Mental Health – lonerloaner

charade

It’s only through utter savagery,
through the comprehension,
of knowing how far I can stretch the extremes of my soul,
torch the very idea of my being,
that I came to terms with all the sensitivity of mankind,
and found intimacy with every pain conceivable.

I bathe in that idea,
I drown in it,
that this world was meant for pain,
and those who avoid it,
who shun waging war inside themselves,
against their own selves,
are only pretending,
to experience pain.

What business do you have calling to it?
Pointing the world to a faux trauma,
idolatry of your false god,
worship of yourself,
and making people bend in guilt?

You’re of the worst kind of decrepit beings,
slithery and poisonous,
you are the illness and the plague,
hash tag your mattering to the world,
hash tag yourself into existence,
hash tag your plight to the devil.

-Wesam El dahabi

The serenade of solitude.

The psycho-social pathologies of people approaching relationships in any other way than completely giving of themselves perplex me.

You are given a chance,
to divulge your whole being towards someone and have them do the same in reciprocation and we still approach one another with amputated souls.

Bits of you and bits of me,
is a little too Frankenstein of a relationship for me to spawn life into.

Grotesque, is thus quite a fitting word,
here’s the most vulgar part of me, I care nothing of,
and here’s the remnants of what they want to share back, regurgitated traumas,
damaged and parts beaten to a pulp in the mind fuck,
in the mine fuckery of pseudo vulnerabilities,
everyone armed to the teeth with ego’s and no hearts,
awash with misery and toxic breath,
lip service to love and all that sparkles.

I’ve got a serious distrust of people,
it is tattooed in my brow,
it is heavily abated in my breath,
like a dragon I wait,
for anyone to try their hand.

Some say it is offensive and arrogant to assume so much,
for those people,
cut open your chest and they still won’t see,
let alone feel what you feel.

Alone, remains the most poetic living I have known,
solitude is the serenade of choice,
let the mundane and mediocre,
in their frivolity, rejoice.

W.E.

Introversion – seventy nine

A floor,
a wall,
and light that leaks in.

At times, I don’t even want to share myself with furniture.

Solitude with all the groans of a house is enough,
an intimacy of unspeakable proportions.

Ghosts of longing that open and close doors as they wish,
secrets that don’t pass their lips.

This house has an echo of women who have clawed at my skin for a piece of my soul,

ironically making me turn further inwards to flee from myself,
stay somewhere that I can control.

This light that leaks in,
a reminder that I have fissures that open without warning,
bursting with unspeakable sin.

Let this be a warning to my heart,
don’t let them near you,
remain in that room alone!

Insist on your intuition over their appetite,
insist on your vision over their illusions,
insist on your solitude over their lust,
sit in so much stillness,
alone in that empty room,
and be one with the dust.

The souls that endear you will inevitably be near you,
without formality and necessity for introduction,

we were created from an ether in the pre-world,
our souls will always find each other in this world and the next.

W.E.

Am I selfish for not wanting to share myself?

The gist of tye above poem is an apology of sorts,

try as I may, I often disappear into myself,
ironically away from my Self.

That oft gnawing awareness of the faults you harbour,
that slip between your fingers of guilty frivolity,
drowns you in a tug of war,
of second guessing yourself,

and that’s why I recluse,
it becomes a bit too much to swathe in a world of ‘sureness’, people vying to be the first one to be right.

What does it matter who gets to the end first,
if the journey was filled with dishonourable disregard.

There is a way,
I believe it to be quietude and seclusion,
introversion and accountability,
a slowing down rather than speeding up.

I’ve found myself just as many times as I have veered off the path,
only in the cocoon of solitude,
only ever alone.

I have never read of a man of worth or a woman of magnitude that has needed the masses to prop them up and I think it is deep in that wisdom we can find what society so desperately needs.

I will put this post up on my stories as a poll,
I’d like to hear your comments below on the above, even if in private.

dear grief – 27

Grief is a scent that never leaves your lip,
with every breath, with every sip,
ever the twisting knife,
ever the fleshen twist.

It hovers over you,
you walk, a carrion,
the parched beaks of time,
waiting for you to pass on.

Like love, it leaves wounds behind
anchors in your heart, holes in your mind,
ever the remnant fog,
eyes, left blind.

What if I prepared for you,
and black was my perpetual dress,
what if burned the incense of mourning,
would you be less of a weight on my chest?

What if I threw you like ashes in the ocean,
let the sea have its way,
cremated dreams and memories,
a eulogy with nothing to say?

What if your colour was grey,
and we spoke in mono-tone,
like numb and algorithmic bots,
or hovered like mindless drones?

At the end of this all,
you’re too platonic, too addictive a distant lover,
so alone I leave you, to have your way,
perpetually a cloud over me to hover.

W.E.

Intolerable

If I am at all intolerable,
it’s because I am in between reconciliation,
and choking on an apple.

I arrive at my slipperiness several times a day,
this dungeon has become all too familiar,
perhaps its stench has stained me,
and I reek of sin,
oddly an ever lucrative pheromone, or so it seems.

Why can they not smell it on me?
Why when all those years I’ve spent unnoticed do they now wish I was something they saw?

The more indifferent I was to them,
the wider their eyes became.

And deep in the pits of me I want to take a knife to their livers and make them suffer more,
“here,” I say, “taste your own bile, I’m already familiar with it”,
but those years alone not only make you outwardly cold and stoic, but inwardly abundantly empathetic and merciful,
so I smile and greet them instead,
with the same bashful innocence of a child who’s spent way too much time inside his heart,
inside his head.

I leave it all unsaid,
I resort to what I know best,
one step back, guard up and play rope a dope,
play hope a hope,
maybe, just maybe, someone will notice,
that I’m half in this world and half out,
and why I can give more of me at a tenth of who I am than others can with their full expanse, their full effort.

Even then, I have to filter myself,
water myself down as it’s too easy to fall in love with falling in love.

And echo on with war crys,
with quaking thighs,
with eyes and lies,
as we play this game of finders keepers,
allowing ourselves to be found,
allowing ourselves to be kept,
unkempt…. as it all may be,
some have less demanding needs,
a glance, an arm to lay on,
a kind word a moon apart,
anything, you can afford,
they sit like beggars at your door,
one more day, one more.

This poetry of dread and longing,
of insecure apetities that waver in and out of the bay of curling shores,
that can’t find its way through the swamp and withering of decay,
is all I have to offer,
the only oil lit niche in the wind of what does not and will not ever belong.

W.E.

eat your hurt

If I lower my voice,
perhaps it would become something of interest to you,
and you’d pay a little more attention,

it seems poets only live,
when they pass away,

or maybe I need to fade,
for you to know I have something to say.

Perhaps in my absence,
my presence,
would be of some semblance.

But all you see is you,
and I ask,
how can I eat your hurt,
if I’m still chewing on mine?

How can I let go of life to become immortal on a page, perhaps,
if you’re willing,
you could hear me,
and this juxtaposition of incurable worldliness and longing to be with the divine,
would be no more.

Un-enough

It doesn’t matter what anyone says or does, they can’t place their fingers deep enough inside of you to make you feel loved. How can they, when hating yourself tastes like home.

When it overwhelms anyone’s attempt to get close to you.

And so you settle, you find the most noble person you can and reciprocate enough love to keep them happy. At times, you surprise yourself and give more, but you reconcile that within yourself to meaning nothing, it’s just the right thing to do.

I don’t know where this resistance came from, this rejection of love and receiving it anyway.

I don’t know why it’s a sad bliss to want to be alone and unloved, to spare people of the effort, of heartbreak and hurt.

This logic infused with over sensitivity is the most absurd cocktail for living. Yearning and rejecting people at once.

UN-enough | Wesam El dahabi

Introversion Impulses -short story

“You have to let people see the truth of who you are”, she said.

I had no doubt that her intentions were sincere, that she was trying to get me to share more of myself, more of my work and to come out of the shell I’d grown comfortable in.

I also felt that she was somewhat attracted, that she was holding back by her own standards and not divulging her interests or motives for conversation. Why on earth would she extend such kindness, such interest in me or my words? Maybe she was thinking out aloud? Maybe I’m looking too far into her words, but she continued.

“You can’t hold back if you want people to find you, you know, if you want to commit to someone whole heartedly you have to show them who you are, how else will they commit to you and share themselves with you as well?”

She strangely intertwined the idea of commitment to a person within the idea of the collective she seemed to be generally referring to earlier in the conversation.

Only in a perfect world I thought. Perhaps if people were not so mean and would not squash your heart as soon as they had full access to it, not unlike many things losing their lustre once the hardship of having to attain them is overcome.

But my mind kept going back to the question; why was she so interested in me, or my writing? Maybe my words were an easier entry point into a conversation she was holding back from, but before I could articulate a reasonable reply, it happened, like a flood on a page, the same semi-conscious expulsions that propel me to write saw me blurt it right out into the plain of thick air.

“It feels”, I paused, “so invasive though….like a devaluation of sorts. Tell me I’m wrong. Do you really feel you can share that part of you? That crevice so deep and dark that you risk someone else holding it in their hands and having the ability to toss it at will? I think it’s a protective mechanism of sorts, for me anyway. ”

“Protective?”

“Yeah, if I keep that part subdued, to myself, I can control it. If I share it, I have no control.”

“Control what?”

“The urge to hurt someone for hurting me. I couldn’t take that. Sharing something only for them to use it against me.

I might even kill someone for abusing it. The hurt would be too much. I couldn’t contain myself knowing I share a part of me so deep, because I get urged or forced into the idea that I have to be open with a partner, that I have to share everything with a partner only for it to later be used as a method to hurt me, look down on me or whatever. It would for once, perhaps show me the other side of a person who’s lost control and killed another person. Perhaps they’re just people who could not handle their vulnerabilities being known and then discarded. I don’t think I could handle the hurt, I dunno, I’d much rather keep shit to myself. Even this I feel….”

I stopped and realised what I had just said. I could see her eyes turn cold – oh no, she thought I was a monster – and then warm again. Then she surprised me, they welled up as she then looked into her lap and placed one palm over other as if to say she was ready to catch a stream of her tears.

“That’s really quite sad”.

I felt my throat swell and fill with regret.

But she smiled and continued, “and beautiful at the same time”. The tears were now just falling directly onto her jeans as if to say there was no use hiding her own vulnerabilities and the moment was urging her to unshackle her inhibitions, to share more of what she really felt.

I thought about what I just said as the silence tempered the mood into an agreed introspective freeze.

Was I really that fragile, that afraid? Unable to share the truth of myself with anyone because I was repulsed by it all or was it because I was apprehensive of rejection? Am I crazy for thinking it was unacceptable for someone to squash you at will, after you’ve slowly desensitised yourself into sharing a part of you? I rationalised that it wasn’t. That people who did that with disregard deserved to be hurt back.

Could I kill someone over that? I could. I remembered the rage I felt when I was bullied when I was younger and my work I had been struggling with for a week, destroyed by a kid who thought it was cool. I was only twelve years old. Work I had spent hours on, deeply engrossed in, only for him to think it was funny and cool to destroy it. I still remember the coolness of the steel chair legs in my clenched blue fists as I picked many up, one after the other and hurled them with everything I had, directly at his head with no consideration for his life.

At twelve, I was quite comfortable in knowing he could be seriously hurt or die, because what I lost meant that much to me.

I could kill if someone discarded something that meant that much to me.

No, I thought, grand as the the fairytale of believing perhaps that someone could hold your heart in their hands and protect it, the temptation to discard it, the ease of discarding it for their own comfort would probably overwhelm them and they’d ditch your vulnerabilities at the earliest convenience to make themselves comfortable.

I’d much rather not hurt anyone, so I won’t allow them to hurt me by giving too much of myself.

Beautiful as her tears were, they suddenly became bound by a used by date. How I wanted to give her access, how I wished she could hold that part of me forever, safely, but I couldn’t believe it and back into my cocoon I went, and it felt as if the physical space between us grew hands that pushed us away from each other and back into everyday niceties.

Her face was kind enough for me to believe her, but not hard enough to accept the reality of how dark some of us are.
Better for her that she live in a world where she didn’t have to see that part of human capability, the compulsion to meter out justice.

People cannot walk around thinking it’s acceptable to hurt others without knowing there is a consequence.

I’m not socially awkward, I’m socially unwilling

Sometimes I wish I could dance with the rest of you,
but to waltz into conformity,
leaves me two left feet awkward,
stumbling over myself to find a foot in mediocrity.

I’ve been guilty of looking down on others,
and what a bitter lesson it is,
to taste my own bile,
and stare straight at a victim in their eyes.

I’ve no boat big enough,
to carry my remorse out to sea,
the most restless winds,
won’t blow my shame away.

So when I see how easily,
everyone makes the same mistakes,
it hurts to be reminded,
to have a replay reel of who I am inside,
flickering perpetually,
a self fulfilling prophecy is inevitable,
if I don’t pretend not to know how to dance.

That’s why I shy away.

I can love with the best of them,
boy can I love,
I can laugh and play,
I fight with a rage so turbulent,
it attracts even those who hate it,
but looking at innocence is too much for me to bare.

This comfort with the quo,
is the mediocrity that pains me,
alas, solitude is a great shackle to wear,
and if all else fails,
a great anchor for this flailing soul that won’t behave itself.

If the boat isn’t large enough,
and the winds aren’t strong enough,
the sea bottom is surely large enough,
to swallow far greater than me,
far worse than me, far better than me.

Here I am all Pharaoh like on display,
waiting to be swallowed whole.

All this,
admittance,
ownership,
accountability,
and still no acceptance.

How then,
did I find solitude in separation,
calm in introversion,
whilst others are out wrestled by urge and inclination?

How do I pause when others impulse?

There are still a few of us,
who shun the outer for the inner,
but society has been a frequent customer,
of the comfort world.

We’ve learned to avoid pain so well,
that we’ll inevitably stagnate and whither,
if people don’t remind us,
that it’s OK to see some ugliness,
some bad shit,
some gross stuff inside you,
not to accept and parade it as acceptance,
and contentment with ones’ self.

Rather, it gives you the incentive to improve,
to learn – in the process – what it takes to get away from all that unsavoury stuff inside.

Any process that allows you that,
will inevitably add value to your character,
be it in a month or twenty years.

Pain is not there to be avoided,
it’s there to jolt us into growth,
a reminder to manage and push through it for adaptation.

Avoidance, only limits exposure,
and lack of exposure leads to oblivious ignorance to a better way.

I recluse,
cocoon into hermit disregard,
to bathe in pain,
because I want to grow.

How’s that for a dance with ones self?

W.E.

Art by Viviana Gonzalez

Feel more, think less

Don’t listen to psychologists trying to box you into categories of being, categories of feeling, categories of your mental state.

You can think someone is a total fuckwit and genuinely care for them.

You can hate an attribute of your spouse with enough rage to want to punch them in the throat yet settle to spooning at night.

You can think people are total idiots in their life and still be utterly attracted to something about them you can’t put your finger on.

You can feel fifty shades of fucked and still be normal.

The idea that your feelings should be contained and ostracised, cut down and pruned to suit an idea of normal, that a long dead looney fantasised is normal a hundred and fifty years ago is total and utter bullshit.

What’s abnormal is not ever being taught how to carry yourself with dignity irrespective of those feelings and instead use that feeling or state to justify shitty behaviour.

Feel more, think less about it,

but act proper for fucks sake.

W.E.