i see you made this

i got a voice in my head and hes louder than me
he says sit down shut up you were never meant to be
so i laugh in his face and i hand him the key
cause if hes living rent free then hes paying a fee

woke up this morning had a meeting with myself
sat across the table said we need to talk about your health
mental not physical the physical is fine
its the wiring in the attic thats been crossed since 99
i said mate i appreciate the concern i really do
but the last time that i listened i ended up confused
between the version that you want and the version that i am
somewhere in the middle theres a boy who had a plan
he had a plan to be happy by twentythree
plot twist twentythree came and went like a breeze
now im counting ceiling tiles at 4am
wondering if the version of me i like will show up again
he visits sometimes usually on tuesdays
brings a bit of confidence wrapped in a suitcase
stays for about an hour then hes out the door
leaves a little note that says youve done this before
and i have and i will and i do and i dont
i promise that im fine then i promise that i wont
make promises i cant keep to a version of myself
that i keep on a shelf like a book ill finish someone else

i built a house inside my head but the roof leaks
the walls talk back to me in my sleep
i fix one room and another one creaks
ive been renovating me for about thirtyseven weeks

see the thing about brains is they dont come with a manual
you just wake up one day and the panic is mechanical
like clockwork ticktick here it comes again
the feeling that youre drowning in a room with no rain
i smile at strangers i hold doors i say cheers
functioning so perfectly youd never see the gears
grinding behind my ribcage rusting at the seams
stitching myself together in between the inbetweens
my therapist says write it down so i did
filled up fourteen notebooks since i was a kid
page one says im fine page two says i lied
page three through fourteen is just me trying to decide
if the happy me is real or if the sad me is the truth
or if theyre both just tenants arguing over the same roof
and im the landlord stuck between two broken leases
trying to keep the peace while im falling into pieces
but the pieces have opinions and the opinions have a voice
and the voice has a volume that i didnt get to choice
choose i didnt get to choose see even now im tripping
over my own sentences while my sanity is slipping
into something comfortable like a wellworn lie
im alright im alright im alright im alive
and alive is enough on the days when enough is plenty
but what about the days when alive just feels empty

i wear my brain like a backpack i cant take off
heavy with the things i never had the nerve to talk
every single zip is stuck every pockets full
carrying the lot of it and calling it beautiful

when i was seven i decided i was brave
drew a cape on my shadow and i told it to behave
by twelve the cape was gone the shadow had grown teeth
started whispering that maybe i was out of my league
by fifteen i was bargaining just get me through the week
by eighteen i was fluent in the language of defeat
but somewhere between the giving up and giving in
i found a crack inside the dark and i squeezed my whole self thin
pushed through it bruised and bleeding came out the other side
into a room that looked exactly like the one inside
my head but quieter the voices took a break
long enough for me to hear my own heartbeat and say
oh there you are i thought id lost you for a minute
thought the noise had finally won and i was finished wasnt in it
but the heartbeat said im stubborn and i dont know how to quit
even when the brain upstairs is throwing a fit
so now i walk around with this civil war inside
the brain says youre not worth it and the heart says thats a lie
and i believe them both on alternating days
living in the crossfire of my own conflicting praise
and criticism and doubt and hope and fear
all of it so loud that the silence sounds weird
when it comes and it comes i dont trust it for a second
cause the quiet is just the storm deciding what happens next and

im not fixed im not broken im just in between
somewhere in the hallway of a house ive never seen
every door i open leads to another me
and none of them are certain but theyre all trying to breathe

and thats the thing innit
you spend your whole life thinking youre the problem
then one day you realise
youre also the answer
you just havent introduced yourself yet

so here i am contradiction number fourhundredandthree
a mess in a hoodie whos pretending to be free
free from what from who from the thing in my chest
that tells me im too much while