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