I suffer with bipolar disorder. I have been diagnosed since my late twenties. It ripped my life apart, and twenty years later I am just piecing it back together through poetry.

Here’s a poem that’s in a book of mental health poetry I published called Smile. The book is available to purchase here:

http://mybook.to/smilebipolarpaperback

Just Another Day

It’s just another day
Just another fucking day
In the humdrum, mind numb,
Shut up and suck yer thumb world
Where the tv blares and the kettle boils
And the house is a shithole, a grimy underworld.

From a time when my nights were
Drunken feasts of student shenanigans
The stereo blares out Manchester tunes
Tequila slammers perched on fancy bars
Pissed up students perched on fancy skirts
Reeking of an air of fuck me soon.

And the dust and debris of weeks
Hangs in the air and floats in wisps of sunlight
Signs of can’t be bothered to clean this place
And grubby marks of my son’s fingers
Protest the mess and the photographs bless
A happier time, a smile, a beaming face.

And I pop my pills
Lined up in clinical colours
Promising miracles of sustaining mental health
Masking a madness, hiding the disfunction
Curtains that shut out the crazy
That blacken the brightness that is too fucking dazzling
A disappointment to the queen and the commonwealth.

And I go to the shops
Stare blankly at bargains
and three for two offers aligned on corporate shelves
pile chips in the trolley, frozen pizza, turkey dinosaurs
beans and egg and bacon and unhealthy, unhealthy, unhealthy
cannot be bothered with doctors and dieticians
and the dogooders and the proclaimers of perfect health.

And I sit on the bus and shut out the world I live in
Sue and Bob and Rita
Discussing the crimes of the immigrants
Sending them back to their countries
To die, to die, to be persecuted
A prejudiced view, a heartless, racist,
Sickening arrogance.

And I die and I die and I die inside
Wondering where it all went wrong.
Where life took a turn down shithole alley
Where life diverted from a Mozart opera
To a fascist, ugly death metal song.
Where life became written in black and white
When the colour ink started to run
Off the colourful page of my fortunate life
Where did the joy go, where did my life go so horribly wrong.

And Jezza’s on the telly
And the dirty pots are piled in the kitchen sink
And the carpet could do with a hoover
And the bathroom screams ‘release me from the limescale’
And the depression is crippling
I can’t even fucking think.

And I cry and I cry
And the tears don’t even offer to clean away
The squalor of my messed up brain
The ramshackle house is a mirror of the mess in my head
And a mirror of the futility that envelopes me again.
And I cry again
And I die again
And I stick my head in the sand again.

It’s just another day
Just another fucking day
In the humdrum, mind numb,
Shut up and suck yer thumb world
Where the tv blares and the kettle boils
And my mental health is my nemesis
And my dreams of an easier life unfurl.
And I’m just another fucked up girl.
Just another fucked up girl.

© Sarah Drury 2019