My nextdoor neighbour has this MASSIVE antenna in his backyard (I’m gonna guess it’s about 6 metres tall) because his hobby is talking to people via radio. Coincidentally, my computer speakers sometimes have sounds coming out of them like distorted voices of people talking via radio and it’s so annoying because I can’t listen to music or have the sound on for anything without it being interrupted by these voices! I swear I’m not crazy, my parents hear it too. But they’re unconvinced that it happens because of our nextdoor neighbour’s toy. It couldn’t be more obvious that it is him, I think they’re just hesitant to speak to him about it because we’re friends with our neighbours and don’t want to make it awkward. But seriously dude, it’s bad enough that since you cut down the trees on our fence line we can see that ugly antenna even clearer than before, but now you’re actually interferring with my listening pleasure! And it sounds like aliens trying to communicate with me when I’m home alone at night. Or maybe you really are trying to communicate with aliens? Whatever it is, please just stop.

I’m not living, I’m merely existing and it’s a terrible, boring waste of time. After exams, I always tell myself. After exams I’ll put my life back together. I can’t do it before exams because I will be such a mess when I begin this horrible transformation that I won’t be able to function. We’re looking at hours, days, weeks of lying in bed wishing not for death, but for non-existence. Will I go back to not being able to cry? My emotions bottled up so tight in my veins that it cuts off the circulation to my spirit so I feel nothing but numb? Yes, that is what will happen. I know that letting all my problems explode through my mouth will relieve this numb depression, so why is it so hard for me to do so? Shame closes around me like walls, making me curl into a tight ball like a revolting human-sized slater, claustrophobic to a world that has become too small-minded to have a large enough ear. It all begins with, “Look, I’m not ok,” and ends with the room being so full of dust from all the words that have been sitting in the back of my mind for years that it’s hard to breath. Then the convulsions will begin and my limbs will fly out, trying to dettach themselves from a body and mind that have decayed into nothing but a black, festered disease. I don’t know if letting my thoughts escape will resolve my problems, but I do know it will make them real. That is why it’s so hard for me to say. I’m still living in my mind where there’s a false sense of hope that my problems don’t exist in reality. So for now I’ll just burrow into the earth where it’s dark and damp and cool and I can hide from myself and cry where only the earth can hear me.

Emptiness is filling
Of emptiness I’m full
My empty mind is bloated
With thoughts I can’t control
Fill myself up
Pour myself out
Mouth full of words
I don’t dare to shout
Word vomit word vomit
Stomach stretched for miles
Daggers in my throat
Face pale as tiles
Stand myself up
Knock myself down
Stay afloat, breath
Sink and drown

This morning I woke up and I hated everything. I hated my body, I hated the knots in my hair, I hated the shape of my eyebrows and the pimples on my chin. I hated my job, I hated my course, I hated that I was going nowhere and could see nowhere in the distance that I wanted to be. I hated how slow of a reader I am and how I can’t do the simplest tasks without messing up. I hated my family. I hated my friends. I hated me. But now I realise that it was just the morning, and I’m not a morning person.