Disclaimer: I received an e-ARC from netgalley in exchange for a review.

DITCHLAPSE/ [REALLY AFRAID] is a collection of poetry and one act plays exploring growing up, modern social media, trauma and mental health.
DITCHLAPSE mainly collects poetry, often using modern tiktok slang and exploring certain online trends, which I quite enjoyed. It explores certain online subcultures and seems to be more focussed on the author's recent/more current experiences.
My favorite pieces from Ditchlaps where "you say i'm delulu for explaining levels of dissaciation (b-movie titled "inside me, there are two wolves")", "you approach as the average person is a self-directing credit?" (including the wonderful line: "crying without tears is so clearpilled and angelgirl chique, like how could anyone think you did anything?"), the "interruptions" called "infomercial as the moment", exploring ads and existing online and "*~tommy's room~* as a TikTok live" (which felt very We're All Going to the World's Fair).
I did enjoy this first part of the book, but I didn't feel blown away yet. It was interesting poetry and some pieces definitely made very interesting use of words, but it hadn't yet fully touched me. [REALLY AFRAID] would change that.
[REALLY AFRAID] features some pieces that are connected and thus allow us to spend more time with certain thoughts, and the pieces features are exploring Tommy Wyatt's growing up, dissociation, trauma and identity.
The media referenced here was often horror, which made it a lot more interesting to me and some of the pieces will stick with me for a long time. I also enjoyed that some different forms of presenting poetry were employed here, such as making use of text overlaid over other text and a lot of empty space sometimes, which was very interesting to read.
My favorites here were "lachrymoe//lacuna, a series of one-act plays review of THE VACATION. A REVIEW FOR FANS OF SKINAMARINK (dir. Kyle Edward Bell), AND NON_FANS OF BUFFY: THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (dir. Joss Whedon), VERTIGO (dir. Alfred Hitchcock), & SLEEPAWAY CAMP (dir. Robert Hiltzik).", "The Vacation scene 1", "happy valentines day? love, schadenfreude", "are you an internet cryptic? (as told by your tweets)", "hey, have you ever considered the word "rewind" may drop from the next generation's lexicon", "you never said your favorite color is green?", "the physical exam, or an erasure?" + "the physical exam, or the interpretation", "wow! this could be a david firth video!", "the future as an omen" and "self-help guide to understanding dissociative identitiy disorder once you reached crisis mode. who are you: tommy, kyle or josha?".
As you can probably see from this long list of pieces I enjoyed I really, really enjoyed [REALLY AFRAID] and Tommy's writing style which managed to paint a vivid picture for most of the pieces. The growing up it portrays feels both nostalgic at points and yet so incredibly modern through its combination of some memories that seem to be from before the big technology change really arrived in everybodies hands vs the tiktok generation now. I really enjoyed seeing that dichotomy presented.
All in all this is a very intruiging collection of poetry and one I will be thinking about for a while.

TW: dissociation, self-harm, sleep paralysis, nightmares and night terrors