About us News Small Grey Fish - A Poem for World Mental Health Day I am awake. That sense of dread, Get up, what’s the point? Keep my eyes closed, Stay in bed, But no point either, no rest for me; no sleep. The day is night, the morning dusk That perpetual sense of loss, Yet, get up, I must. How do I start a day, where do I begin? One foot first, and then the other, Brush my teeth, brush my hair, in case you see that I don’t care, Or get a hint of my insanity. No good-hair-day for me, A Groundhog Day of unbearable similarity. The sun comes up but for me it never rises, And so, to dress, but what to wear? All my clothes are grey to me, I don’t need to suit another, Why bother with sartorial surprises? For this perpetual, deathly winter’s day. In the bathroom mirror, my face is grey And tells me how I don’t fit in, To your world, your lives, With nothing to offer or to say, Of your flamboyant work, your goal. And I am circling you all A distant lonely, small grey fish That cannot join the sparkling shoal. I’m not here, this isn’t me, You don’t know who I am; I have dis-ease, Look beneath, look further, deeper, Ignore my look of confidence and breeze, And you might glimpse, My dark offensive sleeper, Why I don’t deserve to be known, Why I may contaminate you with my need and shame, And then you would never look at me again, the same. But you will never know, the real me. I can walk, and talk, and scratch a smile, Write, present, negotiate, Click, log on, log off, make coffee, tea, I stood at the water cooler and laughed, About your recent date, And you sat with me and saw the lunch I ate, And queried how I stay so thin. But you won’t be with me later When I scrape my dinner into the bin. I will never give you the impression, That you don’t know me as I really am And that I suffer, mutely, from depression. John Harris September 2017 Manage Cookie Preferences