Inkprilled - Blog Posts

When pain has crossed the limit

It turns into a heavy stone

It sinks into soft skin

Continuing past flesh and bone

Until it finds it's way

To your feather light soul

And there it stays

heavy and cold

They say write what you know so I will. I want to tell the story of loss and hope. How quickly everything can fall apart , how you can be looking at misery and then suddenly living inside it. How hopes and dreams are a shield against dirty looks but they don't protect your cold hands or feet in the winter months.

I want to tell the story of the forgotten, the ignored. The people sitting against storefronts that are always asked to move move where?

I want to tell the story of the tired, the burdened. The children raising their siblings while their parents buy more scratch cards because maybe this time we'll win some money will they snap out of it then?

I want to tell the story of the desperate, the lost. The young person that left everything behind , that sits in cafes but never orders. That uses the free WiFi to check social media accounts of old friends, but can never bring themselves to do so, afraid that they realise they've been forgotten how much longer can I can they hide?

What story do you want to tell?

Sometimes I think the dreams are either alternate versions of me or another person completely and I'm just hopping along in their life that night.

I had a dream I was a woman working in a book store but this woman was not me. I've had this dream before over a decade ago, same woman, same bookstore. She now has her own office so she's doing well since the last dream, she seemed happy, fulfilled. I woke and felt motivated to do something with my life. Maybe visit a books store, maybe I'd see her in the women checking out books, Maybe I'd one day see myself with my own book adorning the shelfs.

I wonder if she dreams of me, I wonder what she sees. Am I a recurring dream, the Young women that prefers to stay curled up, that never went out with friends and now lives half in a world of pretend. Does she see me lay in bed, lost but searching, waiting but hiding. Am I a nightmare. Does she wake confused and heavy and think thankgod that's not me.

Am I only ever meant to dream of what could have been.

It's nearly halfway into the year and I feel a little bit lost and heavy. I feel like a stone sinking into the summer months. warm. sleepy. Isolated.

Let's be honest.

Let's be truthful.

When you meet your own eyes in the mirror

Can you recognise or a least reconsider

The apathy

That you let cling to thee

It's carefully downing you

It feels a secure embrace

But you're afloat

You've lost the boat, to passion, to joy, to meaning

It's calling out

ahoy

Where did you go

I see your eyes meet mine in the mirror

I see what once was starting to flicker

Are you but a ghost

A lost dream turning thinner.

I don't get out bed most days, I barely remember to drink water and my hyper fixations seem to be doing me more harm than good. But I go to get groceries in the late evening hours, as the birds call out to the fading sun. I can't bring myself to go regularly, but I've been in my house for weeks and the birds are singing and the streets are empty and life seems beautiful and fresh when you walk alone just breathing or singing to your self. I walk over the fly over, closer to the branches that reach up and away from here.

I sat outside on a wall across the pub. My dad was inside. I hadn't spoken to him in ten years. But I had seen him through pub windows and passed by him as he smoked in doorways more than a few times. Once I heard him sharply inhale, coughing as cigarette smoke choked him when I passed, but reached out he did not and neither did I.

It was summer, the air was warm and still, the daffodils had fully bloomed. I don't know how long I sat there, but I know it started to get dark and the streets emptied. Someone in the pub put on Sweet Caroline, everyone inside sang it with all the energy of a football chant, I hummed along to the chorus looking at the sky as it changed from blue to pink to black. I sang I'll be fine (I know now those aren't the lyrics) even though I felt so alone in that moment, I was adrift, I was waiting. And I'd waited long enough. But how could I stop. It was all I had.

I kept my eyes fixed on the door for awhile, then the stars, then back to door blinking against the tears gathering at the edges of my vision. I wanted to take off my shoes and rest my feet on the cool pavement, I wanted to feel rooted in something other than my loneliness, my sadness, but I didn't. Instead I quietly sang along to Sweet Caroline, sang about hands reaching out and felt more alone than ever, felt an ache settle deep and heavy into my bones, i suppose I was rooted by my feelings after all.

I'm not sure why I stayed there, was it in the hope that he'd spot me, rush out, hold me close and say it's going to be okay now , dads here or was it a punishment mixed with self pity. All I know is I couldn't bring myself to go inside but also didn't want to hide. The song ended and the stars above looked on in indifference.

Then a man walked passed. I got ready for a suggestive remark or something similar. there are some streets in my city as there are in most around the world, where women line dark alleyways and men in cars roll down their windows and ask how much, and if you happen to be a women walking alone in those areas you might get asked if your working tonight. So I was prepared for something along those lines, I was prepared to politely smile and get my keys ready between my knuckles if needed. He paused for a moment.

"Are you alright love?" he asked, his voice quiet and concerned.

With the relief came the overwhelming need to tell him the truth, to spill everything to this stranger, to tell him that no I wasn't alright, I was deeply not okay and the heavy feeling has been following me around for so long I dont know how to live without it, instead I indulge in it, I give it a place at the dinner table, I drink it with every meal and tuck it close to my heart every night, I use it as a substitute for a lullaby. But I couldn't , I didn't.

I flashed him a quick smile , the most hollow thing you could imagine, the only thing I could muster. it was just something I did to get him to walk away. "Yeah, I'm good thanks".

He didn't walk away, he stood there with eyes so caring I was afraid they'd make everything I was holding in unravel in a messy pile at our feet. "Are you sure, really?" he knew I wasn't, my sad shining eyes didn't help.

I shook my head slightly, another quick smile "I'm sure."

Beware the ides of march they say. Perhaps we should beware every month, as we the participating audience watch this pantomime play out on insta reels and YouTube shorts. Meanwhile groceries prices go higher, innocent people die trapped under the rubble of their homes and country relations are haywire，all because the man on stage wants to pretend everything is satire. And he does this while the world catches fire, calls it progress. Calls it great T.V. But will call foul play when shots are fired when the people he hurts grow tired.

When I was little I was collecting all my future pains and putting them in a neat little line, each one climbing up the ladder of my spine. Because what is time, what does it matter when I could see the ending before I had even begun. It was like the Me that would live through broken glass and kicked in doors felt her heart beating so loudly she sent the sound back through time, and it found me in my room when everything was good. This organ we prescribe love to felt so much fear it ran back to a time before the palpitations.

In about ten minutes I'm going to receive a phone call and I probably shouldn't be making a post, because I always start freaking out just before (so rn). but I'm doing this to trick my brain into being semi productive, basically I'm getting the ball rolling and hoping I can cling to whatever motion is left for the phone call.

I usually sit in literal silence for hours before any call so that I can store up social energy and mentally prepare myself, but sometimes I instead start getting more anxious the closer it comes to the call time, and when that happens I just don't pick it up. It feels like there's a wild animal waiting on the other end but also one looking over my shoulder ready to get me if I don't pick up.

So I'm going to just make this random rambling post and hope I stay out of my amygdala. Gosh I hate this lol, I've been through way scarier things but waiting on phone calls always feel like falling down an elevator shaft.

barefoot in the garden

Prickly grass under my feet,

the pale sky stretched out above my head,

As I watch small insects

carry away their dead.

The icecream man is driving down my street with the song playing loud and I'm Feeling intense nostalgia, for the childhood I still cling to. I feel it melting away, it's cool softness turning watery, slipping between my fingers.

I painted something to accompany what I wrote above Here

Hollow eyes watching the crowd

it's mid day, It's busy

People rush to stores like beds of fish

Fish with magpie eyes looking for shiny things to take back to their home

The figure watching, Is ignored

To look at those hollow eyes would mean to look at their own magpies ones

To confront the misery and their lack of it

So instead they talk louder as they walk past, they drown out a defeated "excuse m–

Or they become silent, their steps quick and their eyes down as they click and swipe

As the figure with hollow eyes watches you pretend to type.

I just awoke from a nightmare. Absolutely horrendous I tell you. There was a koala sized rat/tarantula hybrid and it kept running at me and clamping it's fangs into my hands. This being. This fiend just wouldn't let up, it was relentless, I have phantom pains in my hands. But To be fair it might have just been extremely pissed off and offended, because the moment it toppled out of a backpack, I gagged and held up a blanket like it was garlic and a cross.

I want to write about the pain of it all, I want to write about the people I qued with outside of food banks; there was an old man who looked like a wise wizard with his long white hair, he waited for a small portion of pasta most days and offered me advice on the best times to turn up, there was a group of polish men with cans of alcohol shared between them, who at first assumed I was polish aswell and tried to talk to me, but all I could say was Przepraszam, nie wiem Polski the old man told me to stand next to him after that, there was also a brother and sister who where both addicted to heroine, most days they seemed to be going through intense withdrawals. We would all wait in a old medieval churchyard, some sat on toppled headstones while others leaned against stone angels with their faces covered. I want to write about what complete isolation and poverty does to you, how eyes don't meet yours and voices talk over you. But when I do, the room goes quiet and people look away, suddenly i feel the need to awkwardly laugh and say so yeah anyway.

Anyone else physically recoil when thinking about how we are made of flesh and bone. I can even look at uncooked meat, if I've seen it raw I can't eat it cooked. And if it looks like a limb I'm not eating it at all. Then I think about how my body is uncooked meat and my bones possible tools and I shudder, I feel far too close to the tendons and the blood, I feel alive, so alive that the sound of my heart is a warning and a blessing, I feel so alive I'm afraid I'll die, I'm afraid of how gruesome it is.

I try to write something, anything, but the words are only clear when I feel them press against my heart and mind. They become muffled when hands reach for them, they loose their shape.

Oc idea for my wip Dead above.

An incoming phone call you say

And I freeze like a deer in headlights

Have I been hit, I feel blooding rushing past my ear drums

My heart is beating quick

then quicker, a fast rapid flicker

it's trying to run away, but my body won't move

Instead my body stands shock still and I watch locked in, but so far removed

I'm dizzy spinning around and round in my amygdala, a ringing is pulsing against the outside walls of it

trying to get inside

I cannot hide

Then the ringing just stops

it's stops

Incoming call is dropped and rational thinking has lost.

Does anyone else feel a bit overwhelmed when a post u make gets more notes than your used to, like there's hundreds of people just suddenly in your room looking over your shoulder at your Mediocr post and by exstention you.

Last night I had a dream where a group of three people entered telephone boxes and where transported to a white room/void space and then the women in the group spotted someone in the distance, it's seems like she had past disagreements with this person because she full on ripped their limbs off with her teeth, the white ground was spattered in red. She then turned to the two guys in the group, who had just watched casually like this was a regular thing for them and hissed "Justice!" with blood spilling from her mouth and dripping down her face. I woke up tasting iron. Anyway.

Hollow eyes watching the crowd

it's mid day, It's busy

People rush to stores like beds of fish

Fish with magpie eyes looking for shiny things to take back to their home

The figure watching, Is ignored

To look at those hollow eyes would mean to look at their own magpies ones

To confront the misery and their lack of it

So instead they talk louder as they walk past, they drown out a defeated "excuse m–

Or they become silent, their steps quick and their eyes down as they click and swipe

As the figure with hollow eyes watches you pretend to type.

I know right now, with everything that's going on in the world, it feels like the night will last forever, it's darkness stretching out for years and years ahead. But I have to say that one day, the soft pull of life will tug at you. You'll find yourself sitting quietly in the summer months enjoying the warm rays and the birdsongs, maybe you plant some flowers or berrys. You'll laugh till your sides ache and your heart lightens. You'll make art and get paint on your clothes and on your carpet. You'll read books your friend recommend and gush over your favourite characters together, maybe you'll write your own. That's what's getting me through, that one day it will be summer, the days soft and I'll have my book finished in my hands and maybe someone will read it. Maybe they won't. But it's things like this, the soft things, that make everything worth it.

I just read your post about being twenty, lonely and waiting forever for something, anything to happen at all. It really helps to know that there is someone else out there that feels the same, so I wanted to say thank you for your post. It did reach me in a dark moment and managed to bring a little light into my heart. I hope things will get better for you and some day you will get your beautiful plot twist

Thank you 🌼 I really appreciate that, I hope you're life is filled with brighter moments and maybe one day something will find us and kickstart this stagnant waiting or maybe our thirty's will be kinder. we can begin when we want and we'll wait for the sunrise. Sending you joy when you need it most and I hope u get your plot twist aswell. Thankyou anon 💛

I stole a bible a few years ago, I browsed the shelfs not looking to steal but to pass the time and then I saw it, black cover and pages edged in gold. I wasn't religious, more agnostic or an atheist that dabbled in Buddhist ideas, I felt the Christian narrative or at least the one I heard about was always about who would pay. How jesus payed for your "sins", and if you didn't believe then you'll pay in the after life, so hold on to guilt and carry your strife , but I also knew that I wanted , needed something. I wasn't looking for misplaced shame only hope and I wanted to have it tangible in my hands.

So with my stomach empty and my shoes hole ridden, I ignored the fashion magazines with diet tips and beauty tricks and filled my emptyness with something close to hope, if only to cope. I grabbed it from the shelf and I left the store. I was too afraid to steal food , I didn't dare even with my hunger, but possibility of having something bigger than life to cling to on cold and lonely nights seemed worth the risk.

During that time I wasn't doing so well, my mother was drinking and taking drugs with her friends god only knows where and the cupboards where completely bare. I would wander around town, I would wait for the days to pass, I would wait for something to meet me in my loneliness. I wanted so desperately for something like god to reveal itself to me, my mother wasn't someone I could lean on and my father wasn't around so I think naturally I wanted something to believe in, to sustain me when food and family couldn't.

Last year my brother and I where almost homeless, we slept on the hard floor in a cold empty room for three years, we spent every day waiting. I would wait for the stores reduced items at the end of the day, wait for the sun to dry my clothes, I would walk for hours round and round, my shoes didn't last long, I tried ducktaping the soles but the pavement wore through that aswell. When I wasn't waiting outside food banks, staring at white walls or writing, I sometimes would visit the church in town. It's a cathedral and I still have no idea what denomination it's under, but I'd walk around and admire the marbal pillers and stain glass windows, I would try to remember how people hundreds near a thousand years ago carved angles into stone and placed their hope in something other than themselfs, that back then a church may have been the only place you could go if you had no where else. I reminded myself of all the people who would have prayed there, that would have stood where I stood and cried, wished and waited as I did. I would light a candle and I would wish for a better tomorrow, I wasn't asking jesus or a god, I was asking the universe, I was asking subconsciously myself to keep going.

What do you think of religion? (Are you religious?)

Excerpt from my WIP Dead above.