Letters to Myself #6

Mental Health Awareness Week begins on May 11th.

I've done a lot of things to raise mental health profiles during this period over the last few years, but the one thing I've never been capable of achieving is an honest prose-based description of what my personal mental health issues entail. This week we are going to attempt to do just that.

I will refer at various points to childhood trauma, suicidal thoughts, depression and anxiety. Please consider your own needs and act accordingly.

It's awful but you won't fix it  // 2

Turns out this wasn't the post I was going to finish today. I looked at that draft with fresh eyes, thought long and hard whether it was worth being That Person as my brain pointed out something important. This is the best it has EVER been for me, without doubt. Nothing in all the years I've been Poeting has come close, even my first win, first publication, first headline performance. None of those things touch this week. This thing, right here, is remarkable.

Crucially, I'm probably more nervous and anxious than I've been in seven years as a result. With great power comes great responsibility. I'm being asked into studios, sacred spaces, places where people expose their hearts, minds and souls to the process of creation, and to be allowed even a glimpse of that is so special, and so humbling. Artists deserve 1000000% more love and respect than the world gives them. Only now, do certain constants make sense in wider contexts.

If people aren't interested in that, I realise, then they are missing so much else.

you don't like the state of the world / but aren't happy to fix it
you don't want to be inconvenienced / but won't do any extra work
you can't be that bothered to think / but are incredibly quick to anger
you won't ever change / but you can't see the cost

The biggest single contribution to my progress as an adult has been risk. I have taken more leaps of faith in the last year than has been the case in the last twenty. Some have not worked out, and as it stands none of them would have enriched me as a human being nearly as much as this creative period. There will, in time and with permission from artists, be some in-depth dissections of what poetry has made possible. It has taught me so much about life.

It has also served as an introduction, a tentative first conversation and a reassurance to artists that I hear them sympathetically and see their work with a gentle and wonderous set of eyes. There will NEVER be judgement, or criticism, or harsh reaction, only enthusiasm, curiosity and a desire to learn how these pieces come to be what they are, how they form their own poetry using ink and clay and whatever medium suits that expression best. This is unabashed joy.

I am here to be educated, and am determined to keep learning.

Many things in the world are awful right now, and I cannot fix any of them, but what I can do is look beyond my own existence to find ways that I am capable of instigating a shift in outlook and consideration. I can and I will take the opportunities to engage with whoever decides they wish to be a part of my poetry. If people are not interested, that is their choice, and we will move on. What matters is the potential this is presenting for personal growth and education.

I am no longer travelling this artistic path alone.