"Bedlam"

Not crazy enough to be crazy
Too normal to be the norm
Playing pretence of ordinary
Hiding my inner storm.
I've never been so unhinged
To be classed as 'mental mad'
But my life has been such a waste
Not depressed but sad.
If I'd been an earlier generation
Would I have been able to cope
Teachers gone one one step further
Thrown in an asylum without hope?
I think I grew up kind of mental
Without seeing a psychiatrist quack
For my head was fucked up
Without being Black Dog black.
If I'd been born two decades earlier
I'd have been in a Cane Hill cell
The only contact with the outside world
Ringing for the nurse with a bell.
I was always a weird kid
The 'strange one' when at school
Not quite trusted to be popular
Or confident to be class fool. 
At home I felt no love
Felt like the family flid
It was just something I accepted
Being the youngest kid.
That feeling of worthless
Never went as I got older
Full of insecurity
A constant of cold shoulder.
Who knows what would have happened
If I'd have seen a shrink
Would it have been the making of me
Or was there much further to sink?
Now I'm middle-aged
Things are about right
My life's not that exciting
But at least I rest at night.
Can't currently put my finger on it
But I feel less mental pain
It's currently only once in a while
Thinking of a jump under a train.
It's not the dying I'm scared of
Just the fear of hurt
That moment of sheer agony
Before they scrape me off the dirt. 
I've not got a pot to piss in
Scared of getting old
Even though I want to live to be a hundred
If the truth be told.
But my half century's made me weary
With little self-esteem
The only thing that keeps me going
Is the ability to dream.
I enjoy poetry writing
And historical research
My only drug is football
Dulwich Hamlet being my church.
I need to set myself some targets
Manageable goals
I need to think of myself for once
And scale back my football roles.
I'm so scared of the future
While scared to look at my past
But only I can change what's left of my life
By not accepting the way the die's been cast.


Dulwich Poet 17th January 2017

(I caught the last day of an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection galleries, about the old mental health institutions, called 'Bedlam'. It got me thinking about in a different era, I could quite easily have been locked up in one...)