Humanity: Raw & Unfiltered
Emily resisted going to bed. She wasn’t ready for the onslaught of thoughts waiting behind closed eyes. She typed his name into the search bar. This time, the top result wasn’t his LinkedIn profile. It was an obituary. Colon cancer. Four months ago. Four months. He’d been dead for four Read more
Before the rising, there was excruciating silence. A million deaths beneath the skin—unnamed, insistent. Felt keenly, ignored. Then came the cracking—full, unrelenting—no gentle undoing. Only the collapse of all self-abandonment once held together. She watched, relegated to the back seat as mind and soul retreated from the noise. Choosing solitude Read more
Remission & Relapse Historians tend to refer to continuity and change, the mainstay interpretations of what has happened and what it means (at least at A-Level). I wonder if Doctors (of mental illnesses) are as concerned with continuity and change, their obsession with relapse and remission being an inevitable legacy Read more
It doesn’t take much to set that feeling off in me—racing heart, the inability to settle my hands if I try to type. I no longer experience a temptation to raise my voice as I once did, though sometimes—like today—when my body gets that jittery feeling that adrenalin or cortisol Read more
I remember with clarity the last time I saw my grandmother. As I recall, I stood on her doorstep, staring through the stained-glass door as her small frame moved inside. She was smaller, greyer, glassier in the eye, and as I also saw, annoyed by my arrival. She opened the Read more
Survive; Survivor; Survived. What does it mean? Is it what they survived? Or what we survived? What I survived? That’s definable – the ‘what’; Danger, violence, terror. The suffocating distress of it. But what does surviving look like? Is it still being alive? Is it still carrying on? Is it Read more
It’s a Tuesday evening, and I’ve just returned from therapy. I pour a glass of wine before gathering the ingredients for dinner: six shallots, garlic, half a can of tomato paste, anchovies, and pasta. Outside, my neighbor who lives in the building behind mine pulls into the shared parking lot. Read more
When I was young, my mother Was obsessed with not eating. She’d scream, Skip the carbs, no bread Or rice. Today I view food Like a used car salesman, The mirror as a cross-examination To see if anything is amiss, The muffin top, the sags. And still, I hear the Read more