Tag: manic depression

To the Misogynists

Published on by Sarah DruryLeave a comment

When I had a lengthy spell in hospital, many years ago, I was very poorly. I was on what is known as a ‘one to one’, which meant I had to have a nurse with me at all times. One evening, whilst sitting in my room watching TV with the staff nurse, he turned around and said to me, “you know that people like you should never have children, right??” Those words really hurt me and he should never have said that. I am now, many years later, mother to a son with Autism, and although i have times when I struggle with my mental health, my son has helped me stay as sane as I possibly can because I am all he’s got after his father died. He keeps me strong, and was a turning point in my life after many years in psychiatric hospitals.

I wrote this poem about the nurse’s cruel words.

Just because
Mental illness blights
My fragile mind
Just because
My soul travels
In divergent dimensions
Gives you
no fucking right
To play God
Or Hitler
With my right to
Bear child

Casting aspersions
Of prejudice
You broke me
May as well
Rip out my womb
And gift my ovaries
To the mentally stable
Yet barren

Mothers are born
Not made
Merciless are your
Arrogant aspersions
As callous words
Plummet in placentas
Of castigation
Blood staining
Your misogynist shoes

My right to
Bear child
Never smashed by
The patriarchy
Will be

I pray the vitriolic men
Within whose care
Rest women vulnerable
And broken
Embrace humanity
Whilst the tongues
Of those ridiculing
My maternal potential
Are bound in
Repentance
Regret
and
Retribution

©2020 Sarah Drury

Broken Wings

Published on by Sarah Drury2 Comments

This poem is dedicated to anyone who has ever suffered with a mental illness.

I have two tattered wings
That sit like prayers
Upon my broken back
I thought I was an angel
But angels’ wings are usually white
I don’t know if they come
In shades of black
And I know I lack faith
I try to keep my eyes
To heaven in the sky
But my wings are too heavy
I try to help myself
To lift my soul, to fly
But each cloud is a traitor
Selling my sins for my lies
God tell me why
I am always falling
At the first demon?
Am I faithless?

I have two tattered wings
That sit like heavy burdens
Upon my fragile heart of gold
I’ve been trying
Not to sell my cut price soul
To the devil
Since losing my virginity
At seventeen sordid years old
I waited for Armageddon
But you pay for Heaven
In pieces of silver
Not in counterfeit gold
And my wings
Aren’t worth shit

I have two tattered wings
That sit like curses
Upon a mind of paranoia
And madness
I’ve been conversing
With the saints
If I say a prayer for a sick child
Will they take away this
Summertime sadness
It’s a bit late for me
For my shattered wings
To be made anew
There’re only so many things
These days
I can possibly do
Without going fucking
INSANE

But I’ll keep flying
Broken angel
Navigating those crazy skies
And I’ll keep peddling those
Happiness lies
Swallowing the pills I despise
And I’ll survive
On a wing
And a
prayer

©2020 Sarah Drury

Lithium Chick

Published on by Sarah DruryLeave a comment

I have a mental illness called Bipolar Disorder and one of the medications I have to take is lithium. My illness has taken me to some very dark places but lithium has been a wonder drug for me. I wrote this poem at myself, a sort of dark commentary of my illness. I must stipulate it is not aimed at other sufferers, for i have great respect for anyone who deals with a mental health condition day in, day out.

Pop them pills lithium chick
Pop them pills lithium chick
They’ll soothe your pain nice and quick
They’ll make you sane, they’ll make you sick
Make your daydreams milkshake thick
So, pop them pills lithium chick
Pop them pills lithium chick

You know you’ve no job, no money, no hope
No esteem, no confidence, no dreams
You mope, you mope, you mope, you mope
You think of life on the end of a rope
But that’d be like if you tried to elope
So you car crash along, you do your best,
You swallow the shit that is life, you cope.

Pop them pills lithium gal
Pop them pills lithium gal
Don’t want you jumping in no canal
Don’t want death being your penpal
Keep up yer pecker, keep up yer morale
So pop them pills lithium gal
Pop them pills lithium gal

You know love hasn’t found you yet
You cling to a heart that was struck by a dart
When the doctor delivered his black diagnosis
You’ve spent your adulthood swinging between
Being celibate like a nun and being fucked like a tart
And wondering when your fantasies would fall apart
When your roses and hearts romance would start.

Pop them pills lithium dame
Pop them pills lithium dame
We don’t want you fucking insane
These drugs fucking with your pendulum brain
No free prescriptions down the drain
A faulty gene on the family chain
A train of crazy you couldn’t feign
Never mind the fucking pain
The psycho strain, the trash mind sprain
The shameful mental illness stain
Don’t have the complacency to complain
Don’t blame me for the bloodstain train
So pop them pills lithium dame
Pop them pills lithium dame

You know you’re not like the other girls
You’re not thin as a lath nor dripping in pearls
Your hair doesn’t fall in locks of sanity or wellness curls
You don’t walk with the sheep
For their wool isn’t hoodwinked over your eyes
And their normal ways are not ones you can keep
The mountains are too steep and the valleys are too fucking deep.

Pop them pills lithium bitch
Pop them pills lithium bitch
A female in the sanity glitch
A loony machine without a switch
A girl the other girls want to ditch
A girl to shag but never to hitch
A monster, a demon, an unhinged witch
So pop them pills lithium bitch
Pop them pills lithium bitch
Pop them pills…

©2019 Sarah Drury

Just another Day

Published on by Sarah Drury4 Comments

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

Asylum

Published on by Sarah DruryLeave a comment

I suffer from bipolar disorder. I was diagnosed aged twenty eight after my first episode of severe mania. Previously i had suffered severe depression. I was in hospital 9 months that time! Nowadays I manage to live a semblance of a normal life. I take my lithium and other meds and care for my Autistic son. I write and perform spoken word poetry. Writing is my therapy and my connection to the real world! Here’s a poem I wrote about my mania during that prolonged hospital stay.

Asylum

Cool, crisp, cotton
Starched beyond comfort
Almost alliteration
But I don’t want to conform
Don’t want to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.

Cold, hard floor
Nothing as fancy as parquet
Just industrial tiles of generic vinyl
Not even a hint of Brahms or The Beatles.
My mind drones along to the speed of an old 33
Dreaming of one day spinning with the fast boys
But for now, a B list artist
Singing for pence
In the bargain basement.

Heart a cuboid slab of ice
Frozen and waiting for fancy knives
To carve and curve and slice and splice
And muster a masterpiece
And create something with the semblance
Of life
Something with the semblance
Of not being dead a fucking gain.
Of not being .

Leave me in my place
With the lunatics wailing within walls
Singing their songs of the places and spaces
In minds held together with threads of madness
Snippets of borderline blue and manic maroon
Maybe a skein of schizoid stained in scarlet
To match the colour of my Maybelline lips
Deluded into thinking that
I may be beautiful.
Beautiful and broken.

Leave me in my place
With the demons plaguing my sacred inclinations
With Hell burning beneath my illusions of Heaven
With the angels weeping for a lost sister
With me weeping for the lost
With me weeping for me.

Long is the hour
When the darkness lives within
And the light resides without.
Long is the hour
When the fire within that has burned
Since I took my first breath
Becomes an ember
Becomes ash.

But it will pass.
It will pass.

© Sarah Drury 2019