Fragile

At this moment in time I feel like a cardboard box which has 'fragile' emblazoned on it and thick tape wrapped around it screaming the same distress call. Except-

I am not a cardboard box.

I am a human contained in something fleeting and although I would like to be carried gently though the world like my metaphorical box, I am instead hurtling through the abyss too fast to be able to slow it down and oh, if only I could just slow this all down.

Outside of the metaphorical box I am still fragile. I just don't have any protection. And I am too well versed in hiding.

The air and the balance in the world feels off to me. At the slightest change of anything in this fickle universe, my eyes are ready to bawl and the only stopper to this outpouring of grief is the inevitable grief of being 'found out'.

I don't know why this is happening. I don't understand it. But it sucks. And it hurts. And I feel brittle and fragile and I am scared.

Of too many things and everything.

Thoughts on months into 23.

The older I get, the more past there is to dig into and drown in. I try to tell myself to not be so nostalgic but the current is too strong and I slip into the quicksand of childhood memories.

If my life was a Hollywood movie, this would be the point  where I would finally get 'closure'. I would sink deep into the quicksand, wrestle with the turbulent undergrowth and then a few days later, I'd fly out of it a new woman. The final scene of the movie would be me with an arm outstretched like superman, reaching into my 'bright' and 'hopeful' future. The sun is shining and there's a happy song playing in the background, ready for the credits to roll and for the viewers to leave the cinema in a state of awe. The women are bawling as their boyfriends and husbands hand over tissues after tissue. "That was amazing, s-s-she was so a-a-ama-zing," they blubber as they leave.

But my life is not a typical Hollywood movie. I don't have closure. I am not sunk in the quicksand of nostalgia and childhood memories. Instead, I bob up and down like a fish. There are some moments where I feel like I am drowning and there are other moments where I am floating above the sand, confident that I will be that stereotypical romantic heroine.

I'm not entirely sure this analogy has been useful but I think it conveys this sense of limbo that I feel like I am in. I find it too difficult to shut off the past and to move on. What does 'moving on' even mean? How do I forget what has happened and learn to live my life because years have passed and there are things which I feel I should understand by now and I don't. I've noticed that over the last few years, as I have moved into the world of the 'adult' (that strange, alien state of being), that my mind has entered this place of extreme anxiety. All of a sudden, I feel like there is this tension between my true self, the child, and the self that grows up into a fully fledged person. I am too scared to cross that threshold and so I sabotage anything which would take me there. I know that I can still be me and be an adult at the same time but I think that my mind has made a mental note to not even attempt to consider my life as an adult. I work 9-5 and have a 'proper' job but besides that, I don't have any sense of responsibility. I am too comfortable by myself. I don't know if my mind will change this or not. Part of me thinks, f*** it. My mind can take its time. But another part of me thinks, what if my mind realises the truth too late.

In the indie (pretentious) movie of my life which stars someone beautiful and intense like Michelle Williams, I learn how to swim. The protagonist realises that she will not ever live solely above or below the quicksand. She accepts that the quicksand is a permanent fixture in her life but she does not accept that it is unbeatable; so she learns to swim. And at the end of the film, that's the last scene.

She is swimming.

She doesn't know whether she is swimming to something good or bad but she powers through anyway. And there is no music playing in the credits. There is just the sound of the water as she cuts through it with her strong strokes. Forward, breathe, forward, breather, forward breathe. The water, fluid and powerful, is the last sound we hear before the film cuts to black and the credits finally roll.

I like this version better. 

Elastic band

Stretched to the limit

My body begs me to breathe,

and my mind screams.

I should let myself be malleable,

be open to contracting.

But I am terrified of being inside myself.

I teach myself to never 

trespass beyond the limit.

I stay in the throes of tension.

Pinging constantly.

Pain

Ping

Pain

Ping

Pain

Ping

Within this limit 

I am highly strung but I am 

intact.

I think if I saw you again I would snap in two.

The birthday blogpost.

23.

I'm not one for swearing but SHIT SHIT SHIT.

I am in the throes of adulthood.

I am well and truly in the hubbub of the roller coaster, swinging in the air, arms flailing wildly and I can't even remember getting on.

What's stranger is that I still feel like a child. I have a proper, adult full-time job. I am a teacher to children. And as another day passes I grow more accustomed to the fact that I am the adult in the classroom. I am no longer a student myself. As each day passes I become privy to conversations that would have happened in my absence, conversations which I now run from.

There is something solid and sturdy in the number 23. Up to being 21 you're definitely a student. You can carry off the "I'm a student I don't know anything really" demeanour. At 22, you're answering questions about what you're "going to do for the rest of your life". But 23 is something else. You have entered the world of work. You have entered the future. And there's no going back.

It's pathetic but I woke up to an email from Subway saying I get my free subway cookie. That will be the highlight of my day for sure. I am already planning to get it on my way to school next week so that I can have it with my lunch. (I just have to get over the embarrassing hurdle of actually asking for it and showing the QR code on my phone)

#adultingforthewin

Ctrl-Shift-N

After years of wondering,

I found you in the secrecy

of the incognito tab.

Your twitter feed 

offers only distant echoes of you-

I can't conjure you up from

140 characters.

Believe me, I have tried.

It only hides the sound of a voice
which I can't remember.

16

You said "sorry"

as if I would be able to rebuild myself with a 

word.

7 years later and still when you apologise for something 

I remember.

I am all at once a trembling mess.

All at once remembering the many things that I 

never said.

And I never will.

You will never know the fear of hearing ghosts

screaming like banshees

only to discover it is your father

hunched over

wailing.

How do I tell you that I prayed for you every night?

That I worried every night?

That sleep was the balm that let me forget you.

That every waking minute I lived in fear of the pain

that you caused me.

And how do I tell you these things
now?

After all this time, how do I tell you that time or 

one word 

is not enough

to rebuild someone you 

ripped apart.

I know you didn't mean to.

If you did, it wouldn't hurt this much.

First week of teaching

Well, I survived my first official week of teaching. I say survived but I had a mini breakdown last night.

I don't know if that's related to being back at school, being triggered by a memory or merely because I was due to start my period. Incidentally, I have started my period...

In truth, I think it was a combo of all three.

I always keep things locked up but being back at school doesn't really leave time enough for me to cry. I'm not someone who can cry openly in front of people. If that happens, it means I have been caught off-guard. Last night I felt crap and started crying. But once I started I couldn't stop. It was one of those moments where everything raced through my mind. I started to remember stupid things which don't matter but for some reason in that moment they meant the world. I don't understand how people voice their "stuff"* out loud.

In my self-diagnosis (not telling people your "stuff", it becomes inevitable for you to become your own therapist; not necessarily how therapy should work I don't think) I have realised that my inability to tell people things means that I grow impatient with people who can, which is wrong. I have become so independent in taking care of myself in specific ways that when I see other people complain of their "stuff" I am uncomfortable about it. The truth is that I am the problem.

You should be able to unleash your "stuff" with the people you love. Otherwise what are they for. I think that I am a coward for not doing this. And yet knowing that I am coward is not enough for me to even admit on this blog what "stuff" is happening at the moment.

Yesterday, I watched "Take this waltz" and one of the characters said:

"I remember when my niece, Toni, was a newborn, I'd babysit her and sometimes she'd cry, like babies do. Nine times out of ten I could solve the problem, I could figure it out, but...sometimes when I'm walking along the street and a shaft of sunlight falls in a certain way across the pavement and I just want to cry. And a second later, it's over. And I decide, because I'm an adult, to not succumb to the momentary melancholy and I had that sometimes with Toni. She just had a moment like that. A moment of not knowing how, or why, and she just let herself go into it. And there was nothing anyone could do to make it any better -- it was just her, and the fact of being alive, colliding."

I feel the same way. I will be on the train or I'll be walking and I'll see something in the window and I will feel like I just need to cry. Today I was walking somewhere and a few leaves feel from the tree I had just walked under. Isn't that just so utterly and intrinsically poetic. There is something so beautiful about trees shedding their leaves. And they float so gently to the ground. Maybe that's just me being soppy. Or maybe it's the shedding. Maybe that's what I envy the most. (self-diagnosing again?)

Until next time,

T

x



*"stuff" being a reference to everything that plagues our mind/heart