practising the art of being alone without being lonely. i was a regularly little artist in my teens, even my early twenties. i was alone but i was with myself all the time. i had time to waste in between my starbucks shifts. i was making up stories in my head, i was writing them down, putting songs into playlists, cutting up magazines, pasting them onto my bedroom walls like the walls of my heart. i was staying up til 3am listening to music, falling down rabbit holes to find out Elvis’ favourite sandwiches and sexual appetites, the nutshell miniature dioramas of unexplained murders. all that alone time is good for the soul when you fill it with yourself and all the things you love to fall into, to dream about, to explore, to listen to over and over. here’s to alone time, spent with yourself 💌
here i am sat on the balcony in our north london flat share, it's nearly nine at night and the sunset is really bright and brilliant and mashmallow fluffy over the tall trees and above the 'jesus is life' church sign that hangs over us. and the air is so balmy, like every paragraph of prose i used to write on my blog and in my journal. it's balmy and warm and the wind doesn't chill. it rustles the leaves and messed up my bleached blond curls. but it doesn't chill.
london town is at 40 degrees right now - a record breaking heatwave. yesterday we spent the day driving in chloe's yellow car with no AC to the shops, so we could walk down air conditioned isles and buy household cleaning products. we ate inside a mcdonalds and then i went to eat mexican food with other friends and then to see a horror film in the AC'd cinema to escape the heat. we've done a lot of balcony bathing, a lot of angling of fans.
and it's tuesday and i have the whole summer ahead of me - no plans, just space and time to do whatever it is i want. and for the first time in my life, the lack of plans, the time time time doesn't terrify me. time to rest before i go back to the place i belong. and i belong here too. and i'm tan and happy. and happy and happy and happy happy. and the world feels like a perfect piece of writing that i wrote as a teenager when i got the vibes just right. it's warm and real and bright. and i never dreamed it would be this solid, this tangible, this fantastical. and i am so grateful. with every beat of my heart i am so grateful.
I stay up all night falling into rabbit holes online. The author who wrote Tiger, Tiger dead at thirty eight. Fiona Apple’s interviews about who is stronger - is it the rapist or the little girl who survives? The playlist I’ve curated since I was fifteen full of child abuse, sadness, violence, self-harm, bulimia. I consume all the sadness and darkness I can find to keep my own sadness and darkness company but really all it does is multiply it. But I’m fifteen and I don’t understand this and even if I did it wouldn’t make a difference. Ten years later I understand that there are very few ways to let the pain. There are very few ways for kids to communicate that they have been separated from the other kids by a violation, and that the violation has created a canyon or maybe built a thick steel wall around them to keep them isolated and alone. I communicate it with music, films, books, interviews that make isolation seem romantic and bearable. My first kiss was with a fifty year old man but I don’t really mind because I was born different and dark and this will mean that I have a wild and colourful and adventure-filled life while my friends get pregnant and married and buy houses and tend to their gardens. Until my wild and colourful adult life starts I will cut myself in the dark and lie on the threadbare carpet and cry until I’m dehydrated. I tell myself it will build character. I'm barely fifteen.
And then suddenly, all the road blocks life places in my way end. The road opens up, paved and smooth, slippery with maple syrup sweetness. The sun shines brightly, my eyes are unaccustomed and I find shade where I can, in the wild forest pines of the past on either side of the journey. To slip under one, into the shade, feels like relief sometimes. Feels like a warm coat on a cold day, or a cold shower in a heatwave. But I don't stay beneath the pines for long. I get back on the brightly lit road, so light that I feel exposed and seen. That's where I am now. The paving stretches onwards into the horizon, further than the eye can see and I know that if I don't take any sideways detours I can stay on it. I can reach the rainbow. Perhaps the pot of gold at the end is in fact little gold coins scattered along the way. I pick them up and stuff them into pockets, feeling them, not taking them out to examine so I don't get too comfortable with the new life. Where things are handed to me, easy to find, shining. Incase I run out of road or the gold stops, I hide them about my person. I hoard it all.
I'm still learning this brand new road, y'know? I don't beat myself up for not deleting the playlist or for distrusting the road. I just stay on it. Take a couple pictures along the way. Learn to sun bathe. Sit a while.
