Sleepy drugs & social media nonsense.

I've had a bad couple of weeks, mentally. I'm generally great at cracking on and powering through, but after a lot of full-tilt Super Sociable/Slutty behaviour and Big Working Woman Energy time recently, I'd crumpled and gone foetal by one Sunday evening. A head cold had taken hold, my throat was sore, and my skin was rioting - little stressy poppable pimples had sprung up along my jaw line and when I didn't take the hint from them, a rogue and particularly grumpy zit gave me a fat lip. I told myself to take a week off. Oh no, not a week off work - a week off everything but work. See, I have this unfortunate habit of booking, organising and jam-packing all sorts of things and jobs and tasks and dates into every nook and cranny of my diary until the pages are squealing from the pressure and the hardback cover is fraying at the edges. Friends joke that I say I'm free as a bird, then flip through a few weeks with my pen poised, only to say 'I can do this Tuesday after 1pm but before 3pm, or Friday after next I have a half hour slot between brunch and lunch?' - I don't mean to do it. It just happens. I speak about it with my therapist, and wonder aloud if there's a reason behind it, or that I just like being occupied. Reader, of course there's a reason behind it. Duh. 

Photo by karatara.

As I had feared, I was distracting myself. That's the long and short of it. As soon as I stopped making plans and seeing all the people, and leaned fully into the sniffles and soreness, my mind deteriorated. The wormhole yawned open and swallowed me. I found myself casually and quietly crying as I worked at my desk, walked through the park kicking and crunching leaves, and pottered around supermarkets. I've been taking melatonin supplements before bed most nights lately to avoid the 4am stirs; for some reason that had become a pattern following my unexpected and abrupt relocation a few months ago, and in the darker smaller hours it was much harder to muffle the memories that would creep in, along with the confused reality of what was happening to me and where I was (or wasn't) in my life. Natural knock-out drugs were the only solution. 

I have this ongoing social media nonsense wherein I 'measure' my months in coffee. Oh, it's a VERY obscure, deep and ancient theatre reference, you probably won't get it, sweetie... I do the same one-handed in-and-out of frame short video of my beloved pink Keep Cup as it travels around with me, against vaguely interesting backdrops, to imply I'm moving around and going places. Which I am. I just find it a little tiresome - and lonesome - now. So this month I've decided to mix it up and include actual people in the frames; coffee dates, confidantes, mates, something-mores. In the past few months I've really come to appreciate the people around me, the ones I consciously surround myself with, and have brought along in my backpack on a journey of sorts - ha, much like my Keep Cup. If you're one of those humans, thank you. I've somehow become more romantic and expressive since my heart balloon was so viciously speared; I'm more excited about declarations of love, kisses in shop doorways, holding hands on long walks through tall grass, surprise proposals in crowds at concerts, I adore it all and I say it often. This is your sign to feel and say it, too. 

Things that have made me happy recently (besides the sleepy drugs and friends in Keep Cups)... blurry text, endless episodes of Brassic, clearing and tidying and organising, buying Christmas gifts, penalties being waved, seeing things and thinking of someone specific, downsizing the storage unit, peanut satay takeaways, solid perfumes, apophyllite crystal clusters, queerness, scruffy semi-tattered books, home comforts, blank canvases, mac and cheese with broccoli and peas, glimpses of a future, the little V&A mug I bought on my birthday, new bookshops having their fronts painted, wrapping paper covered in squirrels, actual real life SQUIRRELS in the nearby park and on all the trees and burying nuts in the allotment and bouncing across my little garden... Toast with almond butter and raspberry jam. Lyric tattoos. Anonymous kisses. Seeing my project blossom and bloom. Spending hours on trains, travelling so very far for some hugs. Realising that 31 is going to be the best and wildest age, even if it scares and saddens me sometimes. 

G. x