Tag Archives: a day in the life

Memoirs of a high functioning depressive (hfd)

I don’t know if that’s what I am, but
I manage to get along as best that I
Can, muddling through each and
Every day, feeling lost, and alone,
With so much to do, feel, share, and
say.

But I’m quiet.

I know many would laugh
At that preposterous thought,
Because quiet,
Is something
They’re sure
That I’m not.

But that just goes to show,
What the clowns already know;
That – if you put enough garish paint,
On the side of the face where the pain ain’t,
Nobody notices
How you ache inside.

Tears pushing through sorrow,
Choking back the sun, with this
Empty ache echoing forever
Inside
Each
And every one.

I’m tired,
It goes without saying, too,
As I don’t want to be a burden,
I guess I’ll just carry on
Seeing
This through.

I may not always be alone,
But, yes, I am lonely,
For this space I rest my weary head
Is for me
And for me
Only.

That’s not so much a choice,
As a curse three times nailed,
The postman has come and gone,
My effort’s been mailed.

And I’ll keep on trying,
Keep pushing on through,
Because the alternative
Is not an option,
So trying
Is just what I’ll do.

I’ll try to find happiness,
Try to find one other,
Someone to spend time with,
A soulmate…

And there I freeze,
Because I – aside from the breeze,
Blowing softly across my knees,
As I listen to the traffic outside,
Going by, as normal as you please –
Am no longer one with this world,
If I ever was.

The tinnitus in my ears, and others’ eyes
Running for the hills as I try to read lips,
To discover goods from ills, is simply an
Aural manifestation of what I have known all along –

I am outside of it all; boat and swing
Missed, fog-man distracted by internal thought,
Left swinging in the emptiness, swimming inside,
Sitting lonely on his couch,
Having forgotten to have cried.

Excercise in futility; aka the dating game

Having completed Tinder, OkCupid, Match and Bumble, I can honestly say I prefer GTA4.

The rules of the game are simple; “swipe until it’s empty”.

I have done that at “Boss” level. It’s not difficult. Just takes loads of time. Time I clearly had.

I have a whole method for efficient swiping… It’s tap tap tap… Swipe.

Any sedated tigers, chihuahuas, pouting, or loads of gym photos, or a guy’s name on seemingly a woman’s photos, or all serious photos with no smiles, swipe left.

The slightest possibility I might be attracted to them and they seem normal and their smile actually reaches their eyes, swipe right.

Works just as well as randomly swiping left and right with my eyes closed (I have tried it).

And you have to have lots of uncomfortable chats where you try way too hard to be charming and funny – think pickup lines without the alcohol and background noise to distract from the utter awkwardness of it, a few slightly awkward dates (now video calls, which is the “advanced” level difficulty), and end up realising you can’t work out the most basic reason people are attracted to one another – that magical unknown quantity of “chemistry” – without actually meeting the person in person.

It is at that point that you “complete” the dating app.

And, just because we are creatures of habit, we then go try other dating apps, because maybe, just maybe, doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome is not the definition of insanity.

Once we have completed all available dating apps, and come to that same realisation time and again, with friends and strangers egging us on the whole time by dangling that “I have friends who met online and got married and are really happy” magical power up in front of us, do we officially “complete all levels” in the online dating game.

There is no winning. It is realising that we are simply confirming the uselessness of it all that means we have “leveled up”.

That is why it is called “gamifying”, or the “gamification” of, dating.

It’s a game, and the only ones to win are the companies that make money from us endlessly swiping.

So we get frustrated and delete the apps, only to return a few months later in desperation, hoping against hope that, somehow, this time it will be different.

For proof of this, just see how many profiles say, “I had deleted this app but I am back now hoping to delete it again…”

I think we need a “Dating Apps Anonymous” group.

When

When sorrow sits
On your chest
Drawing
The hangdog look
On your face,
And all the world seems
Like the least unfriendly place,
You may be down,
But not out, for
There is still something left
In the tank.

Just gotta push
Right on through
Til the you
That you once knew
Can ride the wave
Of happiness again;
Just another ripple in the ocean,
Wave to be ridden,
Dip in the clackety-clack
Of old wooden rollercoaster pull
Up the long slope to that first steep drop,
Heart in throat, then stomach in brain,
Whooshing down to the bottom,
Then back up again.

The asinine flow
Of life’s ups and downs,
Raising us into the air,
Only to smash us back to the ground.
Still we ride the wave,
Feel the flow,
Let rip,
Let it go,
Because there is no
Other way to be –

That is you.

And this
is me.

junk jettisoned, ebooks printed…and all’s well

This is just a quickie…I know, I know, usually it takes a good couple of dates, some wining and dining, a few smiles, a hug, a kiss a cuddle…and then onto the final frontier…space…or at least what’s left of it aside from the junk we jettison out there as the ultimate chav planet in the galaxy…but more on that later.

(No, more on that now! Are those in charge of disposing of earth’s rubbish the same senseless oiks who dump old refrigerators in front of their homes on the off chance someone else wants it, or maybe the neighbours will get fed up enough – as I sometimes do – and clear it to the dump themselves? Seriously! If I was an alien race hell-bent on world domination, or just a friendly neighborhood alien race looking to drop in on the newbies and see how they are settling in, whether the kids have found school to be tough, or even just to borrow a few million gallons of oil, and I saw the rubbish floating around our planet by way of dead satellites, space waste, jettisoned rubbish and general debris that we humans have surrounded our planet with…well, I would think twice about visiting. Do you regularly go meet and greet neighbours who have old kitchen sinks dumped in their front gardens? Think about it! We could be missing out on the evolutionary-jump of a sentient race which thinks we are the chavs of the Milky Way…and we’ll never know…and now back to our regular broadcast…)

What was I on about? Oh, yes, I’ve published three compilations of, well, stuff from this blog as ebooks on Amazon – just search for ‘Emerson Freedman’ on amazon, or type in ‘Poemetics’…or even just click on one of the three links to those books on Amazon on the rigth hand side here…no not there…over to the…yeah…to the…to the right…your other right…yeah, there, the ‘Poemetics’, ‘A Day in the Life’ and ‘Storytology’ links. Yup. Those. No, you can’t download them for free. They cost a whole £0.71. Not cause I’m greedy. Cause Amazon don’t do free ebooks. Go figure. Cheapest I could make them….no really…it was….whatever.

So, go on, have a look, download them, let me know what you think. Share them with a friend. This is the first foray into epublishing for me…the first ‘real’ epublishing books I created…by way of Word to Plain Text to Jutoh to Amazon…cool stuff, eh?

Let me know what you think. Feedback is always appreciated. Even if it is not precisely what I want to hear. (The truth is not always pretty, I know. But if you’re going to be honest, go easy…I am more fragile than I look!)

Til next time, bon nuit,

Em (mE)