Flying On Clipped Wings

(cw: suicide) This is a poem I wrote based on what kind of note I'd leave behind should it come to that. When I go, take a picture of what's left, make my body the next Dawn Of The Black Hearts, Donate my books to the SVDP, delete my browser history Let my friends know I'm at peace Let my enemies know I watch them sleep Play The Logical Song at my funeral Cause it was the only thing til now that made me happy Hurling season is over, I never had the hand eye co-ordination for it, but I admired their skill all the same

Last June, I was officially diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, or Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, as it's being referred to more often in a clinical setting. This diagnosis followed a long period of internal speculation, and a “most likely has it” from an assessment in Celbridge. It wasn't a life shattering revelation, but it did explain a lot of things. The fights and rows I'd gotten into in the past and how quick I'd go from 0 to 90. The pervasive feeling of emptiness that seemed to be more severe than traditional depression (not that that's a walk in the park). The impulsivity when it came to drinking, substances, spending. It made me fearful for the future too, even though I'd been able to secure a place in a DBT program. I'm weary of writing disclosure pieces on mental health. They always seem so futile, and with an undertone of “poor me” no matter how I try and avoid that. However, BPD is one of the most debilitating and ...

(tw: mental illness, suicide, self harm) For as long as I can remember i've always dragged my feet when it came to different things, but in the end I'd always come through. Giving out about doing a farm job but still trekking up the fields in my wellies. Fucking around getting drunk most weekends out of the month during sixth year until the gravity of the situation set in and I went on to crush my Leaving Cert, a pretty crass boast at 21 in final year of college but fuck it, I tried to kill myself that April, I thought scraping arts would be lucky, but I pulled through when shit got rough. It's something I like about myself, and it's something that's held me back from getting proper help for a good long while. Well, that and the fact that mental illness fucks over your cognitive abilities, energy, all the shit you need to get better. The fact I've seen and heard enough to leave me deeply cynical towards the medical services and not want to put myself throu...

Here’s a collection of haikus I’ve put up on my Instagram and on Twitter in the last few months, but never sat down to compile into a post like this. If there’s an theme that unifies this set, it would be that of inertia, stagnation, boredom, being trapped in your own misery, only able to dig that hole deeper. A Patch Of Nettles On The Other Side This is about false expectations, wishing a simple change of circumstances would fix things when in fact it really doesn’t. Like thinking things will get better over the summer when in fact there’s just a new set of challenges to deal with. There’s a reworking of the grass is greener on the other side is cliché which I thought was clever at the time but may not be in hindsight. Freedom’s illusion, An unspecified elsewhere, Misleading greenness. Days Wasted Not Even Getting Wasted The summer can be a great action filled time for many, but it can also drag like a motherfucker. Your days last too long, an exercise in smokin...

Here's some things I've learned during that period of frantic panic and caffeine consumption known as exam season, having gone through three bouts of it with my next period of it coming up in May. These aren't anything to do with my course material, rather they are little life lessons from the various things that I've experienced during them. 1: Listicles get clicks. This isn’t even me trying to be all meta with this article, I’ve clicked onto so many things which have turned out to be unfulfilling, watched so many end of year review list videos on YouTube, all due to this desire to just not have to engage with the foreboding behemoth comprised of powerpoints and pdf files staring me in the face. 2: Caffeine has a dark side to it. All those coffees, those cans of edge, those cans of red bull should you have the money to afford it, they may well keep you awake, but there is a crash and it will come. It may come midway through typing where you feel a wave of tiredn...

Here’s some poems I wrote since last publishing a set of these on this wee blog, they’re a bit heavier going this time so CW for self-harm and depression, the self-harm one is at the very end so you don’t accidentally see it while reading that content warning for it. I'd gone for quite a while without writing any poems at all, but a particularly  bad autumn and winter of 2016 helped spark some creative impulse, or else I just needed to create something in order to understand the negativity inside me and possibly work up from there. Shot By Both Sides This is something I wrote about my experiences of being a non-binary  person in a world where things are gendered to a degree which seems pretty ridiculous, while I’ve been able to come to terms with it and feel a lot better than I did when the questions were going through my head, there’s still that overriding feeling of not fitting in, falling into some sort of empty space. A binary cage, torn apart by divergenc...

There’s an abundance of articles out there on how to handle your first year in college, covering such things as money management, romance, preparation and that precarious work/play balance many including myself have fallen to the wrong side of. This piece briefly touches on those matters, though with the scauldy touch that is somehow part of my brand. The first year of college is often a scary one, involving a lot of change and upheaval, but it’s also an exciting time too. Embrace The Mistakes: A major part of life is making mistakes, being able to own up to them and learning from them as a result, so you grow as a person. A lot of times you’ll end up having to make your own mistakes despite warnings from your parents, older siblings, whoever in your life seems to have it all sussed out though in actuality nobody ever does.  Even things written by people on the internet can be useful, believe it or not. Some mistakes yours truly has made include losing numerous hats throughout th...

This article has a rather stark title compared to my other ones, no sly little joke or further expansion on the specific nature of my discussion. There’s nothing really humorous I can put there to alleviate just how fucking heavy a read this is gonna be, and there’s no short little summation of this article. It’s not just my experiences with suicide, it’s about how we handle the topic of suicide, how we might have put our feet on the moon, but when it comes to matters of the mind we’re still grasping at straws a lot of the time. There’s no hashtag, or foundation behind this to continue some sort of advocacy, I’m just a voice on the internet, opening up about something seriously traumatic that happened to me, in hopes it can open the conversation, in the hope that I’ll somehow come to terms with it, even a little bit. April 1st, 2015, a date that’s not gonna leave my mind any time soon. The explanation of the context that helped contribute to my attempt would take up almost another art...

For someone who’s obviously open about many things, due to the content you can view on this blog, I’ve never been good at accepting help or letting people in. Perhaps I saw it as further admittance of weakness and wanted to save what little face I had left. Perhaps I didn’t think I was deserving of help. Perhaps I was sceptical of what help could be offered and didn’t want to end up going back to square one with memories of better times burning a hole in my stomach. Perhaps I just didn’t know how to react, having gone through life relying on myself, dragging myself through whatever mess I ended up involved in. Whatever the reasons, that reluctance is something that’s held me back, something that has held many people back from getting help, making bad situations that bit more unmanageable. I dragged myself through a lot of shit, on my own, and while I’m still here I wonder if things would have gotten better a while ago if I hadn’t kept things secret from my mam, if I’d listened to m...

Sharebait. It’s a term anyone who’s spent an extended time on social media, particularly Facebook will be familiar with, generally referring to the likes of Buzzfeed articles, posts with purposely inflammatory titles and statuses packed with emojis urging you to copy and paste. While they may clog up newsfeeds, most dismiss them as being harmless if irritating pieces of code. However there’s a darker, nastier side to this, found both in the cult of the passive-aggressive not-quite memetic images and that of the faux-deep, faux-inspirational images. They’re intrinsic parts of a negative culture, which does no favours to your mental health or relations with others. It’s an unnamed phenomenon, while there’s a slew of articles that deal with passive aggression on social media and this excellent Vice article that covers some of what I’m talking about somewhat better than I can, it still is an ongoing thing, a loop of the banal we’re trapped in.   I’m not quite sure when the passiv...

Been writing a bit more since my last update of poems, which is me sort of keeping to that New Year’s resolution I made. The context of these usually gets a few laughs when I read them out so I’ll stick that in sure. This is all fresh and funky content from 2015/16, have a read, stick it on your Instagram to look cool n deep, show your friends etc. etc. Smoking Area Serenity In places that can be as anxiety inducing as clubs and pubs, there’s a small centre of peace that can be found in the smoking area. The generosity of strangers comes to the fore when one is in need of a light, a skin or a filter. Intimate connections and some of the best conversations you could have can all be found over this shared ritual of sparking up a cigarette. Shared flame and small talk, Disconnection from my woes, Finally at ease. The Melancholy Nature of Green Dots There’s a peculiar sort of option paralysis that comes from an “active on messenger” that ...

While MRAs will frequently cry out “wut about the menz” whenever feminists dare to do something as simple as post a relatable meme for the purpose of likefarming, what many of them fail to realise is that it’s men that fuck each other over. The constant arms race to be “the bigger man” be it through whatever traditional image is in vogue or within a subculture, is a very damaging thing, for everyone. Herein are the chronicles of my experiences with toxic masculinity, my own personal struggles with trying to get out of it, a tale of much unnecessary bullshit. I’ll be focussing on interactions with people, because if I was to untangle the problematic messages in every piece of media I’ve experienced, I’d probably be at dissertation length. My introduction to toxic masculinity was at home. Despite seeing himself as a woke and unproblematic individual, my dad would still take part in those annoying tests of manliness. In front of relatives he would try and perform subtle put downs, knowin...

Here's a few things I've written, from spring 2014 to winter 2015, mostly grim, all haikus, titles of varying levels of annoying stupidity. Have a look, feedback is welcome. Home Movies When father directs, Failure, high definition, Success, VHS Dead Opera Singer Apathy Central, Intellectual sweatshop, Phone slowly dying A Game of Thrones or a game of Kings? Single serving friends, Band-aid for isolation, Thirteen bad choices Obligatory White Poet Poem Mentioning Cigarettes To keep from drowning, Replace the water with smoke, Live now, die later. “Fine, Ok, Alri, Great” You the architect, Me the simple bricklayer, Walls between us rise Lying In Bed Listening To Elliott Smith Or Joy Division Past, momentary, Tomorrow lies years away, The next hour, further. My Consultant, Captain Morgan Answering questions, With just a “why the fuck not”, The great enabler. ...

It’s a bit of a cliché to say that a band or singer or teen idol saved your life. It’s hyperbole, often a sympathy call online or a means of validating your fandom when validation isn’t really needed. Having said that though, music does have a certain power. It can pick your mood up by letting you switch off and just enjoy the vibe. It can help push out the negativity building up in your gut, suffocating negativity, by forcing the tears out. It’s never gonna be too busy, you don’t need to lie to it, it’s just always there. Listening to music will get you through quite a bit. While not a solution, compared to a number of other coping techniques like smoking, drinking and self-harm, it’s a safe way of taking the edge off the shit parts of life.   To keep the top paragraph from looking more like an empty platitude written by a blithering idiot who sat in on one psychology lecture over orientation week and thinks they understand people, I should give some context. Mental illness ...