummies as we drive. It feels like it’s the only right thing to do, that there is only one way the car can go. Outside are the hills of Gloucestershire, I know this drive, something skips in my soul. There is coal in my chest that can’t be swallowed, it’s indigestible. As the roads get smaller and we get closer I am somewhere between me and who I was two years ago; I’m sitting between the two, sweaty palms and hospital stained skin, and clean and serenity. Squashed and suddenly nameless in thoughts. We turn in and I breathe deeply, pull together the two parts of me, squeeze them into each other. The tires roll over the gravel in that beautifully familiar sound. We walk up to the happy and joyful, who offer tea and name badges. We’re early, we wait. Sip tea under the marque that looks like too grand, too out of place, a sour thumb. It sits at the bottom end of the car park. The rest looks the same. It’s how I remember it but it’s shrunk. All the memories are still here, they’re right where I left them.

As people drift in the bells start to ring in my brain, with ‘it’s you,’ and everyone begins to feel like family again. We swap stories, talk of therapists we feared and ones who fell asleep. We are naughty school children with giggles and cigarettes. We laugh at the tedium and the tears we shared. The changes are huge, ‘not fast car- big house’ huge. But happiness huge, ‘I have my family back’ huge, ‘I walked the dog’ huge, ‘my life in now manageable’ huge. ‘I don’t want to die’ huge. One mother shares about how she’s now a grandmother, how she couldn’t be happier since her daughter left treatment three years ago. A woman talks about the old parts of herself she’s learnt to live with and ignore. Someone who’s voice was once stuck in their chest, picks up the microphone and talks of becoming a man, studying at university, being free from pain, being brave. And I am so proud to be part of this.

 There are faces that are mending, hopeful and full. Chubby where sullen cheeks once sat on grey sunken bones. Fresh with colour, eyes alive again. None of us want to go back there, back to the madness. We eat, spread ourselves busy across this space that now looks so small. Children play on a bouncy castle that sits on a piece of grass where I had sat and wept in hopelessness. Where I had felt this pain was forever and it was always. I scan the faces, the faces of the people who have dug themselves out. Spat out the dirt and scrubbed off the soil. And have come back here on a Saturday afternoon to keep fighting.

Some have relapsed and come back. My self-included, I’m almost six months again. We all say- ‘this time I’m doing something different, this time I have hope.’ That’s what today’s about- hope. The hope we find in each other. Because we know how dangerous this game of life can be. But today we are fighting. And it’s beautiful.

Back to Bristol and rain spits at the glass of the car window. I remember the fear I had of this city before. Terrified the place would steal me into its stinking underbelly. I’m not afraid of that any more.  

It went too quickly. I wanted to hold it longer. To crawl back into the space that saved me in the moment I needed to be saved to the most. To let it cover me in warmth. It’s a little bit like going home, like slipping into a memory or a dream or a world where time doesn’t exist at all because you’re back there and everything’s changed but nothing’s changed at all. Today is a tiny fragment of all the collected moments I’ve had so far. A day where the dots join up and new picture begins. 

worry

We worry a lot. About all sorts of things. ‘Did I lock the door?’ ‘Will so-and-so do well in their exam?’ ‘What will happen at doctors?’ and ‘HOW WILL I EVER GET TO THE LEVEL OF CAKE CREATION ON BAKE OFF?’ All sorts of worries – some big, some as small as questioning our own culinary skills. Often questions we don’t know the answer to but one day will. That’s the concrete truth in all this. We will have the answer, one day, maybe in a few hours or maybe in a year, but the answer will almost always come. So why, oh why, do we waste time with worry? Or perhaps if we are worried about someone’s health, panicked about the result, worried about the aftermath – what use is our worry to the person who is suffering?

And then there's the suffering that comes with our worrying. It might be small, but on occasion my worry has lead me to be slower at a job, it has caused arguments with family, it’s even made me accidentally smash a plate or a cup or a glass or some other smash-able object – and it has gone further than that. But that’s another story. The worry I’ve dealt with has caused me pain and also troubled and harmed the people around me. 

The basic fact though is that it is incredibly easy to stop these troublesome thoughts. The hardest part is realising that you can. We have control over what takes up space in our brains but of course we cannot necessarily control what enters them, but we can decide which thoughts stay and which thoughts get shoved out of the metaphorical skull door. Because worrying isn’t helpful to anyone. It’s harmful and painful. So now, how do we stop it? We just stop. We come to realise that almost everything that happens is out of our control, the health of a partner or the results of a test, they aren’t things we can change. We can’t be heroes. Unless of course you’re a doctor or a nurse then I suppose you are a hero and please keep up the bloody good work. You’re totally fabulous and you should not worry either, in fact, I have a theory that those in health care worry the least, because they cannot possibly have the time. They are possibly masters of the worry-less life.  There’s so much to worry about right now, big huge massive things – Trump's America, wars, austerity, hurricanes, you only have to switch on the news to be fraught with anxiety within seconds. But I ask you this, instead of letting that panic grow can you ask yourself – ‘What can I do to help this situation? Is it do-able? Can I change anything here?’ Perhaps you can, maybe you can slip on your dressing-gown and check if the door is really locked. Or you can sit with your distressed teenager while they revise, buttering them hot crumpets and making copious amounts of tea. But if the answer is ‘no’, if nothing can be done but waiting, or hoping, then have that hope, hope for better tomorrow, be more compassionate and kind and loving. And start by being kind to yourself and saying - ‘I accept this problem, but I cannot directly help, so I shall not worry because you sir, are a highly distressing thought and you will cause me pain.’ Let the thought dissolve with the knowledge that you did your best to be helpful. Centre your focus on something that IS helpful and continue your day. Because it is your day. And you have the power to make it a day to be proud of. Now I understand there are those worries that can’t get out the skull door, they’re too fat and cruel. So talk them out, find a friendly ear (a non-judgemental buddy), pick up the phone, chew it out till it’s shed it’s heavy weight and it’s no longer exhausting to carry around. Or write it out, paint it out, meditate it out, run it out, find your thing that frightens that thought away. You're so much stronger than that "thought" can ever be. Because the crux of it is, worrying is exhausting, it’s the mightiest, most pointless weight to carry and you have the power to put it down. It’s not always easy but it’s doable. My worries still come at me, but I give them a little shove when they squeak ‘you might never own a house,’ ‘have you seen your student debt?’, and 'what the hell are you doing with your life?' and I say- ‘that’s future Megan’s problem, how the hell do you expect me to be happy now, if I worry about all that stuff that I can’t change or that I'm already fighting for?’

how much for my life

I search ‘drug rehabilitation’, there are hundreds that flash up; beautiful buildings, clinical rooms, promises of a life lived like a hotel. Hidden price tags. I try again- ‘free rehab,’ up pops adverts like package holidays on a website- ‘At home detox, only £1295’, ‘7 day residential detox £2500’, LATEST OFFERS screaming from the screen like Tomas Cook’s Tenerife get away. Pay for your pain because you are the pain in society, that’s what I hear. It’s what I see in the streets, clay faces, glazed eyes, ignored. Prisons full of the aches and no escape. Almost as if our answer is in our bank balance, blind the side lines and tunnel vision to debt and empty pockets.  

I called up Bristol Wellbeing when I was low, lower than low, needed to talk to someone again. Half an hour of questions and heart and soul pouring, rated the highest on the depression “scale”. A call back months later to tell me they couldn’t help me because I am a drug addict. Because I have a disease that separates me from the rest of humanity. But this story is small, mine is small and I am lucky. I talk to recovery friends, they talk of waiting lists and bedsits and mould and mattresses on floors, park benches, fear. Hospital beds that kick from underneath them when the shaking is dulled and slowed by medication.

I understand that it’s our responsibility to get clean. Recovery is a choice, but how can you choose when no one is giving you the option? The utter bleakness of this illness is reflected in the way it’s treated. The best treatment to seems to be the hardest to find, almost a secret. It feels like our freedom is sold to us. Our lives are sold back to us. I praise the NHS, love the NHS but drug rehabilitation isn’t really provided by them at all. Just detox after detox. The irony of doctors pumping more drugs into our systems to get us clean, detoxing our bodies when the toxins are in our brains. We know more now, we are smarter than this now. Aren’t we? Can’t we look back over the years at what’s worked and what hasn’t.

I overdosed twice. I was pumped out and pumped in and once my body was better, I was sent home. But I was sick, sick stained, ready to die. Had I not been so lucky I would have. I went to a private rehab, a private rehab that cost £10,000 a month. £10,000 that my family didn’t have but they were able to find in precious people. What could I have done? Being ill is a luxury for the wealthy and dying is almost a certainty for the poor.  Recently I read that there were no beds in any mental health wards on the NHS. None. Zero. Nothing. There are stories of people being put in beds miles from home, teenagers and children separated from their families. It’s not enough. Not good enough at all. Because this isn’t just about addiction, this is about mental health. When will mental health be considered just health? When will it no longer be segregated and covered in barbed wire, for horror films to written about, fear to be spread with, lives to be played with.

The vulnerable have always been taken advantage of. The dreadful cost of the Grenfell fire was only felt by the poor and the hiding. Addicts are vulnerable, their disease tells them they want to die. It lies to them and it’s a terrifying place to be. There are free ways to escape the pain, but the place between using and that safety is a long and tough stretch during which there is very little support. Charities do incredible things, staffed with experienced survivors who know how hands should be held, know that addiction is forever and therefore treatment must be forever. But they are few and far between – underfunded and overshadowed by the promise of quick release, by a week in hospital which may seem more appealing than confronting demons. Getting sober is a battle, a bloody and hideous battle. It’s horrible and scary and we cannot do it alone. Why must that mean that we pay through skin and bone to be well? Why must that mean, just because this illness takes such an ugly shape, that we ignore it on our streets?

It seems that the homeless addict loses his or her right to be human. People pass a person who has passed out in filthy clothes but if that person was suited, briefcase in hand, they would be much more ready to help. Why do we lose our souls because of our bank balance? Everything else is treated, but our mental health is so often ignored. It’s not good enough. Our heroes are crowned – the famous drug survivors, the ones who sparkle in their sobriety and use their celebrity to shout about how good it feels to be clean. We need Russell Brand and his ilk – he inspires and he is proof that there is another ‘country’ on the other side of the demon bridge but he is a one-off and most of us don’t have his wonderful money and confidence to help to blast away the agonies.

In the meantime, the ‘crack head’ on the corner is blamed, belittled, berated and perhaps worst of all, invisible. He will keep scoring until he dies unless someone ‘sees’ him and his many many ‘friends’. The people who could make a real change need to dust off their glasses, look straight at these struggling souls who are just minutes away from being you and me and come up with some real answers.

http://www.charislondon.org/home/4541859091

http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/

http://www.cauk.org.uk/index.asp

http://ukna.org/

https://www.focus12.co.uk/

I wanted to say something

I sit on the step at the front of my house and smoke a cigarette, midday emptiness, peaceful. I sip my tea and flick through Facebook. On my newsfeed is a rash of Labour red, in my social media bubble I am squishy and warm with hope that all might be fixed.

I watch a man who staggers up the road with sticky fag rolling fingers. Fumbling curly tobacco.

In the window next to me, I have blue tacked my media bubble- ‘vote Labour.’

He stops and sways.

‘Are you voting Labour?’ Squinty, eyeballed, stutter.

‘Yes.’ I answer.

He rocks on roller-skate soles. Wriggly insides trying to be stabled.

‘What about the fucking immigrants?’ Gurgling mumble. I am silent. ‘That one at number ten’s a bitch.’

‘Yes, she’s not very nice.’ I try and reply.

‘David Cameron was alright. With that security he had.’

I sort of hum, because I don’t know what to say.

‘What do you think of it all?’ He asks.

‘I think, it’s really scary.’ He doesn’t think I mean what I really mean so his smile is met with my creased forehead.

Something invisible and solid falls between us.

He stops, I wait. I want him to leave, I don’t feel safe.

In his drunken eyes, I see mine from sometimes last year or the year before.

He sprinkles more tobacco on the floor.

‘You haven’t got a vape then?’

‘No.’ I say.

He mumbles, heavy haze and walks away.

I should have said more, something else, something stronger.

Behind my screen I can talk high and strong and brave and power. But face to face, when it really matters I crumble. And I think that is exactly where they want us to be.    

I wonder, has anyone been changed by a tweet or a poster, or is it just for our own self-righteous satisfaction? Aren’t we all so solid in our views?  

My sponsor arrives. When she leaves, I think of the man who past my step on the street, broken by a need that might kill him. In a world that won’t heal him. 

word hero

Do you get those moments, where you think- ‘how the fuck has that much time passed? Only yesterday I was playing Harry Potter on a beach in fancy pink cord flares and a Tammy Girl tee-shirt and now the worlds a mess I actually need to do something about it.’ Or ‘it wasn’t that long ago that I was broken?’ Sometimes life stacks up and you suddenly realise that chapters have filled pages so much faster than you thought possible. Memories that were seconds ago are oh so quickly years in the past. We know this. You know how time works. But it never fails to shock me that it hasn’t stopped. How does it all keep going, isn’t time tired yet? Then of course, I’d only want it to stop it in a Bernard’s Watch way, you know, so I could start it again, because I relish that kind of control.

I have been writing about my brain for almost two years now, and sometimes I worry* I’ve run out, dried out, exhausted those letters on my keyboard. Because all the talk of recovery and therapy and brains has become my normality. It can be so thick and so boring, like paying a gas bill or purchasing a bus ticket, but worst of all, it can feel like it defines me. It doesn’t. Each of us suffers are so much more than our troubles, some of us are really good at bowling, not me, I’m terrible at it. But you see my point. 

However, after all of that, I realised there is more to say, because you don’t go into recovery all shiny and new, sometimes it all fucks up, sometimes it doesn't. It is constant and ongoing. Sometimes being in recovery feels like I’ve found the secret. Like I and all the others, who stand with courage against the monsters in our brains, know something that no one else knows. I’m not even sure what it is, possibly that we can get better, or that we already are, I’m not sure. But it can feel like a super power. Going through the pain and learning how to feel it and not let it kill you. That’s heroic, fuck it, we are super heroes, we are the Batman’s and Wonder Woman’s of this sometimes seemingly post-apocalyptic world. Sometimes it’s not heroic at all though, sometimes the pain creeps in and we forget how to operate. Our capes and our tool box of brain fixing things are abandoned. But on the good days, we are Superman. We find hope in little tiny hidden places. We make the choice to be happy, it’s not as easy as waking up in the morning and saying, ‘I’m going to be happy,’ and putting on that ‘Friday feeling’ playlist on Spotify. It’s could be running away from day time TV into yoga studios, or coffee shops with friends, or (maybe possibly) the gym. Then of course, it’s talking, loud and strong and brave until stories that once made blood burn veins turn from The Shinning to Sharknado. Then it’s up to you, people or high powers, you can choice. Make your film a comedy; the only difference between Ghostbusters and Paranormal Activity is how the character’s deal with the ghosts, (sort of). Laugh, because time does that thing where it catches you, sneaks up behind you and makes you forget the child that still lives in you. They need listening to sometimes, when they need to be loved and looked after. Maybe not the times when they want to eat their body weight in Chewits or get upset because you dropped a 99 flake that cost two pounds twenty, (actually ice cream spillage is totally valued) but mostly listen when they are scared, hear them when they ask for help and courageously take them to it. You can, you’re a super hero. 

*(I also worry that there are so many more important things to write about, but I am writing about them, just in play form- http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2917150 )

something like happiness

I write more when I’m depressed. It’s easier. Something in my gut takes over my finger tips and I mind vomit words of sadness till I’m better. I’m sure the writing’s not better, but there’s more of it.

I’m not sure when it began or how long it’s been going on, but it’s been going on for longer than it’s ever gone on before and- I’m almost afraid to silently release these words from brain to screen- I’ve been, better. I’m not sure what to do with that. I know depression, I know it well, we’re old friends. I don’t, however understand this, this *shakes hands in the air frantically* this, this… happiness? (I was also recently ill with a stomach bug, couldn’t cope with that either. Being mentally unwell I totally understand, but physically, it was a mind fuck; so to speak). Anyhow, I’m enjoying this life thing, (maybe I’ve become one of them, those people, who wear colour and smile because they actually want to, not out of being polite or because some preachy song told them to). I have often felt that happiness doesn’t feel very news worthy, I have often been wrong. It’s really worth writing about, because when you’re mentally ill, you can get sucked in believing that this is your brain. You are stuck with it and this is how you will feel forever. I have believed that in the past, but it is not always true. It’s not been true for me. So, to help me process this happiness, I thought I’d write about the things (people) that make me happy-

My happiness is; friends in studios making theatre. Coffee shops and talks of the world, and silly laughter after. Working with children. Drinking tea. The women and men all around who inspire me, who are understanding, who I feel strong with. The chatter of my family of memories and plans somewhere in the future, to happen or not it doesn’t matter. Long walks where it’s only my feet and music in headphones and long black power coat and Dr Martens. Trainers on feet and running and more than free and speeding so fast on wheels that my legs might just fall off. Tea. Between pages of adventure and stories and the gritty realities that help me face my own. Cinema trips and coffee sips, on trains, on trips. Films. The future and the unknown and the known, the projects that are growing and all the bubbles with possibility. Waking up at the right time on a weekend. Saturday morning. Did I mention tea? My cats when they are sleepy. And scribbling in note books and speedy fingers on keyboards (of course not the piano kind, I can’t play so it wouldn’t sound very nice). People being passionate, compassionate and brave despite a world that seems to cave around us. Old photos of people that have changed but remain the same in my world because it wouldn’t be the world without them. Coming home afterwards. Finishing a blog post or a play or a poem or a story, even though I hate the word blog and even if it’s shit, I finished it.   

I only get this happiness because I work out my brain just like I work out my body; there are many workouts available, I think the best one is talking, the second best is running, but people are different so do what works for you (run). I maintain my mental health because it is just my health. (Seriously.) In the past I neglected it, and didn’t seek help when I could and when I wanted help I couldn’t ask, and then I had the luxury of being saved by a bunch of beautiful hero’s, so my vigilance, my work outs are for me, but they are also for them. Mental illness is NOT a choice, but how you cope with it is, it’s not easy, mostly it’s fucking shit, but sometimes or sometime, now or tomorrow or years from now, you might just feel that, happiness thing (happiness is the wrong word, it’s too fleeting, it’s more about being content I think, but ‘content’ isn’t a very good word, not powerful enough at all). My mind will never be “fixed” or “normal” (what the fuck is normal?) but I can feel joy and power and strength and hope and happiness. In fact, I think, for people like me and you and us, we can feel those things so much more. Maybe. Anyhow, I’m off to, you know, dance or play in the forest or something. Fuck knows.   

four

I drink milky sugared coffee. The way you would drink it. Too sweet and too bitter. Tastes that take me back to coffee cups that were ours. Days that were us. Untidy years sprawl together and meet today. They bunch up and pocket here. At number four. Tiny four years, an infant, just escaping toddler tantrums. But also far too long. I think that you control my Spotify. Think you put on songs that we shared. So I can curl into them safe and lost. I think you hold me when the pain starts, the familiar waves of crunching, tightening lungs that retch 'I miss you. I really fucking miss you and I can't, and I won't believe you're gone.' I am caught in years, the ones that are past and the ones that I count hopelessly and hatefully on fingers that desperately grasp for someone who cannot hold them back. Empty air. Too much space between now and when I saw you last, and it'll only stretch on. Only pull forward. And I only have those pictures that flash between memories that seem to creep into the distance, creep into the pages of a book that doesn’t exist, that I once read about someone else's life, not mine, not his, not ours. And now we wake up for coffee in the morning, chew cereal and kiss goodbye. Work days and return to each other. Lazy evenings filled with love. Long weekends stacked up high with creating and music and busy noisy happy people. Adventures in a playground world. If only it were my reality. If only.