đŚ'Knocked Down'đby Chasey Delaney.
..getting up again. [16 January 2026]
âEveryone is writing about all of this political stuff all day, and Iâm over here likeâŚ. âIâmmma Wrrrrrit0R! (who canât write for nothing!) also, choking on this Lack of Tact, Babyâ
THIS LETTER IS HUGE AND LENGTHY - THE LONGEST ONE IâVE DONE (thatâs what she said!?! lol) SO TO GET ALL CONTENT PLEASE OPEN EMAIL ON YOUR BROWSER OR READ IT DIRECTLY THROUGH THE APP.
FRIDAY 16 JANUARY 2026
Dear Chasers!âŚđŚ
I supposed its safe to say I got my eye wiped today. I had a few freefalls from grace. I got knocked down, twice, and got up again with the little help of a friend. Not the MUSE this time, he has his football studded boots on right now, by my keyboard. A big thank you to the Alphabet for making this all possible and pulling me through a really tough time tonight. There will be mention of the muse at the end but for now just come along with me as I ramble, revisit, rant and rummage in metaphorical skips.
âThe Art of Life is Taking Pleasures As They Pass, and The Keenest Pleasures Are Not Intellectual, nor Are They Always Moral"
ARISTIPPUS, Greek / Libyan Philosopher
Pushing people away is not an art form or mind game not in my case anyway. It is not even a trauma response or defense mechanism. Itâs because they have done something against me. They have lost my trust.
I need to be able to trust in order to stay sane. Itâs my genetic make up and this fucked up mental illness that is lethal to my brain. I canât afford to push anyone away when I have the smallest circle I can whittle it down to already. The hardest part is that for so long I have been afraid of being left alone or pushing the last one out the door when I canât push myself away. This means Iâm always going to be stuck with the enemy.
How can I ever really trust someone again, me, who has done the worst possible thing anybody can do to a person. I tried to kill me for fucks sake! I know lightning doesnât always strike twice, but I did and I still feel the same way. I had little value for my own life. I havenât changed. Iâve just learned to appreciate the good days.
The quiet sanity that I had never observed before was like a breath of fresh air when I became compliant to medication after finding one that works. Even then I was at the end of the line. The last chance saloon with fingers crossed and borrowed optimism of some kind. This was the final drug, having gone through every single option before, that I could try to give me some sort of stable experience of life.
I had someone by my side who I loved telling me that everything would be alright but if I didnât accept this drug, they too would âwash their hands with me and leaveâ. I was only doing it to stay with them.
I hoped they could watch over me, to prevent them from leaving. I was scared that the next time I tried to take my life would be the last. Third time lucky as they say. I didnât do any of it for me unless you count that I would be the beneficiary of having their presence, if not protection, by my side.
I didnât feel my life was worth preserving at the time and now I donât want to die. I have to survive. I never wanted to die even when suicidal. I desperately wanted to live and I couldnât and wasnât living when I was sick.
I tried the medication because there was no other way through this. My organs shutting down, my lungs collapsing, my psychosis destroying my induced comatosed brain made me wary of trying to die again. Being unwell, in recovery with a mental illness untreated and battling pneumonia was a frightening experience to go through alone.
I remember all that dying, coma, life support and eventually the lonely halls of the hospital. Practicing walking on my own after an age in bed with tubes down my throat and needles in my neck. Alone for loads of months.
Too many, months and months on end, unable to breathe alone, not seeing a single soul Iâd known, eyes constantly closed, freezing cold.
In and out of consciousness, having my menstruation dealt with by nurses wiping me with what felt like cloths dipped in acid, stinging between my legs, pissing the bed, being put back on the catheter.
I have no idea where I shit come to think of it, or even if I had shit. The be all and end all to it is this: it was all too much more to deal with once, then twice, only a fucking idiot would go back again for more.
The dreams, nightmares and psychosis on the Intensive Care Unit will haunt me forever. I almost died twice and I didnât like the journey to the end. It was almost worse than living and life itself. It was just another hell.
I hadnât known anything other than despair, misery, loneliness, rejection, humiliation, hate, anger, and violent experiences. My life was made up of all those things.
What was missing was peace, love, safety, communication, understanding, nurturing, caring, kindness, connection, encouragement, hope, faith, loyalty and trust. All those things were missing because I couldnât access them from within. I hadnât been strong enough to make them up from nothing.
All my life I knew I could only depend on myself but I didnât want to, didnât think I could be bothered just like everyone else. I only gravitated to a few people I knew, like my Dad, Nana, eventually my Mum.
I always felt that my Grandad had my back no matter what. He was the only person who stood by me and has never let me down emotionally or anything. Grandad had always told me âlike it wasâ. I trusted him the most.
I did push others away as soon as I felt unsafe. I didnât want anyone to depend on. I wanted them to let me be myself. I needed their âhelpâ because I knew I couldnât care less about me.
Everybody I ever met disliked me, they canât all be wrong. There must be something so terrible about me and fucked up that why should I give a fuck about me or where Iâll end up? The problem is I canât run away from myself.
I just tried to escape from drugs and thrust myself into making the most of misadventure in the given time frame of my youth. I knew that one day I would come unstuck. Dad was right about me being hedonistic. Iâd always laughed it off but now I know he was spot on about me. Who wouldnât be a pleasure seeker when all Iâd ever known was the opposite?
Did they think I had some super natural internal well of knowledge on how to feel good inside, when all these bad things were happening to me on the outside?
I wasnât brought up in a secure loving environment in the early years of my life. My Nana and Grandad supported me from age five, I felt safe. I felt loved and almost cherished (most of the time) yet I always knew the family dynamic wasnât common or normal.
I knew what I gained by being with my grandparents. I was missing out on things from not being with my biological parents. I overheard adults talking about me and saying things to each other about how my Nana shouldnât do it. She should never have agreed to look after me. It wasnât fair on her.
Sometimes when I was naughty, Nana would look at me like I was âmuckâ on her shoe, in fact she would say that I was and didnât try to disguise any of it. Always at the worst times too.
Nana would get so frustrated with me and worked up by something Iâd said or done that sheâd be so disgusted by me and let me know about it. She would tell me how I was just like my mother (who at that point I only saw once every other year and had no memories of ever living with her).
All my relatives felt like strangers to me. I loved the ones closest to me but never really knew them or understood them and they were distant with me too. I mean we lived together but never formed a conventional bond.
It was an existence not a life, a nice existence from what I came from or what might have been. Just people getting along, day by day, experiencing the same things.
Until one day, when I reached 16 years old, my Nana would be free from me. It was a limited life. A conditional kind of caring. I appreciate it and wouldnât choose to change anything about it up until the point where things went wrong. I felt starved of affection. I felt dissatisfied without any answers to all my childish curious questions.
I actually miss the time of innocence where retreating into my own mind for peace, strength and validation seemed the easiest and safest option. It was nice to be able to draw strength from within.
This taught me a sort of independence that I was light years beyond my needs. I didnât feel capable of being emotionally educated, mentally stimulated (although I had all the educational toys and books I could dream of but had to learn on my own and I didnât really do that.)
I was a very lonely child in terms of peers. I was shy but outspoken, I was active, happy a lot of the time, angry some of the time but always stuck in my head. Always kept my cards guarded. I just wish I had carried that forward with me.
The moment I let the outsiders in, the moment I got a taste of external emotion, attention. I was groomed, sexually abused, used, and this tarnished my reputation, and all illusions of family love, affection and connection were untethered and I was eventually disowned and disposed of, I began to unravel.
I soon found that the world Iâd grown up in, came to know of, the person I thought I was becoming and growing up into had a personality that was decomposing. I was always unwanted even by those who I belonged to.
I was disowned by my own bloodline, so how the fuck would I know that Iâm alright, as much as it knocked me down a peg or two in life, it made me realise from the get go that people are unkind.
I donât need what everyone else needs. I have to survive on my own. Then I romanticised my chances of finding a romantic love in my future. That I might meet someone who cares.
I thought theyâd teach me everything I didnât know, give me tools to cope, introduce me to a new world, a different side of life that I knew existed, stick with me as I got to see love, feel love, give love, and be loved.
I would find one soul that would see me the same way and be with me all the way as we would do the things I missed out on.
I knew this other way of living existed. I saw it from the sidelines of my childhood. My Cousins had Mumâs and Dadâs who loved them. My friends had families who loved each other. My colleagues had loving lives and were nice to each other.
I had no one. Nobody, and the people who ever did come around me, left and left scars, or I pushed them away as they stuck the knives in. Stitched myself up again.
Mentally, psychologically, emotionally, metaphorically. I feel today, like a medicated voodoo doll. I donât think the world or universe owes me anything. I just thank Western medicine for giving me the magic ability of feeling something that was missing.
I feel love and hope and all that shit from within with no core foundation, no training, no experience, against all odds, I take my meds to feel like you did when you were young. It doesnât make me normal, it gives me the tools to know the difference.
I had for years normalised tragedy, suffering, suicide and sexuality. I take my meds to know the difference. Two sides to a coin. Iâm now on the flipside. Thinking with my head this time (as opposed to just sex, like my tail end). I was enlightened by the sensation of life being kind.
Life could be âalrightâ and it was possible to do nothing and get by. Relaxing didnât mean enduring. Less frightening nights of sleep. I could see something on the other side of sadness. I could feel the hope running through my soul. Trust became possible. I was able to finally cope.
Being treated so badly so unkindly has made me stronger. I am reinforcing my personality again with the strength they tried to take away from me. I wrote this when it was either wallow in my self pity, in my sad situation, being mad about my behaviour, it was either do that or type shit.
I still push people away by showing them my darkside. I donât just put on a brave face. I wear a scary mask. I show them that they are right about what they think or say. I show them what exactly lies past my limit of patience, kindness, tolerance; indifference and they fucking hate it.
I sometimes make mistakes too. I lose a bit of myself in being bad, being what they expect, what theyâre used to, being a cunt so for once they get to fucking understand me. Itâs all they know. Dickhead shit is so familiar for them to handle, to defend themselves against. To hold against me.
You know what? fucking let them! Fuck them too.
Only I shouldnât have said some things to the innocent bystanders, those who pretend to be my friend and have never been openly, honestly, transparent with me but at the same time have never been openly, honestly, transparently unkind to me either.
Itâs those people who werenât even in the firing line. Who had not a care in the world for what I was up to, doing with my life. They donât give a fuck about my life. Why am I poking my nose into theirs? Why would I push them out when they wouldnât want to be in there anyway?
They did nothing wrong and nothing right. They did nothing to deserve my venomous tongue. Nothing that I know of yet. In hindsight I could have been right pre-empting the backlash, or I could have prevented it if Iâd have showed any kind of fucking tact with regards to The Muse situation.
I have my own situation going on at home. I have nobody to turn to but I should never have turned on them. The Muse is gone now.
My love will linger on but I sense the dream has just fizzled out already. Like myself, the future is tarnished. I sort of think less of him but also I know it would be a bone to throw in his face and spoke in my wheel every time we werenât in a great place.
I donât even know whatâs not real anymore. Itâs like the pennies have dropped from all directions all at the same time. Iâve been spinning plates like mini-lifelines and now they all fell and crashed to the floor at once.
Now, itâs just me in this quiet storm inside my head, waiting for the empty teacup of my brain to find its place on the saucer. Itâs been four decades. Iâm still nobodyâs cup of tea - just as well Iâm more into coffee actually, bit of whisky, vodka, lager⌠drinks..
âŚI GET KNOCKED DOWN BUT I GET UP AGAIN⌠xx
Sorry and Thank you!
All for your aMUSEmentđ
Best Wishes,
ChaseyđDelaneyâŚ. x
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