"Lying in my brain's bed" by Cleo Spencer
There’s this roundabout
I’ve driven at least a hundred times.
I can spend hours at a time in its worn down routes
Revolving round the same uncertain attempts to
Release the vacuum in my chest
Empty the cotton in my stomach
With keys from secondhand maps.
Take the first exit for brain draws a reasonable observation.
Take the second for brain fabricates some poisonous distortion.
Strained neck squinting out the window at each turnoff
I look for hints that one will take me to Reality.
But the more I go around, the more the distinction between them blurs
Till there is only one exit
Dropping off into some defeated, deflated void.
My wrists ache from holding the turn as I go around again.
I don’t want to take this exit.
But I feel nauseous, short of breath, dizzy
And the uncertainty looping in my brain nags
Is this a lie is this a lie is this a lie is this a lie is this a lie is this
Calling it a lie feels like an excuse most days.
And maybe this is also a lie?
If there is a line separating Anxiety and whatever I am
It’s been broken for some time.
The lurking doubt and panic
Sometimes feel like a surreal game I’m playing, where I just need to
Snap out of it/Get out of my head/Try harder to stop over-thinking over-feeling
Over-being.
But I don’t know if I can get any closer to what’s Real than what I experience
Through the chemicals playing in my brain.
Real or lies
Either way I’ll ungracefully spiral down around down
Around into that familiar void again.
Funny how passive hating yourself becomes
When the organ that tells you who you are
And what reality feels like
Keeps making your bed with lies.
When I get tired,
Where else am I going to sleep?
*image by Elle Horsfall
