‘Grand’ is an insidious form of self-deception.
It is the zealous and rigid absence of self-expression.
It is a safety net, my safest bet to eliminate the threat.
It’s how I present me to the world and to the people that I’ve met.
‘Grand’ is a hand in the face of genuine concern.
I utter ‘grand, sher I’m grand!’, oh if I only could unlearn,
that when it’s my turn to opine, to articulate, to cry,
that I will not be abandoned, left to wither up and die.
‘Grand’ is a figment of our collective imagination.
Feelings are taboo at this stifling railway station.
But there is no destination, all our feelings are entwined,
with no differentiation, using frayed synthetic twine.
Block them out, shove them down, because everybody’s fine.
“We’re grand, we’re fuckin’ grand! Look at the sun, how it shines!
Just be positive, an optimist, don’t you dare kill our buzz!
You’ll be grand, force a smile, just like all the rest of us.”
But we are liars, all deniers, we will never speak our truth.
‘Cause if we do, we’ll all be blue, and we’ll suffocate in this rue.
We stuff them down so that they drown, we swallow feelings whole.
Snort them back, inject the black, so that they’re banished to the coal.
But what comes back up in their place, it is covering my face.
It’s in my throat, it’s on my hands, it ruins all my plans.
It lingers in my hair, on my breath, and in the air.
It’s smothering me, my recovery, and my ability to care.
‘Grand’ is happy, ‘grand’ is sad, it is fear, it is shame.
It has become so habitual, it’s synonymous with my name
and who I am, ‘cause I am ‘grand’, and I need not try
to clearly recognise that ‘grand’ and I, we are one of a kind.
But those feelings and their dealings, they sprout up through the dirt
when I least expect it, I’m unprotected from the sorrow, from the hurt.
So I wait for it, brace for it, hang on for dear life.
Here it comes, I come undone, it is brutal, it is rife!
The viciousness, so conspicuous, yet smothered by the ‘grand’.
But all I want, and all I need, is a safe and loving hand.
In these waters I’m enslaved, though what I’ve come to understand,
is that my feelings arrive in waves that will drag me to my grave.
“So resurrect, just resurrect us, from this graveyard of neglect”,
cry my feelings and their dealings, as I purge to disconnect.
But recovery, it’s calling me on this journey of discovery,
that soon I might accept, I am not ‘grand’,
I am _______