Finding HopeESCAPRIL 2023 (With A Sprinkling of NaPoWriMo)
Posted on May 6, 2023
TW: Mentions of blood, injury, dermatillomania, and drug use.
April has come and gone and the poetry challenges – ESCAPRIL and NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) – are over. I am such a fan of these challenges and I keep meaning to seek out more of them; I love writing poetry but it tends to be the creative outlet that always slips down my list of priorities, just because there’s always so much to do. So a challenge or series of prompts is a great impetus to get writing again. I didn’t manage to write everyday, especially at the beginning of the month when I was still in Nashville and then releasing my new single, ‘House on Fire,’ but when I got into it, I couldn’t stop writing.
On the whole, I wrote more for ESCAPRIL than I did for Na PoWriMo. I think I was just more inspired by this year’s prompts from the former. Plus I think it’s fair to say that more of the NaPoWriMo prompts experiment with form and structure whereas ESCAPRIL focusses on content, the part of poetry writing that I find more exciting and fulfilling.
ESCAPRIL encourages participants to post their work on social media throughout the month but I’ve never engaged in that part of the challenge; doing the challenge is for me and my writing, although I do enjoy sharing some of my favourites at the end of the month. I mean, that’s why I do this blog post. But I can’t imagine posting a piece right after writing it, when it’s still soo fresh and raw; that sounds more than a little bit terrifying. Anyway…
Here are the prompts for 2023:
Here are a few of my favourites from the month. A lot of them weren’t comfortable to write – and now to read – but they feel raw and real and that’s what’s most important to me in poetry, especially my own…
ESCAPRIL
NaPoWriMo
(Inspired, obviously, by the short film, The Nettle Dress.)
So there you have it, a handful of the poems I wrote throughout April, inspired by these two challenges. I feel like a lot of dark stuff comes out in my poetry, as well as stuff that I went through when I was younger, I think because I didn’t necessarily have the the emotional maturity to recognise what I was feeling or the language to describe those feelings. Some of them come from my present day brain though, working through stuff by writing about it. That is, after all, what writing poetry is for me, in whatever form that may take.
BEHIND THE SONG: House on Fire
Posted on May 5, 2023
Today I posted a new video on Youtube, talking about the inspiration and process behind the writing of my newest single, ‘House on Fire.’ I posted it on all of my social media accounts but I also wanted to post it here because I put so much of myself into this song. Both my initial inspiration for the song and the interpretation that has evolved over time mean so much to me and it means a lot to me to share it all in more detail. I just felt like you guys might connect with these stories, as well as the song.
If you haven’t listened to the song yet, you can find it here and I’ll be releasing more stuff soon. I hope you like the song, I hope it makes you feel something, and I hope it’s been interesting to hear the story behind the writing of the song, some of the behind the scenes of the creative process.
As always, thank you for listening to my songs, watching my videos, and reading my posts. It means more than I can say.
EDIT: You can now watch the behind the scenes of making this video, where I rambled, tripped over my own tongue, and accidentally advertised Red Bull! Enjoy! (x)
2022 in Review
Posted on December 31, 2022
TW: Mentions of depression and suicidal thoughts.
This may be the hardest post I’ve ever tried to write. I did seriously consider abandoning it but something in me kept me from doing that; I don’t know what or why. Everything I feel at the moment, and for the last year, (even when I’m feeling nothing) is so overwhelming that it’s very hard to see straight, to think straight. But I do know, without a shred of doubt, that this has been the worst year of my life, my depression as devastating as a drought. It sounds dramatic but the metaphor feels accurate. It’s hard to write about but, for some reason, I’m still trying. Here’s my best attempt to sum up 2022.
In the past, I’ve separated the year into chapters of sorts but that’s hard to do with this year. For the first half of the year, I was on medication (first ADHD meds – which fucked up my relationships with food and sleep in a way that I’m still struggling with – and then antidepressants) but I was so depressed and suicidal that I had to come off them. But things haven’t improved since then. I’m still depressed and consistently suicidal, overwhelmed by anxiety; it’s beyond miserable. (This is partly why I dislike – and therefore haven’t been – writing about it, because I just feel like I’m complaining, even when I’m simply stating facts.) On the worst days, I feel like there is no joy to be found in the world, and on the best days, the joy to be found can’t possibly outweigh the bad. And there’s just so much bad. I miss feeling safe. I feel like, somewhere along the way, something in me was irreparably broken and there’s no coming back from that, not properly. I miss who I used to be. I miss who I thought I would be. And I’m just so tired: tired of feeling this way, tired of trying so hard, tired of not knowing what to do, tired of tearing open my chest multiple times a week at therapy and feeling like I’m only making things worse. Like they’ll never get better. Like there’s no point trying to get better because there’s nothing worth getting better for. I feel like as deep as I reach for the words to describe how I feel, they’re never enough; that agony that comes with feeling like the world is just too difficult and painful to live in, I’m not sure that that’s something you can truly understand if you haven’t experienced it. I’m not sure you can understand it unless you’re in it, and maybe not even then. This year has been a war, and one I didn’t sign up for.
Looking back through my photos, I can see that, objectively speaking, good things did happen: I got to spend time with people I love, I saw beautiful art and music, I cuddled with my cats…
I don’t want to diminish those moments but they very much feel like the odd, precarious stepping stones across an ocean (I know, my metaphors are all over the place in this post). They were good things but they were fighting to be heard through all the noise of the bad. It’s like what I said in my Grateful post this year: I can know that they were good even if I can’t feel them in a way I could eighteen months ago. And it’s hard and messy because the good also reminds me of the bad, of the feeling broken, of the things that feel impossible, of the ever-present presence that is my depression. It’s also hard to talk about – the good things existing amongst the suicidal thoughts – because for each understanding response, there are so many negative, judgemental ones.
I don’t know what tomorrow brings. I don’t know what I want it to. I didn’t want this year. I didn’t expect to still be here and I’m not happy or pleased or grateful for that. I feel pathetic and stupid and cowardly; I feel broken beyond repair. I feel frozen, overwhelmed by all of these big feelings. If feelings could kill you, I think these would have.
I really have no idea if I’ve managed to accurately capture my feelings about this year; all of these feelings are so big and overwhelming that it’s hard to really know anything. It’s like trying to find your way home in a blizzard. I don’t have a neat and tidy end to this post either. This is just how things are.
Finding Hope 