here i am. my home in , my little room. i moved to london during a global pandemic, started and finished my first term at drama school. i'm just doing a dark wash on a sunday, just washing my hair, just reading on the northern line to g.s. i'm just living this little life that is entirely mine. finally, for the first time in my whole life, this life is entirely mine. i dreamed it, made it, created it. i'm living it, decorating it, being kind to myself when i feel displaced. because of course i feel displaced when i have two separate parallel lives that i don't feel i reside in completely yet - my friends haven't even been able to come see the flat, havent been able to take them to muswell hill or crouch end or highgate village to see the christmas lights, or hampstead heath. but all of that's coming.
when i feel displaced in my bed, the refectory, the bar, i remember it's because i kind of am. and nothing feels wrong. nothing, for the first time in over ten years, feels wrong. it feels so, so fucking right.
reading: bunny by mona awad (fuckin bonkers), my brilliant friend - elena ferante, cherry - nico walker.
letting me be who i would have beenif everything had turned out alright3 alternative endingsnow course through my blood on iceBut I thrive because I say I doand because it's what I write
Soul cycle you to death, run you out of my blood to San Pedro
My life is my poetry, my love making is my legacy!
it's times like this that the marine layer liftsoff the sea on the dock with out candle litthat i think to myselfthere are things you still don't know about melike sometimes i'm afraid my sadness is too bigand that one day you might have to help me handle it
turns out i didn't need a halfway house. i'm ready. we're finding apartments near camden town, we're planning garden balconies. i'm going to drama school. and the one i really really fucking wanted.
thank you thank you thank you
thank you
thank
you
♥
"i walked away from the last six months, from london, from everything i
put my hopes on knowing that i gave it everything and more. but the"
I
was ready to write something new, but this was my saved draft. From
probably 10 months ago, now. Walking away was the right thing for me to
do, although i felt like the little mermaid walking on the dry land.
every step like a little dagger. But here I am. Here I am with a
bleeding hear confession for nobody left on LiveJournal to read. but
i've been here for over ten years now, i think i'll always keep coming
on back here. I wrote this next bit a couple days ago. It feels more
revealing than anything I've written in a long time.
I had
stopped feeling. And I don't know if the numbness started when,
pre-Bipolar diagnoses, I started taking Prozac in September. Or whether
it started when I started heavy drinking on that Prozac. Or when I
started heavy drinking to begin with, in Autumn of 2018. Maybe it was
the stress of that October when I started commuting. Or maybe it was the
assault in the Summer before that Autumn when I thought I might die?
But then again, that assault is what took my binge drinking into heavy
drinking, into problem drinking and then finally into daily drinking.
All in all, I can tie it, in some way to alcohol. The numbness was
present when I was in London, through the Autumn and Winter of 2018 and
into 2019. I had a small breakthrough in the January of that year, that I
felt had shocked me back into the land of the living. But maybe the
feeling never came back completely. Drama school rejection, the ending
of a project I thought would change my life, but instead sucked a lot
out of me. Being alone, with time to think, for the first time since the
assault in the first place.
I have always kept inside of me,
even during my worst times (the year I was 15, the winter I was 17, the
year I was 20, the winter I was 22, the summer I was 23), a reserve of
goodness. A reserve of something solid, of worthiness. I knew I had so
much to give. Even below all the sadness and hurt, the madness and
trauma, I knew I had something golden and glowing inside of me. A really
good soul. A complex one, a kind one, a reliable one. I was a good
person - even if I wasn't one to myself - and I was an interesting
person. I had years of watching, reading, listening stored inside of me.
I had stories and recommendations, favourite foods, cafes, favourite
perfumes and blogs, opinions, thoughts, wild feelings, dreams,
restaurants, favourite passages underlined in pink raspberry scented gel
pen in my favourite books and essays, new artists, pictures that made
me want to write short stories, songs. I had the ability to be open, I
trusted myself to always wake up in the morning. I always wanted to wake
up in the morning. Sometimes I took it too far, but even when harming
me, I still liked me and my behaviors towards others. I wasn't
embarrassed. I wasn't harmful to anyone but me.
I have never been
so lost as I've been the Autumn and into the winter of 2019. I thought
the year could only get better for me, but it slid into a stagnant,
hypomanic episode where I kept badness around me, let nothing good into
me. I didn't know who I was anymore - worse, I felt like there was
nothing inside of me to be. I didn't watch anything or read anything or
listen to anything. I didn't connect or cry, no coincidences blessed me
with a higher meaning, there were no little signs to tell me I'd be okay
or that I was on the right path. Nothing reached me and I couldn't
reach anything else. I had nothing to give (except blowjobs).
Drinking
numbed all of my feelings - all warning signs, instincts, intuitions.
My survival instinct was silenced. Those weird little things that were
so intrinsic to me and my faith in loving being alive. The way the moon
looks. The story the man on the train tells you. The song your workshop
decides to sing - the very same one your best friend gifted you, that
later plays in Chapter One cafe in Manchester. The neon blue rainy coach
journey back from Victoria to home, watching Victoria change to
Mayfair, signs for Chalk Farm and Camden Town, through Edgware, onto the
M1 to follow signs for, the very bold declaration of, THE NORTH. How a
dog shakes on the platform of St Pancras. The chime of electronic bells
at the start of a song that feel like how all music sounded like when
you were fifteen. Movie moments - things I know now are actually just a
deep, beautiful notion of being present in that exact moment.
I
tried to fake the feelings - I tried to journal them, list them, sing
them but none of them landed. Nothing fake lands on the soul. And that's
how I know that I'm getting real again. I don't feel like someone new, I
feel like Me again. And I have this deeper love for myself now I've
found myself again, a deeper compassion, a deeper admiration. The ways I
can love, the ways I can be there for others, the way I can connect and
let others be there for me. The beautiful things I always find and
bolster myself with. How I love to read, how sometimes I cry on the tram
home, how I search out meaning, find instrumental songs I love, how
talented and loving I am. How strong I am, although I've convinced myself I was weak for so many years now.
Despite
how addiction has taken from me, has ground me down since I was too
young to understand what was beginning, I still keep on fighting it. I
get fucked up and I fight it off again. If that's the best I can do in
the moment? I'm okay with that. I'm trying. And right now at least, I'm
succeeding. I'm winning. And i'm crying and feeling and reading and
underlining and taking neon blue coach journeys home and thinking about
moving out and my new auditions for drama schools and the incredible
opportunities I've been blessed with this year. God bless the charity
Open Door for taking me under their wing and investing in me and
believing in my talent as an actor and an artist. God bless the girl I
loved for 6 years who I could not take into 2020 with me, god bless her
mother. God bless their flat that became a lecture hall, a university
for a little girl like me. God bless my friends who never lost me even
when I lost myself. God bless the job I waited for, that I knew I was
meant for the second I found it. God bless the car. My cat son. My new
backpack. Travelcards. New boots. New coats. New perfume.
God bless my mum. And god bless me.
(this is my favourite movie, with one of my favourite songs ever. watch it, listen to it. and remember, i love you)
♡
I'm getting back into me. I'm warm, I'm writing. I'm making playlists. I'm reading, I'm loving. I feel reborn. All the tears watered those little dead flowers in my chest.
; the candles will be lit every evening, the bed will always be warm. there will always be leftovers waiting for you in the fridge in a little container. there will be orange juice in there too. we will always be making something - singing something, writing something, drawing something, painting something. there will be fresh flowers and fresh coffee. we will be stoned and starry eyed. i will make a lot of playlists with just the right kind of warm music. there will be a lot of journalling. there will be a lot of marking of scripts, of monologues, of essays and poetry. there will be lots of underlining of favourite passages from books. there will be live plants and fake plants and fresh air. there will be lots of bed dwelling and settee dwelling. there will be hiking boots and yoga classes. welcome to the halfway house before the rest of your life ;
