Words From Within

A collection of creative writing by patients at The Phoenix Wing,

St Ann’s Hospital.

LEARN TO FLY

The butterflies in my stomach are fighting desperately to escape, The intense fear causes my heart to pound at an immeasurable rate.

People are asking me why I’m sad, This make me feel more helpless and incapable because perhaps I’m just mad.

Why can’t I be normal and feel okay, I can’t explain these unbearable emotions making me feel this way.

The flood of tears, anger and pain Only feeds into the diagnosis label that I am just insane.

Now that I’ve been given this label there is a self fulfilling prophecy, To meet expectations and live up to this description of me.

Because what can I offer the world and who is the real me?

I have been consumed by this disorder and that’s all anyone can see, It’s like being a bird unable to fly, The frustration and restlessness it feels as it watches others dart through the sky.

It witnesses all the other soaring birds doing what they desire, The jealousy it feels as all it can do is watch and admire.

This is just how I feel being trapped in this endless maze, With the false hope I keep reassuring myself with that it’s just a phase.

But is this a phase if it’s been going on for so long Maybe this is the punishment I deserve for doing things so wrong.

But I must have fight in me and maintain some hope – If I don’t there will be nothing to motivate me to try and cope.

So just as an injured bird should not be afraid of the sky, I should fight my inner fears, achieve my goals, and learn to fly.

LD

DANCE

Willing away the endless hours Imagining and dreaming of life’s endless powers Look to the future and take a chance Tell yourself you can sing and dance KA

LEARN TO FLY

The butterflies in my stomach are fighting desperately to escape, The intense fear causes my heart to pound at an immeasurable rate.

People are asking me why I’m sad, This make me feel more helpless and incapable because perhaps I’m just mad.

Why can’t I be normal and feel okay, I can’t explain these unbearable emotions making me feel this way.

The flood of tears, anger and pain Only feeds into the diagnosis label that I am just insane.

Now that I’ve been given this label there is a self fulfilling prophecy, To meet expectations and live up to this description of me.

Because what can I offer the world and who is the real me?

I have been consumed by this disorder and that’s all anyone can see, It’s like being a bird unable to fly, The frustration and restlessness it feels as it watches others dart through the sky.

It witnesses all the other soaring birds doing what they desire, The jealousy it feels as all it can do is watch and admire.

This is just how I feel being trapped in this endless maze, With the false hope I keep reassuring myself with that it’s just a phase.

But is this a phase if it’s been going on for so long Maybe this is the punishment I deserve for doing things so wrong.

But I must have fight in me and maintain some hope – If I don’t there will be nothing to motivate me to try and cope.

So just as an injured bird should not be afraid of the sky, I should fight my inner fears, achieve my goals, and learn to fly.

LD

TO BE

Laid back on the grass, I watch my chest rise and fall with each breath. The sound of chattering birds and whispering leaves hums in the background and the sweet scent of growing flowers wafts around me. Butterflies flirt with one another, and skittish bugs

zip around the grass. Light flickers down from the blue expanse above, a lemonade haze wrapping itself around the world, and the sun’s warmth licks my arms. I smile, flicking the world into bright colours and sparkling life. There’s nothing to do, nowhere to go, nowhere to see, just myself to be.

FB

UNIT

Here mothers and housewives shed forty years, swaddle themselves in Winnie the Pooh.

Padding down corridors in thick socks, unsteady legs take tentative steps, learning to walk or marking time.

A nurse waits with outstretched arms to catch them when they fall.

We sit in aggressive silence.

Lips sealed to stopper the flow of words.

Language is insufficient, feelings formless.

So we act up, lash out, spill milk like tears.

Here tantrums delayed for decades reduce adults to crumpled heaps, rattling the bars of the playpen.

Rules, so they tell us, are crutches, stabilisers, stitches.

We are propped up by 'boundaries': locked gates of routine, allocated doses of fresh air and freedom.

Here we are schooled to unlearn old tricks.

Our table manners leave a lot to be desired.

We are spoon-fed or eat under instruction, like so, like so, like so: knives are for cutting not scraping butter belongs on the bread not the plate salad dressing is part of a salad sandwiches should not be opened up or worried to bits pick up more then one pea at a time be mindful of the time scrape the plate clean.

Pockets are checked for biscuits, sleeves for pieces of toast.

Butter fingers let sauce slip.

Bitter pills are swallowed at bedtime, hot mugs cupped close to the chest, rising heat soothes worn faces and dries salt on cheeks.

The dark corridor is paced at night.

Sleep is restless, In the blackout the beam of a torch scans humid rooms, checking that we have not drowned.

We retreat to corners and dark cupboards, draw knees to our chest, curl heads into crooked elbows.

Searching for the comfort of an absent embrace, longing for our original selves, uncontaminated and pregnant with possibility.

KL

ANGER

Anger is the start of a fire The result of spark. Or series of sparks.

It feels like a boiling kettle.

Release of the storm.

Like the burning of surface on my skin.

The fear that runs through under the surface of my skin.

The blood rushing up to the surface of my skin.

Want to explode.

As an erupting volcano.

The entangled thoughts becoming more intense.

A web of emotions.

NH

UNTITLED

Dark outside. Inside an orange glow.

I listen to the roar of silence, its small interruptions as the new morning is broken in.

A door creaks, worn out.

The quick heartbeat pad of footsteps draw the length of the corridor as they die away.

Somewhere along the line plates are clattered into order, a glass catches an edge, ringing out a bright high note, an unexpected bell.

Plastic bags are worried, rustles creep and fade, searches left frustrated, hanging in the air.

A low plane drags over the silence the guttural of an extractor fan; it crawls across the window pane humming black blue.

In its wake the tentative warm up of the dawn chorus.

Inside soft shoes shuffle, feet slap or thud.

A chair moans, dragged backwards down the hall.

A falling door is caught by its frame, which clutches the catch decisively.

The day is approaching too soon, I turn away and slip back under.

Amplified, my eyelashes are coarse and rasp on cotton, my shifting hot limbs shush, I think of a microphone tracing the space of a page.

Standing in the bright glare of morning I read my sleep in the lines of my sheets.

KL

RUSSIAN ROULETTE

Playing Russian Roulette pleasantly surprised those who have grown up too quickly.

Speak up! Burning questions act fast to make experts. If you can’t go can you face the deepest crisis and do the maths to rebuild relationships. Obsession allows an easing of the rush of timing. Plans. Super tasty pocket size pears are a triumph. With insights into the flavour of French for an easy life everyone’s a winner. The key to matching home are typewriters, red lions and round drawing.

NH

SLOW DISORDER

Her toes felt cold against the blue linoleum floor. She smiled as she thought of the word – linoooleeeium. How it curved and glooped along her tongue like the mar-melade on her buttered toast.

This was her new hobby. Saying words verrr-yyy slooooow-ly. Feeling everything verrryyyy sloooooow-ly. Doing it all slowly.

Time etched by at a frail pace. So she had to find ways to fill the time. Get rid of the old disorder but create new disorders and habits and oddities. Just to amuse herself.

Her spark was being snuffed out. Not like a candle. Nothing so poetic. More like she had been a sizzling firework threatening to skid in any direction, uncontrollable perhaps, but exciting.

And now, now a dog pissed down on her to keep her quiet.

She counted the crumbs on her plate. 17 small white bread flecks.

Not too many.

Not too few.

Slowly.

FB

RELAX ON THE SIDELINES

Laugh if you like but the sidelines have a ring of truth Retreat from the frustrating rhapsody of unthinkable reality Watch their little faces dismantling Magical things burn Wish. A giant leap to crystal stars.

Doze off. Time to enjoy the view.

FB

THE WATER TOWER I My mind filled the space before my body.

I imagined the doors of the tower holding in a huge column of water, from the ground to the uppermost limit of the roof, that opening one of those doors would unleash an uncontrollable torrent which would flood all around and sweep me away.

Before there was the tower thoughts turned to drowning.

Water was choked with salt, hard to swallow, drying, it pulled skin tight and powdered white.

I was always thirsty, always floundering and always thirsty.

Now the tower keeps me afloat.

Here water has edges, and a ground which reassures, proved by feet pressed flat.

Here there is a beginning, an end, and just enough in between.

This space takes me back to the safety and sanctuary of pre-birth.

Here I am embryonic, held again in water, submerged and drawing deep breaths.

I feel a drum beat fill the space and echo in my ears.

The tower resounds until I hear what it hurts to be reminded of: my pulse, marking time.

Outside I flounder and drown.

But stepping across the threshold of the tower, I find a space I can swim in.

Here we speak our voices as though for the first time, tentative, then relishing the sound.

Here we have a mooring, no longer in deep water.

Instead there are depths we can touch, heights we can reach and water we can drink.

A metronome sounding our tempo, even as it stands stock-still, the tower keeps us in step: drawing us across sodden grass,

II Here we speak our voices as though for the first time, tentative, then relishing the sound.

Here we have a mooring, no longer in deep water.

Instead there are depths we can touch, heights we can reach and water we can drink.

A metronome sounding our tempo, even as it stands stock-still, the tower keeps us in step: drawing us across sodden grass, as we shoulder our crosses, worry our fingers, knot frown after frown.

Crossing the threshold, we step from light to shade, from aching glare into dim forgiving shadow.

We make our own heat and find our light in the lights of others, who put pen to paper and say over and over, “I am an artist, I am an artist�.

III All for tea gather patiently, and cup the hot brew close to their throats, taking sups between drags.

Today we have left the constrictions of decorum outside.

Clive has brought us music: a familiar riff creeps louder, feet start to shuffle, knees to sink, our bodies to sway.

We dance as though rocking a baby, cradling our gratitude for the here and now, embracing our nostalgic return to the past.

The tower wraps us in shadow, but we turn to crown one another with electric stars.

One by one we become dancing galaxies, fingers weaving constellations.

Steven sings the right words at the wrong time, Tamara finds stillness in movement. as though meeting a long-lost friend.

aI dance for the first time in months to songs I had forgotten to remember, and feel tears welling, s though meeting a long-lost friend.

IV There is sanctuary in water.

Take me to the water, lead me there and cup a drink to my lips.

This tower does not hold us captive but sets us free.

Stretching up far above us, it connects our heads with the sky.

Quiet in the enclose of the cool brick we find corners, edges, lines and crevices, worn and neglected, sometimes indistinct in the shadow-they can be felt if not seen.

The building is eloquent, listening we hear ourselves.

White sheets of paper await us, gently invite.

They are a gift of space.

To the water tower I return again and again, finding myself new baptised.

Here I start over again: hands hold my head, catch the rest of me that follows, as I arrive, delivered into water.

KL

FIRST FLIGHT

‘Oooh! It’s a long way down.’

Thought the baby bird.

‘I don’t like heights, I know it’s absurd.

I’m only little, this tree is all.

If my wings don’t work I’m going to fall!

Sure, I flap them here, they feel quite strong, but what if something drastic goes wrong?

I might get cramp, my feathers drop out, or, dare I say, how about a sticky out twig could black my way.

I’ll never see another day!

The scary hawk that circles round might snaffle me up before I reach ground.

My aim could be out, my eyesight poor, Will I know how to land on the approaching floor?

I’m feeling dizzy, I’ve gone all weak.

Flying needs you at your peak.

I’d better wait, there’s just no hurry.

That sky looks grey, rain a worry.

Soggy feathers, thunder, lightening.

Being a bird is just so frightening!

Pull yourself together...here I go…

Eyes shut. Step forward.

Geronimo…..!’

JA

BETTER TOMORROW

Never make tomorrow what can be harvested from the earth today with absolutely no effort or imagination on your part. (Then tomorrow, show it to people and say you made it and see how impressed they are).

Never too old to be faster than any other.

That’s a great shame.

That’s a great waste.

Never too young to be past all hope.

That’s a great hope.

That’s a great chance.

What scope.

What tapering, drapering, chafing, gracing, enchanting scope.

For the best.

For the worst.

For the life you wanted/ For greatness.

For what nobody else seems to expect.

Never too old to give into your greatness, Never too young to give up your respect.

I’ll reveal more experiences next year, lollipop ladies.

Never mind the noise, defeat plummet with enduring power.

Defeat enduring power, plummet.

And in London’s biggest Britain, make this the year.

Smile rule. OK. Bleak winter, now….different. Better.

EH

CONSEQUENCES

Count Dracula met Alice, a profession dog walker, at Morrison's in Wood Green he said ‘Will you marry me?’ she said ‘Only if you click your fingers twice and twirl around once really quickly.’ consequently The heavens opened and the rain soaked them to the skin but they didn’t care THE GROUP

BLACKOUT

don’t worry will be destruction

poor

the unholy in the future.

elite rulers will be But I don’t like death and

Nobody has an escape. Everybody will die overwork, disease and despair NH

BACK OF TAXI You can’t see me through the glass right?

Good. Drive.

I know the address.

Don’t make me say it.

Don’t repeat it.

Drive.

My friends don’t know I’m here, right?

None of the neighbours saw your license, right?

My dad won’t interfere, right?

Confidential service.

That’s what they promised.

You burn up all the paperwork once I’ve arrived back home, right?

That’s what I like to hear.

That’s what I pay through the nose for.

That’s what I break my balls to earn my dough for.

That’s all I’m asking for.

You got it?

Go on.

Step on it.

Your license plate’s a fake, just like I asked for?

What’s that light for?

How much longer do we have to wait?

I can’t be late.

You make me late, I swear – She’s done her make up.

She’s all chaken up.

She’s happy to be woken up.

But just by me.

Please.

Please.

It has to be – me.

Please My mum – Needs me.

EH

TORMENTED

She might have thought that she was unique, an individual, immortal, but she was just another skinny, bony girl whose body was crumbling. There was an illusion of being special with this illness, and as the numbers dropped everyone became a pale and dreary skeleton. Was this why it was so hard? There was no element of being a unique individual, no value in what you had done, just the painful realisation you were just another tortured creature stupidly starving yourself. There’s no purity with being emaciated. Just a weak and weary body. A paranoid, scrawny, egocentric, broken, exhausted, insecure, fragile, stubborn, controlled, distressed, arrogant, guilty, depressed, consumed, fractured, broken, battered, dejected, emaciated, obsessed, righteous, pressured, afflicted, helpless, irresponsible, impotent, ill equipped, desexualised, distressed, twitchy, grumbling, hysterical, anxious fixated, incapable, controlled, ashamed, touchy, petulant, malnourished, embarrassed, compromised, manipulative, neurotic, disturbed, selfish, worried, jealous, isolated, bewildered, panicky, hurting being cast adrift in a self-inflicted ocean of flagellation. They all thought they were unique, special, stepping every closer to their wonder world of etherealism, but actually they were just in thrall to an emaciating and debilitating disease. But knowing that your life has been reduced to being a tormented bony body perched on a weighing scale, just like the desolate and lost faces around you, doesn’t make it easier to climb out.

FB

PAPERCLIPS only so much can pass your lips when you’re held together by paperclips sewn together so you can’t admit or exit any hiccups or slip-ups when every other pore is pierced by blunted metal and your skeletal system is dangerously close to begging for remission on bony knees that will crack and open a hole for the paperclips aching to make their way further into your body and help they just want to help i know all too well they just want to help and it’s safer perhaps to let them hold you together than to shun them and shuffle them off and out of your pores and fall to the floor only to fall apart and shout for your open pores and broken vital organs spluttered sermons from one lip to the other half the way across the room and stuck in a crack in one of the floorboards better to keep your lips together even if they have to be sewn together and nothing can pass them in or out because the paperclips are your new voice and sustenance and governance of all your skin and bones and vital organs and thank God for them because in some small way they’ve come to hold your soul in

PAPERCLIPS

tearing out of shape with all the pressure fighting from within to burst out of this makeshift caging and fly with flightless wings to heaven far from gravity’s harsh downward piercing with paperclips keeping you as much as possible safe with only limited office resources you may feel slightly sick but your lips are held together by paperclips so nothing will pass from you by mistake your aches and pains are growing but better far than exploding better far to pour blood drip by drip from the pores pierced by paperclips EH

A NEWSPAPER

STOLEN: One sense of identity, unshakeable by shifting fortunes, shaking emotions, wavering friends and broken dreams. If found, please insert intravenously back into my brain with instructions to be internalised and made emotionally resonant.

RECIPE: Take one girl with low self esteem. Has a tendency for negative comparison and a belief that somehow you are not quite right. Swirl with a new start and an urgency for change, and add a healthy dollop of fear of rejection. Leave to simmer. Strain. Disordered disaster.

WEATHER FORECAST: Blood coloured swirls of steely clouds, strong and bolshy in their presence. The sky will pass from a serene blue to a tumultuous array of colours, signalled by a loud clatter and fracturing thunder. Swathes of purple and grey, like bruises on an elephant will mingle with firey orange explosions that bleed into the night.

FB

HEADLINES

Show stopping glitter berry The deliciously humble peas Amazing creations Will go A little bit crisp Then The sorriest tale The next battle Achieving the Rest (we need) How’s that for recycling?

NH

AN EVER SHIFTING END

The little girl was feeling a bit down. To cheer herself up she decided to get some fresh air and go for a walk in the woods. At first the sky was bright and the green boughs of leaves provided shade from the blistering glare of the sun. She was protected from its burn, and felt calm as she stepped away from the busy world. Sparkles of dappled light flickered on the windy path ahead – it looked pretty.

She had heard that in the forest there was a golden box filled with treasure. She wanted to find it, just to get a little bit of the treasure. It might help make her happy. Her footprints on the gravel were loud, crunching away. After a while, she came across a box, by a rock. She picked it up and looked inside, but there were no gold coins, no jewels, no sign of glittering riches. That was a shame. But she kept going.

Another box was on the path. Again she looked, and again she found nothing she wanted. She kept going and going, striding on, determined that the next box she found would contain the treasure and pleasure she sought – but it never did. She was getting thirsty, and starting to wilt like the flowers lining the path. It had been ages since lunch, and her energy was flagging.

The day started to mingle with the evening, and it was getting colder and darker. The trees loomed over her, blocking out the sun and her view of the sky. She was tired, but she wanted to find the treasure. The path was a windy one, and she was almost dizzy.

At times other roads turned off the path. They looked tempting, but she decided to keep pressing on in the direction she had chosen. She turned around but could no longer see the entrance to the trees. She called out, to see if her mum could hear her and perhaps come to get her, but her voice was swallowed in the dense forest.

Her legs started to buckle and she kept tripping. Gloom wrapped around her, a swathe of thick darkness. The air was heavy and she could hardly breathe.

But still no treasure.

Surely soon. A few more steps. A little further. Keep going.

A branch cracked beneath her feet and she tripped on a stone. Tumbling, she fell into a gloopy swamp, mud coating her body. She could hardly move her arms and as much as she tried to kick against the pull of the thick sludge she was being sucked in. weeds tangled around her legs and she began to choke. She cried and wailed, but no one could hear her. The treasure was not here and she was drowning.

She was going to die.

As the tug of the swamp yanked at her, she looked up. There, through the leaves, was a tiny triangle of light. A little glint of sunshine. Slowly, she reached on up.

FB

BALANCE

Ideas that give roll out To ‘tastes’ like home?

Study calls, the rift opens, It questions our AGE. Magical setting it deserves Stays of glittering eye Participating Warms your heart.

Thousand, browse, add a slash Some with higher interest It actually All balances out.

NH

WHAT IT MEANS TO RUN FROM A BUSINESS MEETING INTO A CHEETAH When a rush – isn’t rushing. it has nowhere to go, it just, is, it just, rushes, flushed and frantic, but panic, panic?

Static, drastic, splattered on a brick wall, PEDANTIC, THAT is PANIC, THIS is RUSH, it’s dashing, dodging tree stump for tree stump jumping, head rush of colour, fifty flashes every second, a new scene, a fresh dream beckoning, a new flush, brushes past our heads, these suits think we’ve seen nothing, but we HAVE, we’ve seen EVERYTHING, we’ve been RUSHING, while they’ve been CRUSHING, while they’ve thought for HOURS< while they’ve stared for HOURS for DAYS for WEEKS at NOTHING, much for that they’ve done NOTHING,

so much to SEE that they’ve seen NOTHING so much to BE that they can’t be the best at anything, but we have nothing, we know nothing, but rushing, lightening, chasing, racing, with no finish line, no time, no deadline, no things, no last innings, no fine trimmings, we’ve seen, felt, been moved, gleaned, we’ve known EVERYTHING we are nothing, but we don’t know we are nothing, we don’t know the brushing of fresh air flowing past our rushing heads or full that they have no time for nothing easily emptied they only have space for everything.

EH

WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO?

What would it mean to be happy?

I don’t know for sure but I guess being free, Free from the grips of my worries and anxieties, Where I can be confident and content with just being me.

Or would complete freedom cause me more pain?

The expectations and endless opportunities may drive me insane.

My mind is desperate to escape this dark place, I just want contentment, joy and for my thoughts not to race, I’m lonely and isolated, suffocated by my thoughts, ‘Don’t worry, be happy.’ is what my parents always taught.

The guilt and desperation that comes with this upbringing Gives me worry and fear so my brain’s always ringing, When I picture freedom I think of a bird in the sky, Seemingly having no restrictions to go ever so high.

But perhaps I must ask myself how it would feel to be that bird.

It may feel an obligation to always fly high which I guess is absurd, Maybe if I did have complete freedom I wouldn’t know where to go , I’d get lost trying to be the best, constantly putting on a show, Is that why I’ve been plagued with this eating anxiety?

Is it a subconscious coping mechanism limiting the choices I can see?

Maybe this bad luck prevented me from worse luck— If I was completely free more disaster could have struck.

So if I were to re-evaluate what I want freedom to look like, It would be to have complete control and for things to feel completely right, They don’t necessarily have to be perfect all the time.

I just want to embrace life and make it completely mine.

LD

With thanks to LD, KG, KL, EH, KA, NH, JW, HR, JA, FB, Camilla Cox and Yardenna Cohen.

The Phoenix Wing is a National Specialist Eating Disorders Service based in North London providing specialist care and treatment to people aged 18 years and above with a primary diagnosis of an eating disorder, including specialist in-patient care, an out patient service, rehabilitation, day care and community liaison service.

Contact Details St Ann's Hospital, St Ann's Road, London, N15 3TH 020 8702 6240