L.E. (anon)
About the author: L.E. is an insomniac midnight wanderer and lost-soul deep-sea daydreamer with a diagnosis of BPD and anorexia. She obsessively consumes music, art and poetry as a source of comfort and joy, and as a means of survival. She finds writing is one of the best tools she has to help make sense of her internal chaos, and tries to use her sense of humour as a weapon against the darkness too (when she can). Here she has written about her experiences living with the condition and the stigma that comes with it. She currently lives in Germany.
You can read a selection of her poems in the slideshow below:
Tornado
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There is a raging storm that whirrs and thrashes beneath my skin, unseen.
The wind whips back and forth.
I’m flung from side to side.
My arms are flailing as I try to catch onto something solid.
To hold onto someone solid.
Hold on.
Sometimes I feel so empty that nothing can fill me up.
Nostalgic for past times that never happened.
Homesick for somewhere that never existed.
And sometimes I feel so full that I could burst,
And I do - like water spilling over the edge of the glass.
I pop like an overfilled balloon.
My mind runs rings around me. Like a gust of wind, ten thousand miles an hour.
And as the wind blows it sings songs of delusions and fantasies.
Nightmares and dreams.
The dark and the light.
Mercurial, like the weather - the only constant is change.
But
Despite the storm inside that throws me off my feet,
The storm that makes me fight, each and every day,
A fight that no one else can see,
I know that I am strong.
Stronger than I might appear.
And when the wind howls, I will not let go.
I am not the only one with a tornado that rages underneath their skin.
Maybe you also fight your own storm,
A storm that sometimes eases off, calmer, and allows you to breathe,
Or sometimes gains such strength that it rattles you to your very core.
Like it could rip out trees from their roots.
Some days are easier than others.
But you are strong. Stronger than you might appear.
Don’t let go.