you can wear a hug and it's great

i have a hoodie that's like a hug
it's old and worn and too large by far
i wear it when i'm tired or lonely or at a loss
when i don't know how to breathe
or how to keep the heart beating

it pulls my bones closer together
helps the insistent itch on my wrists settle down
it helps me hide from feeling like nothing
and too much, both at once
and breathe in and out
one more time

i don't like the colour
but i don't really care
because it makes me feel a bit less like
a jigsaw puzzle in an earthquake
shaking, trembling into complicated pieces

it helps me stop and breathe and think
and feel like somehow things will work out
like somehow, being as i am
i won't let my life fall apart
and everything will be just as it should
for someone a bit less like me

i fall so hard

clawing my way up the walls of the dried-up well again.
fingers bleeding. that's okay. makes it real.
stuck in a sort of state of mental stillness in a time
where that kind of thing is no good
but hey.
nights not slept. that's okay.
some days, most days, are better through a haze.

where am i? where was i?
always broken at the wrong time
i find myself sitting in dewy grass in the moonlight
sweating and crying, and nothing feels real.
i find myself in places where we went together
find myself admiring rusty locks and boarded-up windows
grey skies and muddy footprints
motorways.

i find myself leaning against the window
and wondering, what if it broke under my weight
what if i lost my balance and fell ten stories down
and what then

i'll just sit here and breathe for now.
waiting for someone
something
whatever
to distract me.

relapse

the way you go from crying
because it doesnt hurt enough
to crying
because you can't stand the pain

wine and emotions

ignorance is bliss
pretending is basically an alternate heaven on earth
imagining things makes everything better
and refusing to see them paints rainbows on the insides of your eyelids
squeezed
shut
from the world

as long as i don't think about this it's not real
and therefore has nothing
to do
with me

i don't care about you
i don't
that's what i dedicate my waking hours to
i don't think about you
never do

seeing you makes my heart grow wild in my chest
traps my breath in a bell jar
and i lean against a wall to think about how i
don't
care
about you

miss too many people, regret too many things

This is where I come these days when I feel lost and alone and hopeless, when there's something in my throat that won't budge, even the wine won't wash it away. This is where I come when my hands start sweating and my grip starts slipping and I know I won't last much longer but there is no crash mat because there are no crash mats or chalk bags in life, just sweaty fingers and rocky terrain and that's scary.

This isn't a cure for my shivering scared weak useless mind. Nothing ever is. Not climbing up a wall or writing down the words that come to mind or a playlist made of all the saddest songs I know. Not pining after anyone. Not this glass of wine that I should not be drinking now. That is so close to turning into a bottle instead.

Why do I find it so hard to care?

I didn't answer.

I miss things I never had. Do people do that, or is that why I'm so wounded all the time? Is that why I find it so hard to move forwards, because I can't find myself in the now? I miss things I never had, and I dream them in detail and beat myself up for not letting them happen. Do people do that?

Sucks, anyway. I don't know why I'm sad this time. Even my words seem a bit disjointed. Don't they always. I don't know what I am doing. Can't relate to this person I seem to be. I was a happy child. How did I grow to be an adult like this, and will I ever be any better?

and that's when i hope i could shut up, silence the pessimist, just be your friend

late night, like downing a pint of vodka the scraps of emotions i still possess

I will keep on reading your words until the end of eternity and then some.
It might be the only thing of you I will ever get again.
It might be that we will never and I do not want to finish thinking this sentence
but it creeps up the edges of my mind nonetheless
and I am scared.
I will not run from your words, though
I find solace in them both in pixels and in my mind
and still in my mirror
left there graciously by people who said,
I think you should decide.
Because it is clear to them that it is not easy for me.
This kind of things are never easy for anyone
and I hurt easily, I care easily, and they know.
I will keep on reading your words as long as it takes for me to find you again
or then until your essence starts fading like this gaping strangeness in my chest
where there used to be, should be, must be
something
I know. It has happened before
and now I know it can happen
and I am scared.

debriefing the journal from the past eternal weeks (or the act of vomiting one's emotions as words)

last time i was here i was at the bottom of a dry well with murakami and his words of magic and comfort and the strangeness of everyday existence, the distance you can build between yourself and anything normal

now i am climbing up with bleeding fingernails and no rope to support me with valente and her words of magic and comfort like a decadent russian meal and sex that tastes like blood and tears and fills all the cracks that grow in a human when you look closely and even when you don't

we will come back to this.



What have I been doing? Things I have been doing include

i
another night underground in glasgow with cracks in the walls and partially exposed brickwork. tonight is hairspray, smoke engines, and cheap lipstick with beats that shake your soul and sweaty friends dancing until sunrise. the taste of needlessly sweet berry cider and the smell of someone's fruity perfume. plastic cups and a smiling bartender. sticky floors. humans. shiny happy people jumping around.

ii
judgementally browsing the world. tiny annoyances blocking my freedom like a drain
another eternal thursday, this time more so than i'm used to
what shall i list this time?
reactions people have to others being decapitated in front of them?
how do those reactions change when splatters of blood land on their face?
on their lips? do they lick it off?
how do we feel about the smell of blood?
it makes women tired and men uneasy.

and

iii
crazy creepy people writing crazy creepy music.
crazy creepy people taking pictures of bad graffiti
crazy creepy people breathing in stale, standstill air
crazy creepy people recording the clanking of metal and the movement of water
crazy creepy people singing in a tunnel
eating two breakfasts and following pigeons
crazy creepy people existing in a crazy creepy world.


We have come back to this. What I am doing now, or why I am not doing other things.

Like that feeling when [she writes poems about me. she doesn't. i miss her. she laughed a lot. i wonder what killed that boy. she does NOT write poems about me. she doesn't even think about me. who would think about me]. Like that feeling when you don't really write anymore.

In the end, there is nothing like a train at night.
A book that makes you feel warm.
A darkness floating past on the other side of the window.
A comforting pocket of darkness and air standing still.
A comforting pocket of the wind tearing your skirt off, messing your hair like an affectionate older sister.
A comforting pocket of as long as I am reading this book I cannot be anything but happy. 
A little happy. A little content. 
A bright light. A can of beans.


(And here is what I read, what I listen to these days)

That feeling when IMMERSE YOUR SOULS IN LOVE
but also, I can feel death, can see its beady eyes.

One day, the bread was cottonseed cake and paper and dust, and the butter was wallpaper paste, and the next day there was meat on the market. Deathless makes me want to kiss words but also curl up inside myself and cry because the world is full of magic and full of pain and the two will always hold hands and I don't think I hate it.

describing my mental state

i'm sitting at the bottom of a dry well
lungs full of dust and eyes scratchy
stomach cramping with hunger and mouth dry
it's dark
there's a stepladder right next to me
i could reach it and climb out
i can see the light at the top, i can see the sky
(the light doesn't reach me not even remotely everything at the bottom is dark)
but i can't move my arm
i can't stand up
the stepladder is there but it's so dark i can't see it
and my body so heavy and weak i can't move it
so i'm sitting at the bottom of a dry well
and i feel like it's swallowing me deeper
my body barely exists anymore
and i am going to die

boys and their art ii (or attempts at distracting anxiety)

friday evening techno beaten drunken words underground glasgow (refined)
i don't fall in love with people, i fall in love with their art
i am once again inspired beyond belief:
your way of counting the beats with your body
and the rhythm of your bass running through my body
is the sort of thing that turns me on.
whereas just your body wouldn't really much at all
i'm okay with that.
your art was always more appealing and that's what made me interested in the first place
weirdly it's also the stillness of your body against mine
and now i want to watch you dance in these lights you built
inspiration gets me going but it's also the stillness that follows
we don't know what happens next but the presence of the crowd is deafening and whatever follows even more so
how easy it is to remember the roots of an emotion one had thought long lost

(attempts at not thinking about how difficult it is to breathe)
(or to stand still)
(how difficult it is not ripping off one's fingernails scratching off one's skin)
(and how crying is so easy and so hard and it's the smallest things but unbearable)
(like tilting back a chair missing a step in stairs except it won't pass)
(now this is done now i need new things to distract it but i can't really think)
(there's a papercut on my knuckle i'm already biting it open)
(i can't eat)

there was a week (running mind)

Last Friday night I got my nails painted at McDonald's. I got a Furby with my Happy Meal, not a real one, a scary one that's practically haunted, just a tiny harmless furry one that's almost cute (and hopefully not haunted). My friend regretted her chicken nuggets and got jealous and painted my nails bubblegum pink with an American accent. The girl from the next table gave my friend her Furby. Her dad was sitting there with her. Quiet. American, too, said she. He said nothing.

We went to a bar, to a quiet downstairs, drank pints of their cheapest beer and played a writing game. We listened to poems and all kinds of words, one optimistic story about the apocalypse (he writes optimistic like I do, so that someone dies at the end). One boy brought bananas, this is how poetry readings go, right? and another one spoke words from back home about the sort of things I care about, write about, ugly graffiti and junkies in buses and demolition sites and stinking skips in back alleys, "regeneration" and all its brothers and sisters living and departed. And he did it in a way that made me scribble in my notebook, I fall for people's language (boys and their art i) not news but a sort of thing one should regularly remind oneself about.

Someone said creativity is blind. We can't explain the things that inpsire us. I know I can't. Ask me why I have that Greenlandic flag on my wall and I will not say a single thing you would find valuable. Take me on top of a high-rise that they have already decided to tear down and I will feel like I might cry, I might cry, and I will never forget what it felt like. Looking at a view like that.

It pains me that it will be gone.

And I do not know why it makes me feel like that, and whether or not you ask me you will think I'm mad and stupid and pretentious and so bourgeois it makes your eyes bleed pretending so hard to be something else or maybe I'm just boring you to tears how many facts about the Red Road flats can one woman know and nobody actually cares. But creativity is blind and inspiration is a strange thing doing strange things to strange ordinary people

I've wrote about this before. (I should say written but I don't care I'd rather watch you seethe)

I am reading Murakami. What's not to love. No good news in this chapter. It's not the first time I've spent four hours on the yellow sofa in the library with my Murakami and my can of cheap energy drink. I fell asleep and made the can last two hours because I slept for most of that and isn't it strange that the moment you fall asleep in a quiet library someone starts a loud conversation I mean what's that about

Thursdays are eternal. A fact of life I establish every week. A person can change in a Thursday. A person can put on red lipstick in a practice room at 6 pm on a Thursday just to feel a bit better about herself when the people or words that a person claims have no effect on her have dug a bit deeper than a person might let on. A person can feel perfectly content in a cheap fake leather jacket and red lipstick and a cello case on her back. A person might enjoy life more when there is nothing else to do but play Dvorak until her fingers bleed.

Today, a little before my eternal Thursday had ended, I sent a picture of myself with some strategic numbers to someone called Wardrobe. My Friday is hopefully lovely, it could be, it should be, and I will get my hands on Puccini and I will get to sing it on stage. It's just in the choir obviously but I've never and I am excited and even though the picture of myself I sent out was not the prettiest one and I didn't like the look of my body I sent it anyway and that means I'll get a costume and I'll get my hands on Puccini and I will get to sing it. On stage. Grow your hair, they said. I don't need to be told twice.

What an eternal Thursday this was. It's done now, and the next one is as far as is possible. I wonder where my nails get painted on this new Friday, who will do it and what colour. I wonder who we'll talk about and what kind of music we'll drink to before we go to that same bar, that same downstairs not so quiet this time, to drink those same cheap pints of beer and listen to our friends be fantastic and beautiful and creative, and we are all those things too, all of us, and it is lovely.

(P.S. I am writing again and that always means I'm reading less which is a bit sad but then again I am writing)

serving tyler durden realness

We are all three paychecks away from destitution
and we should be careful not to laugh at anyone's misfortune
because it could easily be our own.

This is to remind a few kind souls I've met over the years.
(I say kind, but what I mean by that is that sometimes the words that come out of your mouth make me want to rip your face off you expired jar of mayonnaise)
You are the sort of person I would want to fight but I guarantee that would have nothing to do with destroying something beautiful

You are not special.
You are not protected from the world.
You are the all-singing all-dancing crap of the world
You have been lucky and if you are lucky you will continue to be lucky
but you never know what might happen.
One thing leads to another.
There might be a gas leak in your apartment and your carefully constructed IKEA life might blow up like that
These are desperate times. Insecure. We should all know this.
Our future is held out of reach behind a thick smoke
and we can't even tell what the smoke is, never mind what's behind it.
Someone (life) walks up to you and knocks you out and
we'll see how high and mighty you are
if you still say all the things you did so easily thinking they wouldn't touch anyone (it's easier to deal with those less fortunate than you when you don't really think of them as people who deserve anything good in life) and definitely would never touch you because you are above all that
Right?

Remember. We are all three paychecks away from destitution.
It is so easy to fall on your face, all you need to do is trip
fuck up once lose your job batter yourself to pieces in front of your boss
and getting up is harder than you'd thought because who knew being poor could be so expensive
and it could happen to anyone
it could happen to me (I would not be surprised)
it could definitely happen to you
because none of us are above anything

and the world might have been made perfect but
we have spend a lot of effort fucking it up
and look how well we did
it's fucking flawless now and it smells like piss and blood.

caring is the catalyst for all things unrestful

"I am the catalyst for all things unrestful."
This is something he said earlier today,
with wind in our hair and mud in our boots and I was
looking over a city I never knew and never liked
but loved right then and there
feeling free and happy and a bit awed
laughing at the puddles we couldn't cross
and I thought, I am so lucky to be here with them
and everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.

I hurt myself so often in my carelessness
myself and others around me.
I decided, I will wrap myself in a blanket
of not caring and not feeling and not experiencing
any human emotions
because they scare me and I don't know what to do.

It was always the wrong thing to do.
It always was and never won't be.
I said, I will pretend this doesn't matter
but I always cared and that is because I am human
and because I care I hurt and sometimes
it's not down to me, at all.

I am the catalyst for all things unrestful,
he joked and I laughed because it seemed ridiculous
because he was there to help me feel better
like I mattered and I could be good
but now I can't sleep and there's a dark pit in my gut
my ears are ringing with how loud the music is
and my laughter has lost all the freedom of climbing
jumping and dancing on the hills like a child.

Somehow, and I would never blame him for it
because being there for everything is what friends are for,
he was the catalyst for my slumbering despair
now clawing its way up my throat
and it's not what he said but what I fear
and the way you ache for someone you love
when they are burning inside with a secret
would you ever push them away

I didn't. And this is the surprising story of how my
carefully constructed wall of no fucks given crumbled down
and I discovered that caring
is the catalyst for all things unrestful
and it's not something you can choose to leave behind.

2014

The new year started like it always does, at midnight with fireworks going off in the distance. Nothing special about that but it feels like it's never happened. We talk about change and for a bit we feel like we can change, like we will.

We went out, off into the dark, laughing and playing with our torches like children, slipping in the mud as we climbed up the hill to see the fireworks better than anyone in the city would. We sat in the wet grass and talked about what the year had been like and our resolutions for the next, and somehow what easily becomes just empty boasting was surprisingly sincere. Things we thought we could really do. When we walked back we turned off our torches just to breathe a moment in the dark, in the first moments of the new year, to spend a moment with ourselves, wondering. Another year gone, like that. What even happened? When you think about it, so much.

And then we got drunk and it was brilliant, as you do.

We went back to the hills the next morning, slightly hungover and a lot feeling like we want to walk and breathe and talk. We talked a bit. I got excited about a half torn-down building looking a bit like a death trap, and every sign that told me I shouldn't do something made me wonder what would happen if I did. And I was once again like a child jumping in the puddles and walking in the stream instead of dry land and it was wonderful.

Walking back home in Glasgow rain in silence I felt good. I had a waterproof coat and good shoes on and I just listened to the rain, looked at it fall, and the city might as well have been dead for all the people I saw. It was beautiful. Now I'm turning on the first page of my calendar and curling up with a cup of hot chocolate and a good book and be with myself.