Ten years later, then eleven and twelve, you put on a dress that is black and a necklace that is silver, you have tried on eight different things still not knowing what is appropriate. You always end up in the same dress. You settle, smooth it down, you cry. You have been to many of these now, you even know the words to hymns you proudly once shrugged off. Everything hurts and yet everything is weightless.
Almost too close to feeling the blood run and rush away from your body, almost lifeless, but flowing into a room that is pulsing and cursing that it’s still alive and desperately attempting to meditate around the idea that being here, portrait not horizontal, is a lucky thing. None of you feel lucky. All of you wish just for a moment you were horizontal. You feel grief.
It smacks you soberly until you reach for a glass and engage in a chat that brings you to reminiscing. Only recounting the good things. Feeling your soul filled with countless anecdotes about a person you wished you had called and retold with them but now you can’t. Everyone pretends that what others share is special but only what they share is special to them because they can’t share it with the only person that would laugh loudest, who knows every face in the room, because they aren’t also holding a glass. They’re not pressed up on the bar side, or holding your hand after school, or silently judging your hangover. They’re gone, replaced with a silhouette of grief.
Days after, every time, you feel much older. Much wiser. So much taller than the child that once only wished for sparkly trainers and a car that kept on revving. You feel, for the first time, again and again, like an adult. Growing up becomes not of broken romances, not of grades, not of jobs, not of pounds of flesh or those in the bank and not of expectations. It even, for a moment, that flits subconsciously, is not of trying to stay alive, not of thinking back on all the times you had pondered or tried to not be. It’s of being purposeful. Of making so goddamn sure that when your time comes there are stories and laughter, that there are people who know they were loved, that there were successes to recount, that there was advice that was shared, that there were parties and chats and changes. That whatever room at whatever time you leave deaf, you are certain that you know if you could hear anything at all, that what is walked out beside you and what is spluttered and sobbed and sung generously, is that you had love and that you had purpose.
Months after, those sentiments seem trivial again, almost forgotten in the ether of everyday life, of recovery and acceptance. It’s your birthday. You are standing on a chair, holding the hems of a dress your younger self would have dreamt of and you say, simply and so drunkenly it’s almost incoherent, ‘Thank you all for being here, thank you for giving me the life I have, I love you.’ You step down to walk away as people whoop and cheer and laugh and grin and chink their glasses until you can float to the back of the bar and cry.
The funny thing in all of this, the thing so funny it’s often quite difficult to find laughable, is the banality of everything you feel in what initially comes at you with such a distinguished pang as though it’ll never come again, but it does. It does and it does and it does. It keeps on smacking your brain with a heavy punch that suggests you weren’t expecting it until you start to study it. Until there it is again, that feeling, that anxiety, that kiss, that argument, and so you involuntarily laugh once your head bruise has simmered down to nearly skin colour and you roll your eyes and let out this lip shaking smile of a giggle that’s really a sigh. That moment of realisation, suddenly in your twenties, that the last ten years have been on a cyclical calendar of emotion. Heartbreak, terror, grief, unworthiness, fatness, stupidity, relief, euphoria. You still have absolutely no idea what to do with them, what accent they speak with until you’ve heard them again, what weight they hold until they’re thrust upon you, what bellowing bone-cringing laugh of a noise that will seep from within the depths of your lungs once the end of the loop comes round again and you realise.
You realise the most marvellous thing, the most life-affirming, presence-keeping bit of it all, is you’re absolutely definitely without a doubt not supposed to know how to feel or how to think upon those feelings, nobody else does around you either. Not even those who suggest they do and not even you on a Tuesday night with a glass of wine feeling philosophical and wise do. You’re in this circuit now and the best you can do is give it a nod every time you re-recognise an old thought introducing itself as unstale. You’ve done it, really. The foundations are built. Now all that is left is to choose how you respond knowing how things turned out the last time you didn’t know you had choice.
seaweed – for grandad
Before it was the future
Before it was my brain
Before it was gun reforms
Before it was climate change
Before it was heartbreak
Before it was potential
Before it was plastics in the sea
Before it was existential
Before it was family illness
Before it was personal tax
Before it was the price of houses
Before it was the price of a wax
Before I knew what really worried me
It was seaweed
Long gangly tendrils of green
Wefts of Medusa’s very own wig, had you asked me
Evil slithery things
That clasped around my ankle
Left in the water by one of Poseidon’s own vandals
My two innocent limbs braving a leisurely dangle
Until I decided the holiday was cut short
Because I was convinced I was up next to be strangled
Before it was my weight
Before it was purpose
Before it was societal standards
Before it was junior nurses
Before it was Donald Trump
Before it was dairy alternatives
Before it was the state of my skin
Before it was what state we’re in with the Conservatives
Before it was ‘What do you mean no WIFI?’
Before it was Twitter trolls
Before it was feeling like a fraud
Before it was over-ambitious goals
It was seaweed
Before it was the effects of contraception
Before it was the end of Inception
Before it was faux feminism
It was seaweed
My first experience of the unknown
I ran sandy toed
Into the only arms I trusted
‘Grandad!’ I cried, flustered
‘I can’t go back in there!’
Frightened, I was pointing at the sea
Whilst he was laughing at me
Not in a way that I know now
No, he was giggling kindly
‘Darling, it’s just grass,
Come on, I’ll show you.’
And he did that gorgeous thing
When as a kid adults pretend to throw you
And then catch you
And bring you back to their chest
And you sniff in a nuzzle
As they kiss your head
And everything melts away
All my worries were just bits of grass in the sea
All the hope that I needed was him smiling at me
All the knowledge I had
Had come from his brain
And despite all of my anxieties
That thought keeps me sane
Someone will always know more
Someone will always be grinning
Someone will always be willing
Someone will hold you
When it all seems too big
Someone will show you
The real size that it is
Yes, the world’s scary
My god is it tough
But there will always be someone
Who loves you enough
To try and take it away
And that someone
Made you some
one enough
To be your own someone
To make sure you’re okay
Before it was seaweed
It was blissful and calm
But I’d cradle an ocean of watery weeds
To know that I’d always be safe in your arms.
expectations
Am I soft enough
Am I tame enough for you?
Does my name taste sweet enough
Are my convictions lame enough for you?
Am I seen enough
And herded by you?
What is it to be a good woman
In a world of bitter truths?
Am I soft enough?
Am I half enough for you?
yellow cabs
I had always claimed
Regret could never know me
Regret could never drive me
I would not allow myself to wallow in his punishing fear
As I sit and count out my last quarters
He offers his hand to take them
Pocketing a shrapnel token
And taxis me to JFK.
hospital visits
No colour is quite its best self
Insipid yellows and half greys
Walls flake
With an old damp regret
Not yet brave enough to peel off entirely
The din of wheels and microwave meals
Clack and click unconfidently
And as your throat constricts
And you feel sick to your stomach
You can’t help but wonder
If it’s the grip of somebody else’s death
Trying to talk to you.
You will choose to not give yourself the best chance. It will often not feel like a choice but an act of punishment. A self-declaration that you are not worthy of the good or the exciting, to feel proud or to feel smart or to feel good enough. You push away friendships that fulfil you and enter relationships that break you, you continue toxic cycles of bad habits and behave with such an aggressive recklessness that to those on the outside you seem a fool. A fool that doesn’t care. But you do, you care so deeply that when you are full you feel you have no choice but to spit everything out. To excel in purging all that you are and all that you hate and all that you have and all that you love. It seems nonsensical in the brief and dark and tired moments of reflection. A reflection in which you cannot recognise the planes of your own face and the curves of your own mind.
In the end, it all boils down to these minutiae, these tiny fleeting moments, these vignettes. They all pass you by so quickly. Some of them feel as though they will, they feel as weightless as the seconds they are often administered in. But all considered and put together, these are what shape you. Pain you, excite you, almost break you. All just moments you thought could never be beaten in their insanity. Memories and makings of this jaggedy soul that may well be mad but is the greatest body of strength you’ll ever know.
acknowledgements
The thanks I have to give could do with borrowing the pages of a whole new book. Without the incredible, resilient, emotionally intelligent, insane, beautiful people I’ve met in the last few years, I’d never have had the courage to endure these stories and emotions let alone write about and share them. I am forever grateful and in awe, the biggest thank yous to -
To my family. For supporting me on a ridiculous journey that has always swerved getting ‘a real job’ and believing in me and my wildest dreams. Nothing ever feels too big because of you and in turn every win is done for you.
To my boys, all of you. Adrian, Jack, Finn, Will, Toby P and Luke. Without your smarts and love, without your wit and kindness, without the wine and wayward nights and late night panicked phone calls, without your unconditional support I’d not be here and I’d not be me. Thank God I did something right in a past life to get you as my brothers. Thank you for offering out spaces within you when all I’ve wanted to do is give up.
To my women. To Shannon, to Scarlett, to Beth, to Steph, to Tirion, to Sophie, to DJ and KB. For loving me despite my terrible taste in men. For pushing me when I’ve screamed defeat. For constantly showing me the power and brilliance of womanness. I love you so damn much.
To Abigail for believing in me, for putting up with me and being the agent I once hoped and dreamed and prayed as a little girl that I’d one day have. You are the absolute best.
To Rachel, to Celia and all the wonderful people at HQ. Thank you SO much for trusting in She Must Be Mad and trusting in me. I’m so glad we got to make this together.
And to mum. ‘MORE’. More than you’ll ever know.
about the author
Charly Cox is a 22-year-old writer, producer and poet.
Her writing focuses on destigmatizing mental health and the coming-of-age of a young woman surviving the modern world. In January 2017, she published her first poem on Instagram, showing her internet followers her poetry for the first time; since then she’s been asked to be Virgin Radio’s poet in residence, she’s been published on Refinery29, hosted poetry nights and been named by ELLE magazine as one of their 20 power players to watch out for in 2018. In March 2018, Charly was named as ambassador for MQ Mental Health, a charity which funds research into mental illness. She Must Be Mad is Charly’s first book.
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