Once upon a time, I was fat. I had been a fat little boy who turned into a fat little man who turned into a barely walking bestial glob that barely stood at five-foot and a half who couldn’t put down a spoon. I weighed thirty-eight stone when I was just twenty-five years old. Nowadays you could scoop me up with an arm and carry me like a bulimic suitcase made of loose skin and dirt. I blamed my late wife. She was a feeder, and in the five years I was with her, I had gained eighteen stone and an equal amount of hatred for her. She would hit me when I wouldn’t eat, force-feed me when I still wouldn’t, and reward me with fantastical feasts when I had gained a suitable amount of weight. I peaked at thirty-eight stone, then lost half a stone when I became ill. To make a long story short, she left me with nothing but agoraphobia and thoughts of suicide.

A month later, the house was repossessed. Imagine my fear: agoraphobic and just waiting for the day where I became homeless, for the day where I would be forced to enter the outside world I had become to fear and loath even more than the house with my own blood spilt up the walls.

And yet, I was now thirty-five years old and had lost a tremendous amount of weight. Granted, I had been homeless for ten years, living off what I found in bins, was given by kind strangers few in number, and my own wits. I had come so far. But now, I was done. I was tired of being spat on, glared at, beaten, having pennies pelted at me, and I was tired of having nothing and being completely unable to do anything about it.

It must have been when I saw my ex-wife. She looked right at me, right into my eyes, peering into my soul and then she looked away. Barely containing her disgust. Didn’t even recognise me.

I stole a pad and a pen from some shop, having ran faster than I had ever ran in my life, and I wrote down my final thoughts. I pocketed the pad, chucked the pen, and sat beside a tree in a secluded part of town. Then, I tied a shoelace tight around my saggy, left bicep and watched as my skin turned an even paler shade of white than my starvation had already made me. I pulled the skin on my arm taut and plunged the needle into a revealed vein, transmitting what I’d hoped was a lethal dose of heroin into my bloodstream. I was already addicted. I remember once I saw a spoon as something very different; something good and wholesome. Then spoons became something I loathed living with my ex-wife. Now, my spoon had been very much needed until today.

I remember, between the days where I was beaten and force fed and screamed at, that I would sit there and think that if there was just one thing I could do right now, it would have been to take a needle, fill it with heroin, and ram it into my wife’s throat and watch as she overdosed. If only that were a memory. But she was the only thing missing in the scenario I’d dreamed of, and so I supposed I may as well just go out on my terms. To go out with a feeling of what I’d hoped would be euphoria in a world where I don’t remember ever being graced with such feeling. I would die soon.

Five-foot and a half, eight stone, bald from malnutrition, and looking like someone had collected the skin off a dozen corpses and glued them onto me. My last moments would be spent sat in silent euphoria as I slowly became completely uncomprehending of anything. I would smile, just happy that I would soon no longer be able to think.

I died as I had lived: with a spoon in my hand.

Let’s not fall in love.

Lest you end up being my true love.

Because it cannot be you.

You with your ruby smile, looking cute with your glasses askew.

You with voice like a summer's day,

it is you with whom my heart could stay.

Let’s not fall in love.

Together, our hands fit like a glove,

but not when your hands shake with rage

as you make the living room your stage

at which you humiliate me with taunts and screams

as I continue to bleed, the black out, retreating into dreams.

Let’s not fall in love.

Because I hate you, my dove.

And it took broken bones and glass in my eye

to realise that you were the bad guy.

I believed every taunt.

Haunted

by every word.

Even as I bled and my vision blurred,

you were my world.

So I stayed

and prayed

that you wouldn’t prey on me again.

But the truth is, you are insane,

so let’s not fall in love.

In fact, former beloved,

for all the pain to which I had succumbed...

I hope you get better.

Because I fell in love with you.

I stood on the bridge and waited

for all of it. For everything I had created

to grab me; to reach up out of the sea

and gift to me my apogee.

I dont know why I'm here.

On this bridge, close to tears.

Exhausted in every damned way.

Exhausted like I am every day.

I sob when I realise I have no fear

of the hundred-foot drop down to being okay.

All i do is float. Float through life,

float through each day, each strife,

floating through it all like a balloon.

Soon. But it's already noon

and I'm stood on the bridge having not yet moved.

I'd arrived after waking, deeply confused:

Confused at my abusers, I'd counted every bruise.

One from a flying fist swung by my Dad.

Another from my Mother. She was just mad.

Puffy eyes from an ex lover.

Yet I'd never cried for him. Not ever.

Then a bruised heart from my soulmate.

She left me. No love for me anymore, only hatred.

And that's me checkmated.

Now, my frustrations never to be sated,

I stood on the bridge and waited.

Floating still. Floating like a ghost

who wanted nothing more than love.

Love never to be obtained.

I stood on the bridge and waited.

Nauseated yet oddly liberated.

As the sea did finally grab me by my throat.

Now, all I can do is float.

My backpack contains nothing. And yet my shoulders are burdened by the weight of existence; talons tearing through flesh, ligament, and bag strap. The backpack contains nothing, and yet nothingness has become my curse as nothing seems to weigh more with each step. And with each step falling slightly heavier, each beat of my heart harder against my chest, and each breath taken becoming less and less efficient at drawing in the oxygen I needed to take each step and beat my dying heart.

Until enough is enough.

I stop, taking refuge on a bench, and rip the bag from my person; revealing the damage the talons had done as blood marred the warm and safe bench. I cannot relax as I open the bag, the zipper screaming as it is tugged on with slow, tired hands. And yet, as the bag lay open on the ground, freed from the burden of being the anchor I am forced to carry, I cannot bear to look at the nothing that was contained within the backpack. To look inside the backpack would be akin to looking at darkness; sheer and terrible darkness that manages to not only encompass every fear, doubt, anxiety, and suicidal thought that had ever crossed my plagued mind, but also managed to consume like a great, black tidal wave of great, gnashing death.

But, to not look inside the bag means putting it back on; allowing the talons to pierce back into already devastating wounds. So, as fear of death incarnate flowed through me like neurons in my body, I slowly peek inside the bag.

Empty.

I rummage through the bag. I check and double-check every crease but find nothing. Nothing for what seemed like eternity. Until I see the great, white light. I take it out the bag, marvelling at the beauty of hope I hold in my hands. I cradle hope, holding it to my chest as I sleep on my bench, allowing rest to curb my pain and exhaustion. And as I wake anew, hope sat within my heart, patient and smiling, spreading an almost divine warmth throughout my body with every heartbeat. I smile, a rarity, as now I had hope.

I fling the backpack across one shoulder, the backpack now a different kind of empty. I go home, abandoning my mission to see the sun rise over the sea from the bridge. I go home because, now I had hope, where else would I go?

Why do I write? I write to incite feeling, and too expel emotion. I write to make the world seem less desolate, to pretend like we aren't the worst. And to remind the reader that it isn't as bad as things might seem, because at least we can smile, sing, laugh and write. For now.

I write because what else is there to do on the days when my emotions close in on me, like grinding, churning walls made of dark and jagged teeth that scream: "You. Are. Nothing." But I am not nothing. And neither are you. And writing is the reminder of that, for as long as you have a pen in hand or keyboard ready, you can remind everyone and yourself that the world isn't the terror it pretends to be. To be able to write is to be free, to be free is to hold some semblance of power, and no matter how small that power is, if you can use it to change just one person in this world then that is beautiful.

And that is why I write: for change. Any change.

I was at my Father’s funeral. He had died with a drink in his hand, of course. The very thing that killed him had been the thing he loved most. Unless you were to say he had died by hitting his head off the steps up to the house, but he didn’t love the steps, and he only fell because he was drunk. It sounded better to say the drink he loved so much killed him, as I’d said in my funeral speech, the black eye he had given me still prominent and… well black. After my speech, my mother had burst out crying. Well I imagined she did, because a) she had been dead for years, and b) I imagined she would have felt great shame if she were sat listening to the speech I had made.

And then suddenly I was at the funeral bar, ironic considering everything. Perhaps I, too, would fall drunk and smack my skull off a step.

“Two whiskey’s please.” The man next to me told the barwoman before turning to me. “You look like you could do with a whisky.”

I was, in truth, a timid man. “Um… thank you.”

“What’s your name, kid?” He lit a cigarette that came from apparently nowhere, with a black, jet lighter engraved with a white rose.

“Adam…” I reply, and he sighs. “Sorry?”

“Don’t apologise, Addy, I just knew an Adam once. Wasn’t great to his wife if I do say so myself.” He took a long drag of his cigarette, seemingly lost for a moment in some grim memory. “I’m Stan, lovely to meet you, so your Dad, right?”

“Um… yes. He died. But I wasn’t overly fond of him.”

“Aw that’s a shame, kiddo, why not?” He passes me a cigarette, and I don’t feel like I can decline it, so I just nod. “He beat me a lot. Used to beat my Mom.”

“He’ll go straight to hell then. No doubt about that.” Stan lights my cigarette, and I see the other side of his lighter bore a golden cross.

“You believe in God?” I ask him, compelled to, for some reason, to know.

“I do believe in God, but he doesn’t scare me. Doesn’t do a lot.”

“Well what are you scared of, if not God? Surely, he’s the one thing you should fear considering he’s… well God.”

“Bold of you to assume God is a male.” He chuckles, taking another drag. The whiskeys arrive, and he puts them on his tab. “Drink up, kiddo. It’s not easy losing a parent, trust me.”

I drain the glass, cough a little, and find Stan had drained his with no such fuss.

“Some advice.” Stan says, placing a hand on my shoulder and looking me right in the eyes. “Forget your Father existed. You are your own man, and this timid nature of yours that has grown as a result of being quashed by your dear old Dad is going to do nothing but hold you back. Trust me, we don’t need our fathers, or anyone, holding us back in this life. Because you only have a limited time on Earth and, frankly, it’s hard. I got charged four pounds for the bus earlier. Single trip, four pounds. Can you believe it?! Just live your life, Addy, and let go of anything that stops you from achieving because you can be as smart as you want, but if you don’t work hard too then you will get nowhere.”

“Okay?” I’m stunned, I must admit. His grip had only grown stronger over his speech, and his eyes bore into my soul more with every second. I felt like a cloak I had never known was there had been torn off my head, and had finally been revealed to the world.

“Anyway, Adam, Addy, kiddo, be a lamb and have a good life.” He stands to leave, but pauses. “You asked what I’m scared of?”

“Yes, sir. I did.” It seemed right to call him sir, suddenly.

“I’m scared of you. The whole of humanity scares me. Ignorant, capable of so much evil and destruction. Your phallic weapons capable of annihilating millions at a time. Even you, timid, pale, could flip your switch one day and kill a bunch of people with a knife or a rock. You are a stain on what was once a beautiful planet, and it scares me how quickly you were able to poison it. I don’t know why my Dad condemned me in favour for you monsters, but he did, and now I’m here. And not with him.”

Stan turned on his heel, leaving me all on my own with a pack of cigarettes, the lighter emblazoned with the gold cross and the white rose, and the image of his eyes, fiery globes filled with miraculous, tremendous and fascinating power immortalised in my brain.

"Interesting." I say outloud. "Barkeep, can I get four more on Stan's tab? Thank you."

Today

I had a breakdown.

I saw nothing but black,

and was, after, told that I had destroyed the

living room.

But I am okay, my mother says,

and that's all that matters.

Today

I had a breakdown.

I started to cry in silence,

and nobody noticed until I put my foot

through the glass table and

tore my foot into ribbons.

But I am okay, my dad says,

and that's all that matters.

Today

I had a breakdown.

My foot gushing red while I saw nothing but black,

I fell to the floor,

and curled into a ball,

shaking, not knowing where I was,

like a leaf blown into freezing water.

But I am okay, my mother says.

But I am okay, my dad says.

That's all that matters they say.

I tell my best friend.

And she knows I'm not okay.

Because I am not okay.

But she knows I will be okay,

and that's all that matters.

In another world, maybe not so different from this one, I'd have woken up next to you everyday until we grew old and grey. I'd have watched our children grow up with you. Smiles and tears, squabbles and cuddles, falling in love again and again over the little things you did that made me smile.

But you don't do those little things anymore. You can't. You won't wake up next to me ever again. Or see our kids grow up together. We would never smile again, and you would never cry again. Our only squabbles will be my prayers wishing you came back. Wishing you came back, or survived, or nothing happened that you had to survive, but would simply have lived.

In another world, maybe not so different from this one, you would have stumbled home drunk or caught a cab and left your car where it was. Instead of getting behind the wheel barely able to see.

In another world, our children have a mother. I have a wife. But in this world, you tried to drive home drunk, and I am now broken. My children had a mother, and I had a wife. But now, we only have eachother. And we keep eachother going, keep eachother sane like you used to do for us. Broken as I may be, and as lonely as the bed has become without you in it, I will always be our childrens parent. I promise you, sweetheart. I promise.

Amen.

'Dissonance', meaning 'a lack of harmony between people and/or things', and I chose this word because it epitomises the real world. The world we live in is plagued by an unceasing, screeching movement towards, it seems, the end. At least, there is hope in this dissonance, as dissonance is created not only by strife, but by those who hope to end the ignorant dissonance of humanity, when they fight against those who would see our planet decimated for money.