Charly Cox - Validate Me

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by

HQ, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

Copyright © Charly Cox 2019

Charly Cox asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008348175

Ebook Edition © 2019 ISBN: 9780008348182

Version: 2019-09-12

Praise for She Must Be Mad Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Praise for She Must Be Mad Epigraph Foreword by Elizabeth Day Introduction Objectify me Love me Suffocate me Validate me Acknowledgements About the Author Also by the Author About the Publisher

‘This book of poetry and prose is divine … so refreshing yet familiar’

– Cecelia Ahern

‘Charly constantly astounds me with how inspired she is … [Her] poetry really encapsulates what it is to be a young woman. All the tensions and anxieties and new discoveries’

– Pandora Sykes

‘Prose and poems that have you laughing, crying and questioning your own life in no time’

– Glamour

‘Thoughtful, funny and wistful’

– Independent

‘Brave and Beautiful’

– Stylist

‘Charly’s writing is staggeringly impressive’

– ELLE

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Kurt Vonnegut

Contents

Cover

Title Page VALIDATE ME Charly Cox

Copyright

Praise for She Must Be Mad

Epigraph

Foreword by Elizabeth Day

Introduction

Objectify me

Love me

Suffocate me

Validate me

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

I first met Charly Cox in a hotel suite, which makes it sound like an illicit romantic assignation. I suppose, in truth, the reality was not so very far removed given the instantaneous nature of our connection. I loved her straight away, with a ferocity reserved for only the most special of kindred spirits.

I knew her by reputation only, after discovering one of her poems online and finding myself laughing at one line, wincing in recognition by the next and weeping at the last. I followed her on Instagram where she was funny and self-deprecating and talented (and beautiful, of course, but this was the least important). Everything she posted got thousands of likes. Of course it did. Everything she posted was brilliant. Everything she posted had heart.

When I met her IRL, she was even better. Yes, she had heart. But she also had soul. She claimed to be 23 but really I knew she must be lying because her entire being was shot through with the gold thread of wisdom. I had that thing – that curious, embarrassing thing that you barely ever feel when you’re grown up – of wanting desperately for this woman to like me back.

We were in the hotel to do a series of readings to mark its opening, while various guests from a party downstairs were shepherded through the suite to listen to us. It was surreal. At one point, Charly was standing in front of a bathtub performing one of her poems while I was perched on the edge of a four-poster bed reading a passage from a novel. Afterwards, we bonded over the glorious weirdness of the evening. Now, she is my dear friend.

So you won’t be getting one of those objective, academic forewords where I analyse the cadence and rhythm of her language, wonderful though it is. No, this is a wholeheartedly subjective take on why you should read this collection.

If you’ll allow me to tell you, from my unabashedly biased position as Charly’s friend, why I believe you should read Validate Me , it is because Charly gives voice to the things we think but never manage to say. She gives expression to the intangible qualities of loneliness and alienation in this superficially connected world, and in doing so she makes us feel heard. More than that, she makes us feel understood. She probes darkness with the same tenderness as she tests the light, from the position of someone who has experienced severe and debilitating episodes of depression, but who has found the strength never to let this illness define her wholeness.

The book you have in your hands is precious. It will make you laugh. It will make you cry. It will make you nod your head in affirmation. And when you turn the final page, it will make you understand a little bit more of what it is to be human.

Are you the friend that takes sweet secret gratification in others’ failures? Do you like to indulge in delicious disastrous irony? How about oxymorons? Do you have a few moments to spare to flick through a book that warrants no need for more attention than a glance at your phone? Or perhaps – here’s the clincher – are you a person that has a 4G connection and is currently alive on this here planet?

If you answered yes to any of the above, please take a seat whilst you sign away a few precious cells of your brain to the validation of my mental breakdown. A little scribble of thought with the tiny Argos pen you stole in your childhood is all I need. With that too take your own validation, you’re a climate change warrior, that could’ve been single use. Can I get you anything? A dog meme? An old photo of Paul Danan off his tits? A Trump tweet to make you question what is left of this already heavy and futile opinion on life? Well, get up and get it yourself because I am currently circling around Praed Street, Paddington, London, dictating this into my phone having just strolled out of Accident and Emergency with little but an offer of self-sectioning and a plastic festival-like wristband with my name and date of birth on it as a keepsake. I am busy and now you are too, so Lady Gaga and Piers Morgan can wait, we have got a lot to try and decipher about how it got this far.