Urges. The fuckers build and build and build until you want to scream and shout and pull at your hair. Uncomfortable in your own skin, frustrated by being stuck there unable to run away.

An itch you can’t scratch but boy, do you want to go at that thing hard and fast with fingers bent and nails scraping at skin to relieve the annoying sensation. And it feels so good when you do.

That packet of biscuits that you know you shouldn’t eat. You promised you wouldn’t. But they’re calling you from the cupboard, all crumby and sweet and delicious with biscuityness. You can’t sit still knowing that they’re there. All you can think about is the crisp rustle of the packet and the crumbs on your lips. If only you could open them. Just one won’t hurt…

Harmless, innocent things that really you can get away with. Only yourself and your lapsed conscience to do battle with.

Sod it, let’s have some biscuits.

I smoke. Smoking is bad. I hate that I started again after giving up when I was pregnant. I hate that I am addicted to something so expensive and time consuming and frankly, gross. I hate that I can’t do it where ever I like and I hate that although it ravages my skin I still get asked for ID when buying tobacco from a sales assistant at least 10 years younger than I am. When I wake up, hair matted and face pebble dashed with last night’s biscuit crumbs I need that cigarette (and a cup of tea, if you’re making) before I function. It’s a craving.

Not so harmless. But, you know, sane.

When life gets on top of you and you have the day from hell and all is bleak and no one is listening what happens when you get bad urges, harmful ones? When people are hearing but not listening, speaking but not answering, talking at you about thoughts and ideas and situations that are merely a projected, made up version loosely based on your own. What can you do?

Please. I can’t do this now. I can’t talk, I can’t explain, I can’t think.

Please.

Let me have some space. I need to calm down, to breathe. Stop.

But they carry on. It’s not their fault but they carry on. And on. And onandonandon.

Everything hurts and thoughts hurt and it just has to stop.

No you haven’t been here, you never will. But that’s good. Please don’t tell me that my thoughts and my feelings are wrong. Maybe they are. But they’re mine.

Stop. Please.

Hot tears and desperate urges for release. Cool release on hot skin. An outlet.

Frustration builds and builds as I walk from room to room but still am followed with a conversation that I really don’t want to have right now.

I’m not shirking responsibility or being selfish, it’s self-preservation. Please understand.

Please.

Urges fog my mind and it’s all I want to do. Like a reflex I want to throw my head against something hard or my skin against something sharp.

I’m ill. This is because I’m ill. This is how it is. Please. Stop.

I get angry. I break a mug and shower the room in lukewarm tea as it propels from the shattered china spinning through the air.

Silence.

I weep. I weep like my heart is breaking because my heart is breaking. And it hurts.

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