Short Story Club


  1. Dreams Do Come True
  2. Endless Game
  3. Ready To Die
  4. The Risk


In My View


  1. Living A Value Based Life
  2. Self-Care In A Crisis
  3. Baby Girl Expectations
  4. My Feminist Journey
  5. The Experiential Diary


Fragments


  1. The Importance Of Basquiat
  2. Get To Know Steve McCurry
  3. The Passage That Changed Me
  4. Let’s Talk 1984
  5. Literature So Black
  6. Dave The Storyteller
  7. 10vs10 A Lockdown Tale of Enjoyment
  8. Views
  9. An Ode To Insecure
  10. Michaela Coel Is The Goal
  11. The Elite Desperate Housewives
  12. Ugly Betty: Was It Really Love?
  13. 90s Black Cinema


Poet’s Corner


  1. Breakdown
  2. Delusions Of Grandeur
  3. Helen Of Troy
  4. Crush
  5. Truest Self
  6. What Do I Want?
  7. Rise
  8. Best In The Multiverse
  9. A Complex Affair with Misery
  10. I Did The Love Game Wrong

A Complex Affair with Sadness

IN MY VIEW  FRAGMENTS  SHORT STORY CLUB  POET’S CORNER  XTRA XTRA


October 2016:
One night I felt like crying so I put it all in words. I'm not sure if it's the insecurity about the way I look, my weight or the way I dress. Or maybe it's the fact that my life is truly a mess. So uncomfortable in my skin. Don't feel like I fit in. Give too little you lose them all. Give too much they watch you fall. So uncomfortable where I'm at. I feel alone, how funny is that? Too much pressure. I feel it in my head. For a split second I grasp that I was...

So why am I here? Why do I stress? I can't continue settling for less.

It's funny because when I tried and was good, it was worse. I got better. Then I got worse. Then felt better as I got worse.

This life is it God given? This life, is it a curse? Do I even believe in God? Do I believe in the universe? What's the purpose? I think I'm losing it. I wanted life, but I'm not choosing it. I failed and I'm full of regret. The things I never did. The things I never said. I used to sing. It was fun to dance. I used to dream. Oh, how I imagined this and that. I miss writing. I used to be so inspired. I wish I was a little bit more travelled. A little more cultured.


November 2016:

It's all going west. I just wanted the best. I wanted love but it came in the worst way. It fucked me up coming on the worst day. Too many emotions. Too many games played. Too many one-time lovers that the mind tends to erase. If I lay all of this out on the table, will you read my truth?


May  2017:

I self-destructed to the fullest extent. It’s like I was slowly but quickly killing myself. I didn’t want the pain anymore. I wanted to stop being. So, I started by stopping being sober. Anything to take the edge off. Anything to turn my brain into mush and my liver into slush. But I want to live now. Deal now. Not just cope and survive. Fight and be strong. Live through the pain. Learn to smile again.


June 2017:

I'm stuck in a perpetual state of wanting to escape or move. Or to simply just stop being. Not go away. Not not exist. But to be away from this or these feelings. Rekindle the magic. Get to know bliss. I pictured my world and it isn't this. I went wrong along the way. So many stops and so many turns. Oh, I wish I'd actually learned. Christine, help me. Christine, forgive me. Christine, love me. Christine, need me or just make me a better person.

I don't want to be bitter. I don't want to be a mess. There's one person mainly standing in the way of my success. Sometimes I wish I had amnesia. I wish I didn't care. I wish I wasn't so awkward. I wish I wasn’t here…I like being needed. But I know it's better to be wanted. Hate the feeling of knowing once I'm not useful it's over. I hate that he still cares or appears to. It's his need to people please. I wanted to have let go by now. But that's not the path we're meant to take. This therapy was about me. This was my therapy. It's been infected by you. I keep on letting you in!

I have so much to do. So little time. Inaction is my biggest enemy.


April 2018:

Over 10 months later I have returned because I need someone to confide in. I have been very busy. I’m a bit tired so I’ll talk and update tomorrow.


Not quite the next day - December 2018:

We have jumped in time and space. There are many gaps and ambiguities. It’s just a beginning, fragments, the end of a year, of my life, of my journey. This conversation started because back then I had different issues, different feelings, I was at a very different stage in my life. I truly hit new lows this year, I really let the demons consume me. I revelled in the darkness, I was addicted to the pain and I chased the impossible. I drank the poison and wondered why I was sick. I cried and cried and felt like my tears meant nothing. Nothing to a God. Nothing to the universe. My pain meant nothing. I decided to feel nothing. I told myself I had that five steps forward, ten steps back curse. Despite knowing my woes were self-inflicted, I decided I was ill fated. Fortune’s fool. Star-crossed in action. A prisoner to deterministic living. When it’s beyond your control all you can do is react and I don’t react well. Minor setbacks are major setbacks. A setback is a setback. It holds devastating consequences.


April 2018:

Then I saw the light, once I saw it life was better. I was the centre and I chose to change my ideas and my actions. Then I relapsed once again, but that relapse was a blessing in showing me that once again I had taken something I did not want and that I deserved better. And I found better, not in the most saintly and perfect way, but I still found it. Finding it was the easy part, putting an actual effort to fight for it was really not me, not in my nature whatsoever but I have emerged a fighter.


Decemeber 2019:

I am okay with feelings. It’s okay for me to say that I have been having trouble with anxiety lately. My depression is still pretty bad, but my anxiety has reached new levels. I’ve been having trouble sleeping, so much so I fear sleeping some nights. My greatest fears are coming alive when I close my eyes and honestly, I’m terrified.

I am working through it.


I wrote this piece between the ages of 19-22. It is a dance with my turbulent mental health, and looking back I feel blessed to be alive.