She Must Be Mad Read online

  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 terrorism

  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.

  about the publisher

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

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  Canada

  HarperCollins Canada

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  HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited

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  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

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  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

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  http://www.harpercollins.com