Mental Health and Me 2015

By Mental Health and Me Competition Winners

A collection of writing, including letters, journalism, short stories, diary entries, blog posts, poems, tweets and spoken word - all winners of a competition run by Liverpool Mental Health Consortium and Writing on the Wall to celebrate World Mental Health Day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Writing on the Wall
• Release date: Oct 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781519987099

Book preview

MENTAL HEALTH

AND ME

Competition Winners

Liverpool Mental Health Consortium

Writing on the Wall

SPOKEN WORD

The Edge

Pat Fearnon

1st Place and Overall Winner

Her sense of not quite fitting anywhere

Stretches back to childhood, family, street

And school, a never questioned difference,

From over-fondling grandpa, to neglect

Then harsh and sudden bouts of discipline.

She cannot hack the normal. Robbing shops

And truancy is great. Lazy parenting ensures

She grows up, undetected into that

Half-world where bent does best.

But queen of rebel teens feels wrong for her. She opts

For marriage, for a home, a child, a car,

The props of ordinary life. Yet still,

She does not fit, and cannot do the parent

Thing, that other-people’s round of paddling pools

And going to the park and birthday parties,

Ground that she has never trodden, fun

That she has never known and cannot handle.

Far easier to hide in social life,

Please her husband with booze-loosened wit,

Drown out the doubts until the self-disgust

Matches what she sees in his next morning gaze,

Hears in his tones, She hovers on the brink of choice,

Self-salvation, or that teetering edge.

My Bipolar Hell

Susan Fagan

2nd Place

I was high I was low

I was low I was high

I was happy

Oh so happy

I was down

I would cry

I would rage burn inside!

I had nowhere to hide

I would talk all the time

I'd pretend I was fine

I would smile I would laugh

Then I would cry in the bath

I would lay in my bed

And wish I was dead

As my high would come down

It would start with a frown

Then I'd dissolve into tears

I'd be gripped by my fears

I would hide in my shell

In my own private hell

Cos the devil he had won

With his own kind of fun

Then the very next day

I'd have plenty to say

As my mood would then lift

Like a wonderful gift

But my mask would soon fail

And inside I would wail

Help me ... help me ...

Please somebody help me ...

The Prison

Luke Chandley

3rd Place

My mind is like a prison, but there are no prison guards or appropriate safety measures. There’s a riot taking place. The alarms are going off and at the moment it feels like no-one will ever claw back control. I will never claw back control. The unruly penitentiary of my twisted thoughts has been destroyed. Burnt to the ground and the inmates are on the loose. Anxiety has found its voice, its strength and its confidence. Depression is looking on, waiting for the foundation to become too loose to hold up the walls. Too shoddy to hold it all. Panic attacks are creating the cracks, and as the roof begins to fall the thoughts start to escape. Slowly. Surely. All around, it’s a battleground.

There’s a civil war going on inside my mind. My mental immune system is on the wane and right now it could go either way. On one side I’m ruled by rational thinking. A crack team based around the idea that some things are good, and some things are bad, but neither end of the spectrum gets too much of a voice. A democratic society where every part of the mind gets a say. There’s rules, but they’re sensible and allow the peace to flow like a calm and gentle river, reflecting the sunshine. A healthy environment to grow. To evolve.

Yet, the other side is critical. It’s cynical and it’s disturbed. A totalitarian state, controlled by depression. Aided by anger and pain, it will not halt, will not