I can’t say enough about Dave in a brief intro. Dave is colossal. Their voice sets you off-kilter as it tears at the walls of reality. A helter-skelter of honest, deep, angst-laden self-reflection. Though, as you cling to the sack, knuckles white as you take the turns, you realise you're on a journey of love. Finding surprising, delicate turns of tender romance, and beauty. Dave gives me hope for human art and expression in a world of AI and automation. They are everything this project seeks to embody; seeking identity, change, redemption and peace through thinking, writing, speaking (and, sometimes, shouting!).
Buckle up.
Please be mindful WSR content can be thematically sensitive.
Hello, I’m Dave, here I am, laid bare on the page.
I grew up white and middle class, moving from place to place, every time dad would lose a job or mum would have a messy interaction with the neighbours. A little “girl” (I’m non-binary now and use they/them pronouns) spinning and hopeful, climbing trees and getting dirty. Covering their ears as their parents screamed non-stop in the night. Deathly afraid of the dark, hiding under the table at parties from mum’s drunken antics. It seems I’m the only one out of my siblings that got the addiction gene. When I was little younger, I used to say that I took the worst parts of my parents - my dad’s anger, and my mums tendencies to make a fool of herself, the love of drugs and alcohol, her escapism. But now I know I got their best bits as well; my dad’s humour and quick wit, my mother’s care for others, and her charming and peculiar character.
My writing journey began when I was 11. I started writing a book on an old computer, but it all got deleted when the laptop died. So, I stopped writing for a few years and then started again when I began using around 14, and I was locked in the house for hours on end. All alone. Which wasn’t very smart of my dad considering I used my escapist skills to break out of the house to go and find drugs. Anyway, I started writing again purposefully a few years ago when I was around 24. It just started pouring out of me - all the black gunk that I had been holding for so long, all my sadness, my anger, my longing, my fear, my regrets and the rest. It’s a sort of therapy for me. I guess that’s why I’m doing this piece on Write Speak Recover.
This poem is a summary and an acceptance of me and my dark parts and all the harsh things I had to go through because I didn’t have a good support network. I never had somewhere I was safe. I never had a place where I was loved no matter what I was or who I was - it was always conditional. And so now I’m giving that unconditional love, forgiveness and freedom to myself.
No more boxes for you, little one.
A whole that can’t be filled
A pit of sadness and longing churning in my body, an ocean of salty tears, I don’t even know why I’m crying.
A moth fruitlessly flaps his little wings on the linoleum floor of the train, unable to get his little body off the ground.
I watch him struggle and wonder if he is going to die soon, the life of a moth isn’t long you know, I think of my own short life. And how much living I have done in that time.
How much suffering.
How much joy, how many laughs, how many days too tired to even open my eyes.
How many days locked in my room wishing for no one to see me.
How many days of forced smiles, how many nightmares melted into reality.
I used to be scared of moths you know, it reminds me of a place I used to live.
When I was still being puppeteered by the string of addiction, strings made of glass so that I might not see the lines that held my arms aloft.
When I lived in this place, it was so filthy in my room that there were moths everywhere, every side was covered in cans, dirty clothes and piss stained bed sheets, my shame my guilt, incarnate; inside this tiny winged thing.
Too scared to sleep with the lights off, no friend by my side.
Only fake friends that hung around trying to get inside my insides.
It was easy enough when I wasn’t even conscious enough to know where I was most of the time.
My craving of some sort of comfort, and sex was the closest thing I knew how to accept, kind of like closeness.
But not really.
Too afraid of intimacy, the only thing I could do was let them into me.
But I didn’t always let them.
Sometimes it was the case that I was passed out down stairs, and some shadowed hands carried me away, sometimes I’d wake up in the middle.
But I never screamed, I believed my body was almost like possession of another, a play thing to be passed from hand to hand.
How to find comfort in the arms made of spikes?
How can one sleep easy on a bed made of burning coals, how can you fall restfully into slumber when every night you hear hands knock at the door willing you to let them in and you do, because you are so alone, you don’t even understand that you’re getting abused.
Floating in a cocktail of pills and swills and swigs from a can, a cup, a bottle, from someone else’s mouth following the train of drugs around like a lamb to the slaughter.
Losing yourself, losing what little self you had to begin with, losing your money, losing your body, losing your mind, losing your keys, losing your friends, losing your wallet over and over, losing all your self-respect (not that you ever really understood what that means).
All this desperation, destruction, distraction, disappointment rolled into one tiny person trying to bare the weight of the world.
It was just too much.
Falling in a hole of my own reaction, although I didn’t dig it alone.
I am the one with dirt and blood on my face and hands.
I’m the one begs and pleads to the mirror, my reflection turning away in disgust.
The reflection of those faces that saw my pain and looked away pretending not to notice.
The reflection of my youth, seeing pill bottles and wine glasses drained and smashed as they clatter to the floor or thrown in the heat of an argument.
I’m scared, I’m scared that if I let go of this thing, of feeling, who am I?
Under this blanket of drugs and booze, of violence and fear, of funny stories, who am I under this ball of trauma that I only crawl deeper inside as the years go by.
The moth struggles to get his body off the floor, weighed down by his own life force, his tether to the moral world, the line snaps, the string drops.
Limp to the surface below.
A gaping cavern of darkness, opens, to swallow the little thing whole, I reach out my hand, tears in my eyes, willing and wanting this thing that I used to be, so terrified, to survive.
His body becomes light, and when all hope was lost.
He found the strength to carry on and he floats on the gentle air and flies out of the door.
From where he was trapped, he found his own way out.
Without the help of my outstretched hand, but just by my wish, for him to live a bit more. Me and this thing I used to hate, wrapped in cosmic strings, he survived, as did I.
I pushed through, I put down the pills, I sucked the blood from my veins so that I might be clean again.
I learned to love myself,
I learned to care for myself,
I learned it is ok to accept help.
I stopped falling as much.
I still stumbled, but I never let myself crumble to the floor,
I caught myself before the fall.
I learned who I am, the person behind the mask.
Strong, capable, weak, confident, controversial, contented, smart, funny, fearful, fearless, faithful, faithless, two sides of a coin, the duality of life, the blue to contrast the red, the tears to contrast the smiles, a cloud passing over the sun on a scorching day, the sliver of light that shines through when the rain pours.
I am everything I am, and everything I am not.
I am everything I have experienced and all the things that I have not.
I am you.
I am me.
I am we.
Interlocked with every part of the universe the good and the bad.
The happy and the sad.
You cannot ask the sky to always be blue for it is not in the sky’s nature.
You cannot ask the flowers to always be in bloom.
You can't ask the sun to always be shining.
You cannot will something to grow if it doesn’t have the will to.
It cannot grow for you.
It grows because that’s what it was made to do.
On the poem
So yeah, I’m still growing, I’m still learning how to love myself and to be open, I still have so much pain that I carry around with me. Especially the feeling of the lack of care that I received as a young person, it was like my role in the family was to be happy and cute and funny. And when I wasn’t that, I just got ignored or shunned. I’m sure a lot of people have that experience; when you’re crying or in pain you hope someone would hold you or look after you. In my case it was mostly a scolding and a "why are you making such a big deal from this?". I learned to bottle my emotions, so it came out in violent ways like drugs and fighting.
This poem, especially at the end, is this thing of me accepting my full self and being able to express that, whether I’m happy or sad or anything in between, it doesn’t make me any less me and it doesn’t make my worth any less either. Which is so so fucking important. You can’t cherry pick the bits you like about yourself (and about others of course), you can try to improve, you can try to be better but you can’t vilify yourself while you’re on that journey - you’ve got to love all of you, even those bits that are hard to love. Because those are the parts that need it the most. It’s hard to get better when you’re always shaming yourself.
That’s what this poem means to me, saying:
“I know you've been through a lot and you weren’t a good person for a while and it’s your fault but it’s also not, but you chose to change, you choose to grow and for that I love you”
On the writing process
A lot of the time my writing comes from past experiences, and when I’m writing something it’s like I’m watching a movie in my head and then I just try my best to describe what I’m seeing. Other times it’s really like it’s just pouring out of me - especially if I feel really inspired. It’s such a good emotional release. I really see light in the dark and dark in the light. I am someone that is full of the duality of life, full of contrast, the masculine in the feminine, the blue and the red, the sad and the happy and I think that really comes out in my poetry. I also get triggered by certain feelings about stuff and I just have to write at that time.
Because I don’t want to lose the thread, when I’m writing it’s like pulling a string in my mind and following where my mind wants to go. I’m in a moving car describing the things I see out with window as they pass me by - these are my emotions.
Inspirations
Anthony Lewis just said this in his Write Speak Recover, but Eminem has always been a huge one for me I always say he was my first love, but at the moment I’m really into Hozier - he’s a poet for sure especially the song 'Would that I', although I find most music inspiring. I love anything that can make me feel intense emotions.
I read a lot of young adult books and I would say that all of Terry Pratchet's books are amazing as well as the series The Wind Singer. Every time I read something new or hear a new song that resonates with me, I feel inspired.
In closing
Thankfully I am in a much better place in my life now. Since I met my loving partner two years ago, I have have grown exponentially, not only because of the love I have received, but to understand that when I do fucked up stuff or where I get wasted it’s not only me I have to think about.
Before I didn’t care that much because I always thought it was only me going through bad things, but I realised, that the reason I was putting myself through pain was because in some way I thought I deserved to be punished. I learned to be accepting and be more loving with myself, and understand that it’s OK to make mistakes. I learned that someone could understand me and love me despite the flaws I might have. And then, I found the poetry community.
I have never felt so loved or understood more than when I am with people who share my pain, (and poets have a lot of that!) but being with them and hearing other people’s stories and being able to share mine without judgement is like the biggest, warmest hug in the word.
I am so grateful to have finally found my place on this earth, next to the one I love and the people who understand and appreciate me for who I am. And me, them.
Thank you for reading my story, it means a lot, and I think if I can reach just one person to make them feel not so alone because the things I’m saying resonate with them, it will all be worth it.
Write Speak Recover, in collaboration with TheNeverPress is an open, free collection of original portraits of poets using their art to find strength in their recovery journey from any form of dis-ease.
We invite you to follow Write Speak Recover on Instagram and to reach out to Tim Foley at WSR or us directly at the zine to learn more, or put yourself forward to be featured in this initiative.
Be kind. Stay present. One moment after the next.
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