Eva Hale: Extracts from Eva's Book 'Doors to Nowhere'

Eva Hale is just a girl. A girl that feels too much and not enough, to the point that she picked up a pen and scrawled it in illegible black ink. Eva hopes to encourage others to express their unique and inspiring struggles with mental illness and find their own well-earned voice in this quiet world. Eva Hale's debut poetry collection, Doors to Nowhere, represents her journey through nothing and everything to become what she is today - anything. In the beginning, Eva Hale was just a girl. Things are beginning to change. 

Extract 1: 

I am trying to distract myself and others from the ebbing and the twist and the scars drawn on my wrist. I'm running to lose and I'm running to find if there is a doorway out of the mind. 

Extract 2: 

You put me in a box and threw away the key then dropped me in a lake to see if I could breathe. 

Extract 3: 

I covered my smiles with my hands because I didn't want anyone to see the lies that were always caught between my teeth.

Extract 4: 

The thing is some people like to see blank space so you fold yourself like freshly pressed linen. 

Extract 5: 

Can a blind man see his memories? Does a moth know it will never touch the moon? 

Extract 6: 

There is too much and some things are too heavy for words to carry. 

Extract 7: 

I was once told not to build my walls too high otherwise no one could climb over them. But isn't that the point? My life has been built on one or two fantasies: that I will be loved for who I am; or that I will be saved. Of course I expect both. I build walls hoping someone will knock them down but they don't. And now I've built a city on broken things and padlocks and I'm still alone. Just waiting but afraid of stepping outside of my walls. 

Extract 8:

Rock bottom continues to collapse beneath my two feet and I assure myself that I must stoop lower to finally find a foot hole to climb back up. But everyday I swim deeper and everyday the depths grow father. How can I cry for help without tears without words without any outward sign of weakness? Nothing really matters to me except the pain except the longing. How can I believe that there is anything except for what is beneath me. 

Extract 9: 

There is a shirt on the floor a few feet away from me and I can't pick it up. I don't know if it's dirty or clean or everything in between it just seems tired and worn irreparably torn and never to fit in the right places. Discarded. I can't pick it up. I think it belongs out of place out of mind below the soles of feet amongst loose change and torn threads. And if I did pick it up I would slip it over my ribs and lay in the same place. 

Extract 10: 

There is something inside me that wants to be lost and wants to be found and wants to be buried deep in the ground. It wants to be born and it wants to be dead and I just can't seem to get it out of my head. 

Extract 11: 

I hope that you never understand what it's like to care so much about your exterior that your interior rots. For nothing tastes as sad as skinny feels. 

Extract 12: 

Here's to us. We are the overachievers and the under appreciated we are the insomniacs we are the broken but walking the speechless but talking. I am the calm and the power the panic attacks in the shower I am the trying too hard... and still not enough. I am the prescription glasses just to look smart acting like the world is falling apart when really it's just me. We are the empty bottles and the full cups we are the skipped meals that still weigh too much we are the dead with beating hearts. Here's to us. 

Extract 13: 

My body is a temple, but I am not the king. I am a worker, always taking orders, I am not in control. I cannot control myself. And yet it seems that control is all I have left. 

Extract 14: 

All my life I have taught myself to dig deeper to be better. But the deeper I dig the less I can find  now I know that it is easier to contain a puddle rather than an ocean. I let my contents spill out like a water jug and soak into the soil. Nothing will grow from it. And it has occurred to me that I was a chasm and you were scared of heights you liked your feet to touch the bottom so I poured out my life. 

Extract 15: 

I can understand that you are becoming tired with hearing the same thing over and over but I can tell you that I am more tired of feeling the same thing on replay and rewind and repeat all the time tell me to play a different track I dare you. 

Extract 16: 

Another night spent in the frail arms of darkness. Words struggle to pour themselves onto paper. 
I try to wash away the dreams with the sounds of the night and then drown those out with my thoughts. But it turns it my thoughts are more terrifying than the rest. Don't. Think. It's coming. I just don't know what it is. So with a cheap cut of coffee I watch the sunrise knowing it will set again. But that is a story for another night. 

Extract 17: 

The best and worst part of writing is that no one realises how much of yourself is stuck in the pages.

If you want more... 

Find Eva's book online. Simply search, 'Doors to nowhere' and order your copy.