Dear Gracie, ✍️

Please note: some brief language and mental health themes

11th of January, 2019 -

Dear Gracie,

I just wanted to thank you my friend.

My doors were so closely guarded, padlocked then,

I didn’t know how to make my way through to the other side.

I’d often thought,

Maybe if they just called on me, you know?

Asked me out? I don’t know..

What I think I really needed back then was for someone just to sit with me,

to let me into their life wholeheartedly -

until I was ready to share and open up.

The last 16 months had been a nightmare,

That had come to fire-breathing life!

I didn’t know why I, as a once ‘rational’ human being -

could suddenly be so highly irrational & fearful,

that I could not just think my way out of this mind-prison.

I could barely be left alone at times,

becoming highly distressed at the drop of a hat,

often like a feeling of a thermostat reaching boiling point,

about to explode right out the top of my head!

My feelings were frequently detached,

as if I was sleepwalking when in public,

when driving and out at the shops,

Like a ghost endeavouring to find a body to inhabit,

as I was out of time and place with my very own..

Now, in retrospect, this experience of derealisation,

and depersonalisation (which I did not know the names of prior)

was perhaps heightened by the dreaded anti-psychotic medication

(given for pervasive anxiety)

that places you in a ‘lull’ state.

Perhaps this was a part of the grieving process of my old identity?

in order to make way for the new..

(or rather to return to my ‘default settings’?).

All this made for a kind of temporal displacement back then,

much like when Marty McFly’s photograph of himself (or is it his father?)

begins fading away in “Back to the Future” -

Once the wheels are in motion, it’s TIME that will have the final say!

Time after all was an enemy this last year and half,

every minute and hour passing taunted me -

The news updates from the radio by the hour,

felt like they were shouting at ME, mockingly -

“See! - they would say, SEE how you've stuffed up your life!”

“Let me me show you how you are continuing to do so.”

“Now let’s imagine what a ‘normal life’ would look like,

instead of the shit-show existence from the pits of hades you’re now living.”

“Think of all the disparities between your life currently

and the one you wish to lead..”

“You simpleton fuck-wit! Look and see how you’ve isolated everyone,

and everything from your life, least of all from yourself!”

And maybe I did push people away, but I didn’t mean to.

The problem was, I think my friendship group only knew one side to me,

maybe a version that now no longer completely exists -

and that was again shameful & a source of anxiety in itself,

If I was embarrassed to be around me, how must they feel?

But, then you effortlessly reached out to me Gracie!

You seemed to have this unassuming manner of just accepting,

without having to talk about anything I didn’t want to,

which was kind of comforting at the time.

Sometimes I was still a bit of a ‘space-cadet’,

as if I was in some kind of dream,

Yet, I remember we’d organise going to superhero movies,

and Supernova at the Showgrounds,

then post-hospital going boogie-boarding at Aldinga Beach,

then to see the third “Maze Runner” movie with your kids,

even though you’d never even seen part 2!

Remember that bush-walk at Morialta Falls?

If my body wasn’t emaciated already by this challenging point in my life,

It was by the end of that hike! - you gal, can walk!

The bull-shit in my head was slowly starting to dissipate,

Things weren't ideal, yet these social activities were

definite boosters to my confidence and health,

which you silently understood.

I know everyone else had their lives now,

and I had to accept that,

but I thank you Gracie and will be eternally grateful

for including me in yours.

Sincerely,

Andy

*Thanks for reading. Please consider hitting the heart or subscribing for more free verse poems and film reviews from me. Many Thanks. 😊

Here’s one of my recent pieces for the tautogram challenge: