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Patrick Roche, performing “My Brain Plays a Game of Telephone”
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Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)
0:03
– My brain plays a game of telephone.
0:06
My therapist says, “Do you ever feel suicidal?”
0:09
Anxiety says, “Okay, um, what the fuck?
0:12
How does she know you’re suicidal?
0:13
Uh, haha, okay, we’re gonna end up in a psych ward, cool.”
0:16
Depression says nothing.
0:20
My friend says,
0:21
“Please tell me if you’re feeling depressed.”
0:23
Depression says, “He doesn’t care if you’re depressed.”
0:26
Anxiety says, “He’ll care, he’ll care way too much.
0:29
Why would you do that to him?”
0:31
I say nothing.
0:33
My boyfriend says he loves me.
0:35
Anxiety says he loves me, but for how long?
0:39
Depression says he shouldn’t love me.
0:41
I say, I love you, too, but don’t let him read any further.
0:46
Something always lost in translation,
0:48
a warped language hanging loose from my brainstem,
0:51
funhouse mirror folded into my mouth, bending every word,
0:55
my brain a magician in the worst way.
0:57
Give me a question and my brain will shatter it
1:00
into a hundred shadows.
1:02
Give me love and my brain will saw it in half,
1:05
conjure any meaning that ends with me alone in my brain.
1:09
I say I will get better.
1:11
My brain says no.
1:13
I say I am bigger than my neurons.
1:15
My brain says no.
1:16
I say my name and define it as happiness.
1:20
My brain says no, says it is static.
1:23
It is a dial tone.
1:24
It is a telephone ripped from the wall.
—
This post was previously published on YouTube.
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