Sorry I'm late I took the scenic route!
ruminations on turning 28 and what the hell its all about anyway?
I missed my love letter last month! I’m trying to stop apologising for myself because my therapist says that’s probably a healthier approach to life than thinking you are defunct. So I’ll practice that here and not apologise. Last month I did a big thing and went to a writers retreat in the Scottish highlands, it was very hard travelling alone for the first time since being ill, and even harder to believe I had a right to be there. We drank wine every night and talked about books and I pretended to be more well read than I am. I realised how easy it is to sound interesting when you just list things you’ve done close to each other and miss out the times you watched loads of telly and hated yourself and ate the skin off your thumbs, and I wondered a lot whether all writers, all people, also feel entirely unprepared and futile inside but project outwards a person that appears to know what the hell they are doing on this spinning rock. I am experiencing a very real urge to stop people on the street, to email my loved ones a survey with a questionnaire that reads like: Do you know what the hell is going on? How often do you feel weird for no reason and suddenly lose all feeling in your feet? Do you ever cry because everything feels so deeply meaningful and meaningless at the same time? I’m not sure if I would feel better or worse if people’s answers were yes or no. I had lots of time to ruminate, at this retreat, and I think I started writing something very enormous and special that it’s too early to share with you. I’m such a tease! Writing is a deeply private art form and we tend to be protective of the first drafts, so it was kind of amazing to be in that insular world around others. I feel really lonely, lots of the time. It’s why I’m spending more time on longer form writing I think, I feel in a sense of spiritual company when I am writing that I have been otherwise lacking in my life. I think my late friend Dan understood art as a spiritual communion far sooner than I did, and it’s nice to now understand its significance for the soul when it feels lost. Even if I got it a little too late.
I also turned 28 last month! Which is kind of a meaningless number because I’m just edging towards the big bad 30 which is also a meaningless number but has lots of connotations about ageing and children and goal posts. But probably (almost certainly infact) when you reach 30 a cup of tea tastes the same and so does the rain. When I was a kid and I was watching FRIENDS and Monica was stressed because she was 26 and had no children I was like yeah, woah, she needs to get a move on and now I am like how on earth will I be able to take care of a soft pink perfect thing any time soon? Their fingers will be so small and I will love them so completely and some days I struggle to even change my socks. It’s probably ridiculous but I keep thinking about how crows feet will look on my skin, whether I will be happy for the sight of them. On my birthday last year Dom told me that 27 was going to be a big year because my Saturn was in return. I didn’t totally know what it meant but Dom is usually right about everything and she was right about that. 27 was a monumental year for me, and I do strangely feel like a new person.
I am wondering how much of this transformation is because I am getting older or because I am living with illness. Nothing lives inside neat little boxes, unfortunately, it would be super helpful if they did, so it’s likely a nuanced complicated medley of it all obviously. I do wish I liked myself more and felt that the world wasn’t on fire. I think we probably all wish that. I have developed this creeping feeling that every decision I’ve ever made in my life is terrible, which is a really indulgent thing to think, because my life is full of abundance and beauty. I am a hugely privileged person, which is a useful thing to think about yourself when it encourages you to practice loving action and act with compassion, not when you use it as a stick to beat yourself with. Punishing yourself is probably more indulgent. I’m thinking right now of that AJJ lyric “when your Hustler subscription and your xanex prescription/ make you feel lonelier instead/ you don’t want to hear about all those starving children / you don’t want to be told it’s all in your head / because if it’s all in your head / that’s terrible.”
I am aware this sort of jangled up stream of consciousness writing may be reading like a boring diary entry, if I’m honest it’s only striking me right now that this is even for an audience. Sometimes I do genuinely feel like I am writing my diary to you. Oop! I just had another pesky unwelcome thought: it was ‘why don’t you journal more?’ And then I thought ‘I do journal it’s just on substack for my friends to read’ and it made me feel nicer. Having friends is a really good way to feel better about yourself, because you are surrounded by people you think are genuinely perfect and amazing and then you think you must be amazing because why would they want to be around you? I feel less surrounded by friends than I ever have in my life before, I think that’s just part of getting older and being ill. I wish I knew if people liked me, what they thought of me, but if that was possible then things like trust and faith would become useless and those things are what life is about. Sometimes when I feel bad about myself I sit and think about how beautiful the people that I love are and I feel a whole lot better. It’s a nice thing to do, especially for those of us who think about ourselves too much. Which is definitely all people that write poems.
On that note, here’s a poem.
Ode to 27.
27 was the year I quit smoking and started again. It was the year I abandoned myself in the gutter and then got half way home and turned back and picked her up all soggy and said ‘you are so silly and beautiful let’s get you a towel’. 27 was the year I drizzled lots of chimmichuri on everything and got addicted to pickled jalapenos. It was the year I began to forgive my mother, and went back to visit my nan: with her cigarettes, milky tea and fridge magnets from every country in the world. her house was completely the same and eventhough I knew it would be I cried lots about it. 27 was the year I revisited the rooms of my childhood, with their knots and brambles, and their hidden maps pointing North, to a way out. 27 was the year I came home to my body, bruised and bleeding, and said: shall we try breathing through our belly and not dying from it? 27 was the year I grieved my life before, when everyone was alive and sane and it was simpler, and nothing had the sharpness it does when you’re thinking about what direction your life should go in. all. the. time. when things just meant what they did in the moment. 27 was the year I started investing in good shoes, buying jumpers made from real wool, treating myself to books: stuff that was made with loving hands and matters, stuff I want to pass on to my children. 27 was the year I really seriously oh fuck started thinking about having children, picturing my belly swelling with a forehead, with a beating heart and fingernails, and feeling nauseous but the good kind, like when you eat too many doughnuts but it was worth it. 27 was the year I remembered that words are my superpower and it’s okay to try and be a proper writer (whatever that means). 27 was the year that Ez led me back to myself: reminded me of my own strength, taught me that home could be a stable thing. 27 was the year I got therapy for the first time and realised I am way less on top of my shit than I thought I was! 27 was the year I realised I actually literally have no idea what’s going on! 27 was the year I told myself, bitch, no one does, and got right back to trying.
Thanks for indulging my reflective nonsense this month, it’s becoming very clear to me now that I must be premenstrual. If you’re also feeling reflective and like you want to take stock, as illustrated above, you can write anything about yourself and if you add a full stop or repeat a phrase it can sort of become a poem. I invite you to do that, life feels more digestible or easy to understand when you put it in to a neat paragraph.
If you fancy it, you can do a free write with the repeated phrase:
This was the year of…
This was the year of forgiveness, of learning the accordion, of eating more fruit, of being more gentle
etc etc etc
just write whatever this year has been for you! big or small! happy or sad!
hope it makes you feel delicious & worthy, like you so definitely are.
With love
M x