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In A Different Place · Jul 20, 2026

Men Stop

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Evelyn K. Brunswick · In A Different Place

It’s late. I should be to bed. I cried when I watched that bit in Emmerdale when Len died. That was years ago but it still resonates. We don’t have a telly anymore but there’s this thing called nostalgia, you know, it hits you now and again and I was going to say something else that would come across as self-indulgent, something about hot flushes and the truth is, I am too old to be young anymore, it’s all gone so wrong, this life, it’s all gone so wrong and there’s nothing I can do to stop any of it and it breaks my heart and I just want to wake up in a better place or a place where I don’t know any different and never get to know any different and something else, like a computer or something, decides my whole life for me and I don’t have to think for myself anymore and I don’t have to make any decisions anymore and wake me up in dystopia. Life is too long. Life is too hurting.

I have a new poem for you. Men Stop, I think I shall call it.

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I am drunk again.
The fault lines splay themselves
Help I can’t love myself and
Then it descends into snow again.
Summer heights, you not notice
The swallows nest and never tell me
Chit chit chat and never sense me
You have no idea what it’s like, do you?
These hot flushes, this sudden change
You don’t care because you are a huntsman
And I am red
You don’t care when I tell you the truth
You love your own
And your ideology you don’t love me, no
I know you don’t think.
Not like I drink, no
You don’t love wisdom like I do.
In times gone down they would have
Let you get away with it
And sometimes I no longer care, you know,
Because there is no zen anymore,
There is no purposes or quality and I am
Gone.
Across the road there is a house
And in that garden there is a swim
And I am not permitted.
I am in a difference
And that difference is a shade,
With the blinds gone down
With the blinds gone.
I miss you.

There.

I could’ve embellished that poem, but something stopped me from doing that. It stops abruptly, I know.

Anyhow, that was me for the moment. I will try - I promise I will try - to get you the next episode of my dystopian serial for next Friday but I can’t promise you anything. I’ve been down-done by my chronic mental illness, which has been plaguing me since I was a teenager. Ultimately, it comes from when I was a child and I was, well, you really don’t want to know. It’s a dissociation thing. I will try and be honest with you. But it’s not always me…

If, in the meantime, you would like to read more of my poetry, then this is the best place to start.

If you would rather not, then that’s ok too. My life is my own. It doesn’t belong to anyone else.

Would you like to buy me a coffee, though?

Evie Coffee?

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Read the original on inadifferentplace.substack.com

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