On Coping #7: falling inside myself

I am not a writer.

I borrow words, articulated feelings, structure, sentiment, rhythm, story, detail, from the writers I have read, met, known, followed and loved:

Stephens*, Thorne, Murakami, Ishiguro, Grieve, Tempest, Ahmed, Haruf, Mitchell, Fitzgerald, Macmillan, Strout, Keats.

I am grateful to them all for the idiosyncratic fragments which i now use to piece together these collages which help give voice to my answer to the question: ‘how are you doing?’

For too long all I had to offer was:

Okay.

Not great.

Oh, you know…

Doing my best.

Hanging in there.

Clinging on by my finger-tips.

When the reality is that we’re simply coping.

Until we no longer can.

And coping has a richer tapestry of shades and more nuanced mechanics and more complex notes than the words ‘not great’ could ever capture.

So to not so much borrow as steal directly from someone* whose play I spent ten years working on, I offer the following as an articulation of my answer to the question ‘how are you doing?’ that more accurately articulates what I’m feeling at this moment in time than anything I could construct myself:

“

I have a hole running through the middle of me.

It’s a bit embarrassing because you can probably see it.

I am holding my entire head together.

The skin and the shell of me.

I am falling absolutely inside myself.

But you know that.

You can see the

In my

“

(Seawall by Simon Stephens)