Smoke finally clearing As our love lies smashed to pieces In ruin, I stand among the rubble “It’s over,” logic tells me. “There’s no repairing this…“ “Not this time…”
Time to finally move on And drift out of each other’s lives To become memories and recounted stories Perhaps even wonders of what might have been On some quiet future nights When the heart is feeling restless But nothing more than that.
I start heading outward But can’t help but find myself stopping And picking up the pieces of our scattered castle Holding them in my hands.
Memories of cooking together Shared laughter by the fire Dog walks in the woods Soft kisses on the cheek
One by one, I pick them up And thoughts of rebuilding Soon enter my foolish mind As I stand alone in this wasteland Studying the fractured remains Occupying this empty space These fingers numb with the feeling Of knowing some things can’t be fixed
Growing older, it’s so easy to sink into slumber The sofa groove; the spiritual chamber The suppressed desires and unspoken words It’s so easy to accept the weight of the adult world And let those slumped shoulders form As you stand with the others on the assembly line.
But do the radical thing And nurture the parts inside yourself In whatever way that keeps those eyes shining And letting that mouth speak words of meaning As you continue on your truest path Shaking off the forces that want you To become another background character Bitterly beeping in life’s traffic jam.
Do the radical thing. And love yourself unashamedly Don’t submit to mindless drudgery Nor let the bottle or the pills Numb you to a conditioned reality.
Let the sanctity of solitude Remind you who you are; Let the rhythm of happiness Flutter in your heart.
Be someone that your child self Would look up to and delight in And nurture a life in which you live naturally A life in which you live with integrity,
Tired of not blooming anymore Tired of being over the best part Looking at those sullen eyes Those shrugged shoulders Feeling that emptiness within As the sunlight doesn’t reach the important spaces.
Tired of being on the wrong path And knowing I took a wrong turn somewhere Yet not doing anything about it.
Tired of speaking words I don’t mean And sleepwalking down these streets Being a productive member of society While my soul lies in some deep sleep.
I want to grab it and awaken it And run out the front door with wild eyes And feel these words come more easily.
I want to go back to a place in time When writing came before working And I didn’t care so much about money Or that stupid fear of the future.
I want to break free from this post-youth winter That has frozen my spirit.
I really want to do it But the frost grows thicker And as the days continue to drift by passively As I stare into the vacant eyes of strangers And that silent sadness begins to take over I realise that something must be done.
I’m sorry, but I can’t be who you want me to be I know I’ve tried to iron out these creases To fit my circular shape into a square hole And I know how wonderful it would be to be with you To share our journey with love and laughter But the makeup of myself is something unchangeable.
I thought this time it might be different With the love of a good woman, I could become sane I could find a good job and learn to drive and flourish A regular human-being just like the rest.
But each stride forward just pulls me back And tells me the inescapable truth That I do not belong on that side of the street.
My place is here in this broken shack Lingering with the lost and lonely Finding my way in the shadows While writing this poetry.
A part of me has always known this But your kisses were intoxicating And like all starved people who get a taste of love I guess I let delusion get the best of me.
So tonight I finally recognise that this has to come to an end That the irreparable parts of my character Now break down this bridge To leave us standing on separate shores With only the memory of each other And at least knowing we tried what others wouldn’t.
But now we know, That I can’t be who you want me to be, And that’s okay.
On the eve of my 32nd birthday, I sit here at my laptop, a beer by my side, wondering what awaits me in the coming year as a strong winter wind blows outside. I’ve sent out another load of job applications today. At this point, with the current job market, it feels like half-heartedly throwing a fishing line into polluted waters to try and catch something fresh. I know I’m not going to yield any tasty results, but I find myself just doing it for the hell of it (perhaps to fight off the insanity that comes from sitting around doing nothing). For the first time in my life, I feel like actually getting a stable, regular job; something to give me some routine and a bit of needed structure. It’s a bleak time to have such a basic wish though. Most of my applications aren’t even viewed, no doubt filtered out by AI systems and keyword searches. And even if they are viewed, it’s a lottery to even hear back from them given the absurd competition (a recent minimum wage warehouse job I applied for has received 1265 applications). I’ve also lately heard that a lot of job adverts are ‘ghost’ adverts – just there to harvest the data of applicants and sell to advertising companies. Yes, the UK in 2024 is not a great country to live in – a failing economy, a dramatically rising cost of living, continuous shit weather, no longer in the EU, and just seemingly going further and further down the drain each year. What chance does any young person have today if not born into wealth? For me, I don’t even ask for a lot; I just want a simple and modest life, living in a one-bedroom apartment, working an introvert-friendly job while writing my books in my spare time. Such a life seems to be increasingly further away as the days of destitution and desperation go by.
Call me a pessimist, but I am of the opinion that the total collapse of our current system is not far away at all. I have watched the cracks in society widen these last years as the gap between the rich and poor grows at an unprecedented rate, leaving hard-working people unable to heat their homes or stock their fridges or fuel their cars. Worker rights are being continually eroded and, for the first time, each generation is poorer than the previous one. On top of this, jobs begin to disappear because of AI and many of the few that do appear are poorly-paid with zero-hour contracts. Meanwhile the cost of rent and groceries skyrockets while wages stagnant. Whatever is happening is certainly not sustainable, and the increasing number of homeless people on the streets only serves as a grim introduction of the post-capitalism wasteland that awaits us. And that’s not even to mention the climate crisis which sits waiting for us as well, ready to well and truly turn this society into something from a post-apocalyptic, dystopian novel.
So, at the age of 32, what is a guy like me to do but drink this beer and type these words and throw more job applications into the void while contemplating the coming downfall of civilisation? Thankfully, I am lucky enough to have a space on a medical research trial starting in two weeks’ time. I will go into a clinic for 20 days and take an experimental medicine and have tests run on me. In return, I will receive over £5000 tax-free cash. I can’t complain, I guess. Medical trials are a great gig that has funded my life the last ten years, but I am getting to the age where I recognise I can’t always rely on testing pharmaceutical drugs for money. But for now it’s enough to keep me from those cold streets and that howling wind – and even afford me a holiday away from this sinking ship of a country.
So yeah, it could be worse I remind myself. That seems to be the way to cheer myself up in the dying hours of the 31st year of my life. It’s been a pretty tough one in all honesty, with terrible periods of insomnia ravaging my mental health throughout the year. But what else is there to do but pick yourself up and go again? Tomorrow I will wake up, do my morning meditation, strap on my running shoes, do some exercise, spend another hour job searching, and then go see my lovely girlfriend for a delicious meal with wine. Though things aren’t the best overall, I will be grateful of the joys in my life, including the simple fact of actually having one. As one man said to me: “Any day above ground is a good day.” Well, thirty-two years into it, I’m still well and truly above ground, and ready to keep on running into that wind, no matter how strong it gets. Cheers to that.
Another night of laying there unable to sleep. Another night of watching the hours go by as dawn approached, knowing I’d face the world even more sleep-deprived than the day before. Such a situation was nothing new to me. Insomnia had been ravaging my life for years by the time I was in my thirties. It came and went, but at its worst I’d get just a couple of hours of disturbed sleep a night. Sometimes I’d get none. Slowly it would snowball out of control until my mental state was dark, depressed, and delirious. At my very worst, I would even slip into psychosis and begin to have auditory and visual hallucinations. I would be totally exhausted and broken – a pitiful wretch – and all I needed was to simply sleep to fix myself, but I would lay there each night undergoing psychological torture, totally unable to switch off and get the thing my soul was screaming for. One time I got so frustrated I started banging my head against a wall in a desperate attempt to knock myself out. That’s when I realised the severity of the disorder that was violently destroying my life.
It’s now the start of 2024 as I begin this year in this all-too-familiar way. I partly have myself to blame for it, having gone on a weekend bender in Dublin three weeks before. Whenever my routine is disturbed by drinking and late nights, I usually end up spiralling into a state of sleep-deprivation. I guess I should have accepted by now that my partying days are behind me with this paralysing condition, but it’s been hard to let go of all the fun things that filled my youth. So, here I am three weeks on, battling a disease of the mind that no one else can see and only a few can understand. Still, the start of a new year presents the opportunity to start fresh and mark out some targets. Maybe I’ll quit drinking, I say to myself. Maybe I’ll finally get this condition under control. Strict sleeping times and healthy practices. No more partying until dawn. It’s a nice idea that I commit myself to with a sense of vigour and hope. A man can always use the concept of a new year to try and start afresh; even if it’s just a temporary delusion, sometimes that’s what one needs in order to keep marching into another year of existence.
For now though I lay in my room, hiding from the outside world which seemed far too unbearable when one hadn’t slept properly in weeks. I guess it was a good place to be considering that storms had been battering the country for weeks. I couldn’t help but listen to that heavy wind and rain like I was listening to a representation of my turbulent mental state. The nearby river continued to rise as I felt a growing gloom about my life, as if a sprawling swamp surrounded me with sinister creatures lurking somewhere in the shadows. Each year life got considerably harder and I was left wondering how I’ve even made it this far without drowning altogether. I took refuge in the fact that there was obviously some sort of strength inside of me that had kept me fighting off my demons throughout the years – whether that be depression, anxiety, alienation, insomnia, or general madness. However, I didn’t feel as strong and brave as I once did, and things were only getting harder as that river continued to rise and the current got stronger. I could feel my insides shaking; my nervous system vibrating with anxiety. I wondered how the hell I was ever going to get by in this world with my mental health problems and unemployability and the rising cost of living and everything that just seemed to make being a human-being a stupidly difficult and unrealistic task.
I couldn’t let myself get bogged down in a million worries at once, so I set a step by step guide to get out of the darkness first. The first thing I needed was sleep so I focused on fixing that by staying away from booze, meditating, and having set bedtimes. It took a few days but I eventually felt able to head out and face the world. I ran alongside the flooded river; I breathed in the air; I went shopping in the supermarket for healthy foods. Slowly I started to feel somewhat like a human-being again. The next step involved the ever-present necessity of money. I needed a job after my last one decided to let me go a few weeks before Christmas. I started searching and sending out applications. As always, I looked for the most straightforward jobs possible – menial factory or warehouse roles that required you to do just a couple of repetitive tasks. That’s about all I could manage at this point. Perhaps that was my ceiling. I was an autistic daydreamer after all, and my limited capacity for work was hard to ignore when reflecting on my job history.
Although jobless, I was at least getting some income being on government unemployment benefits. It required me to attend meetings with a work coach to tell them the steps I was taking in seeking employment. My last one was at the height of my insomnia when my anxiety was through the roof, and I was unfortunate to be met with a guy who grilled me and got me to apply for terrible call centre roles in which I wouldn’t last more than a few days. This time I was better prepared and lucky enough to be met with a woman who clearly didn’t care as much about her job as the previous guy. Perhaps she too knew what a joke it all was. I sat there describing some jobs I’d applied for, as well as some vague future employment goals. She typed some things into a computer and nodded her head as I accepted my place as a misfit and liability in this society. The tedious process plodded on and eventually came to a merciful end.
I then headed back out into the streets of Nottingham city centre. I walked around and saw them all surrounding me again: the normal, civilised faces of humanity. Presentable people with careers and cars and credit scores and shoe collections. People ready to continue on along the treadmill of a normal, sane life – mortgages and marriages; security and stability. The separation from everyone else all was as strong as ever. It was a new year, but it seemed it was the same old me – wandering the world like some sort of alien that had been cast away on planet earth. Still, I reminded myself that I had a beautiful girlfriend; that I was consistently looking for work; that I was twenty hours into learning to drive. Perhaps this year would be different. Perhaps this year I’d finally smoothen and straighten out. I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that the ‘new year, new me’ optimistic delusion was taking effect once again.
I continued walking towards home until I reached the river. I stopped and sat down on a bench beside it. The water levels had dropped back down to normal and the winter sunshine twinkled upon the surface. I let myself breathe and observed the pleasant scene before me, watching a flock of birds fly along the river and happy dogs stroll along the pathway. It was a place I had experienced great peace before and, after a few minutes, I noticed that peace there in my soul once again. I felt my inner anxiety being alleviated – all the thunder inside being replaced by a loving, radiant light that had filled me before. Despite my current troubles, I knew that it was a beautiful world, and that I really did belong to it – even if I felt out of place in society. Slowly I began to accept myself and where I was in life. Slowly I began to accept that yes – it was a new year, and in reality would never really be a new me, but the best thing I could do was to nurture the part of myself that had guided me to peace and happiness before. At that moment, I made a decision to look after myself a bit better, starting by resisting an offer to go out for drinks that evening. Something inside of me said the way forward this year was as simple as that. My plan wasn’t to conquer the world, or run a marathon, or some specific goal or resolution like that – but to just treat myself with some basic kindness and gentleness. Starting from there, who knew what it would lead to. For when the storm has passed and the destruction has been cast, it seemed the best and only real thing you could do was dust yourself off, pick up the pieces, and let yourself move forward in the direction of the calming and healing light.
Hear this heart sing Though you try to silence it And wish me to get in line Suppressing my spirit I shall continue to refuse For I know that sanity of yours Is slowly killing you Your tired eyes tell it all Your soul is screaming for music And I do not wish to kill my song too No conformity or career Will put an end to this As this grey world continues You’ll find me dancing within Where my song plays loud Shaking the walls and windows Keeping me thoroughly alive And no amount of knocking at the door Will cause this precious symphony To stop soaring.
It’s a Saturday evening and I’m home alone Trying to write a poem I’m listening to ambient music Looking at pretty pictures of sunsets Hoping that inspiration will strike As the words come flooding onto the page.
It’s a strange process that is hard to explain But doing this, instead of being at the bar, Well it gives me the sort of joy That one only gets when they are in touch With something spiritual and sacred.
For some reason I decided to be a writer I’ve been doing it for over ten years now Nothing has really made much sense to me Except when I’m organising words together.
School didn’t come naturally Jobs didn’t come naturally Social life didn’t come naturally But for some reason this did.
And that’s why I’m here tonight Still giving it all that I’ve got Sailing out on the sea of creative thought Lowering my net into the depths And trying to catch a big juicy 200 pound poem to take home And display on my wall.
For now it appears I’ve only caught this one Which, admittedly, isn’t my best But hey, I’m having fun Typing these words Jamming out alone On a Saturday evening.
I’ll think I’ll even crack open a beer As I keep on sailing on this sea Doing the thing which puts everything in the right place Which makes me feel like I’m on that dancefloor Busting my moves and celebrating life In all its strange joy.
Another weekday It’s 9pm again And the temptation to turn on the television And watch some crap appears.
No, I say to myself This is the time to create To write some words And share some truth.
So here I am back at the keyboard Persevering with my poems As my girlfriend learns piano.
What’s the point, I sometimes wonder It’d be so much easier to sink into a groove To find some comedy series And let my mind be numbed After a long day at work.
It does feel good, When the odd good poem comes along But too often it’s just hours Of staring at the screen Starting and deleting sentences Going around and around In your own mind Searching for that something Which you imagine no one else has ever said As you write the poem that changes the world That will cause everyone to become enlightened As the climate crisis is averted And world peace is finally announced.
In reality, you just type more words To post onto your blog To be read by fifteen people Somewhere around the world Whom you’ll never meet Or even message.
Well, look, I guess this is one more poem The third one of the evening, in fact I’m not sure if they’re any good But at least I can feel like I’ve earned An episode of The Simpsons now.
God, I think about it all now. How wild and crazy I was in my twenties. Flying to Iceland alone with a tent, hitchhiking around the island; cycling around the Scottish highlands with a girl I was seeing; living in a Rio de Janeiro suburb with a Brazilian family; hiking ten hours a day in the Nepalese Himalayas. I remember the locals laughing at me and telling me there was no chance I was going to reach my destination in one day. I dismissed their comments and hiked like hell, climbing a 2000m mountain pass in just a few hours. I then walked along a slippery ridge with no guide or safety equipment. Why? I just had to. I just had to live as hard as possible and be on my voyage to wherever it was I was supposed to be. There was no logical debate or reason; I was just following that inner voice that was screaming for raw experience. That voice made the entirety of my twenties a restless, whirlwind adventure. And sitting here now at thirty-one, I have to say that things have finally slowed down. There aren’t many dramatic and daring trips on the horizon. I now go on holidays and weekends away with my girlfriend. My current mission is getting my driver’s licence. I spend my weekends cooking new recipes and meditating and watching football matches. Right now, I’m enjoying a decaf coffee as I write at my desk on a work night, listening to some ambient music while feeling contentment from the simple things.
At one point I thought this kind of life was unfulfilling. I imagined myself running through the wilderness like a crazed animal until my hair was grey and my face wrinkled. I imagined myself exploring distant lands, partying most nights, getting in dangerous situations. Anything sedentary or static was the enemy of the soul. But the truth is now although the thrills are not there like before, there is a great peace in myself that I was missing for a long time while in my younger years. Ultimately, it was a lust for life fuelled by my existential dissatisfaction that propelled me into that thorny wilderness. I felt that traditional life was a con and most people were wasting their lives in trivial and mundane routines. But now – after all those adventures – I feel I have discovered the universal joy that can exist in every moment of life, regardless of one’s destination, should one be perceptive enough to the reality of being alive.
For example, I am living by a river now. It is a river I have ran or walked along hundreds of times. I’m there almost every day, in fact. And when I look out at geese flying above, the sun sparkling on the water, even the rowers going up and down – I stand and marvel at the beauty of the world the same way I did when I stood in front of Mount Everest. I feel a great delight and peace in my soul with this simple sight that I see all the time. And I just want to keep on living beside it and running my route and watching those geese and experiencing the bliss I have now discovered inside of myself. I simply don’t need to jump on a one way flight to some far-off place and get drunk with strangers before climbing a mountain. That life was fun and it made me who I am today, but now I’m in a different and, ultimately, happier place.
Okay, there is the chance that maybe I’ve just become tired or boring. But isn’t that what people do when they find inner peace? The life of a monk is hardly thrilling, but for most they live without the pain and torment that the average person experiences. And I think this is what I want now: to spend my days in peace and harmony. To meditate, to run, to write poetry, to cook, to spend time with my girlfriend and let the light rush through me. I know that without having done the epic journey, I would not have arrived at this sacred space I now reside in. Through intensive internal reflection, I have found my own formula to happiness. It is a place that maybe many people never get to experience, especially around the age I am now. But now I’ve broken through to it, I’m going to make the absolute most of it. Right now I am still sipping that coffee, listening to this music, and letting the words arrive one by one onto the page. I may publish this piece of writing somewhere or I might not. It doesn’t matter. Just the act of doing it fulfils me just as much as all those adventures did. Maybe I’ll be back on the road someday after another existential crisis, but for now I’m enjoying this oasis I have cultivated for myself. Tomorrow I’ll return to that river and watch the sunlight on the water; I’ll kiss my girlfriend on the cheek and hold her tight; I’ll cook a new meal and appreciate the flavour of the recipe. This is my life now. Yes, at the age of thirty-one, my adventure has finally slowed, but how my happiness has blossomed.
~ A Voice From The Wild ~ 