(Art and words by Stormie Mills. Original in colour. Instagram @stormiemills )
Some days absolutely kick your arse, things go wrong, or worse just not quite right, seemingly one thing after the other, you feel like as the song says, “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.” As the minutes tick past it feels like a grindstone on your will power and then the doorbell rings and it’s anxiety, but anxiety doesn’t bring anything. Anxiety is a thief. Those are the days you learn to breathe, those are the days where we are really tested. Those are the days you just get through, even the nights are long! The strongest people know where they have been broken, so there is tomorrow, bring it on, tomorrow we will fly again.
She grew tired of being so nice.
Footnote story: When you’re a nice person who is caring, kind and considerate of other people’s feelings. It’s quite a blow when you come into contact with people who aren’t nice. Sometimes cruel and hurtful. Careless with their words – and the feelings of others. It can knock you flat.
But then you get back up and learn to be a bit more economical with your niceness. Careful about the amount of good energy you give to certain people and ensure it goes where it is safe,respected and appreciated. And when you feel how bad the opposite to nice feels, you realise just how important it is in the world.
(Clunk & Jam book 2019).
Up Above The World So High .
On the night you’ve gone to the dark, look to the black tinsel sky and see how small you really are. Let it shrink, for a moment, the swell of emotion that engulfs you, anchoring you in your small and fleeting space, so you can feel the splinter of time that holds you here until the next.
(From book, ‘Clunk & Jam’).
For anyone who has experienced overwhelming sense of hopelessness and despair, you’ll know how hard it is pull up out of that space. And it’s not always the ‘light’ that consoles us when in a dark space. This poem arrived at a time when in the grip of one of these moments and how taking myself outside into the dark night and looking up at the stars helped put things in to perspective. Offered reprieve and relief from the state of mind that gripped me ‘inside’. And for those supporting someone in a dark space, it may be helpful to know that you don’t necessarily have to make things ‘bright’, ‘light’ or ‘right’ to help someone. Sometimes just keeping them company, sitting quietly, can help to secure a line to something outside of the head space they feel lost and alone in.
The poem’s picture comes from the documentary film ‘Man on Wire’, about a French tightrope walker who strung a wire between the twin tower buildings in New York and did the impossible.
(Reposted from 2011)
