This is the most important thing I’ve learned about grieving. It never goes away. Time doesn’t make it smaller. Time, if you do the work, makes you bigger. Self expansion is key. Self expansion through creativity and passion and communication. My grief used to be all of me. Now it is a part of me. An important part, but just a part. I love this visualization so much.
eight days as a blur, the anxiety and then love surrounding my birthday. a day trip to margate and a sunset picnic in burgess (the first time i have celebrated my birthday with friends since I was 13)
the dread-infused silence of our flat the next morning; the search for our cat - heidi finding her in shock outside our building (she had fallen off the roof sometime in the night); the rush to the vet, a five night stay; the cancelled holidays and daydreams of a parallel week, a less tragic start to my new year.
the impatience of getting daisy home, the morning wait for a call from the vet, the decision of an amputation, the patience of a slow recovery;
all along the perpetual drag and banging in the background of play rewrites and philosophy dissertation deadline; a creeping restlessness in the london suburbs (unable to grasp how i ever lived here for so many years without a suffocated soul - then again,); each moment to breathe inevitably consumed by sleeping in the sun or overwhelmed by my life’s current rudderlessness - albeit interrupted by reading and a lido and exhaustion in the morning.
a salvaged holiday in the dolomites on saturday, hoping i can breathe light in the mountains.
(an escape to read in the sun / and accidentally stay long enough to watch the sunset / when i got overwhelmed and low low low yesterday) (the sun is a balm, in london)
i feel so busy yet not busy at all. i spend days writing (short stories; proposals; applications; a delayed dissertation in the library); spend three days a week at work; spend evenings out and yet - i rarely feel i have anything to show from it…
i spent last weekend at sundance london, i watched five films, including kinds of kindness, kneecap, etc. i saw the tv glow was the standout but for very personal reasons, and i’m not sure how it translates to people without an experience of dysphoria. i have thought about the film every day since i first watched it (six days ago); i think because i hadn’t seen thoughts, feelings, private fears i’ve had illuminated on a screen like that before; it felt exposing, and claustrophobic, but also reassuring, but also i feel unsure how to move forward in light of it all. i feel like i need my friends to watch the film (though it is not out on UK release until mid-July, I think) so i can have an almost therapeutic conversation… i told H that i want my body to not be this body, that if i could - i would - but that i think it’s too late for me to make any real changes (hence my subtle non-binary hrt micro-dosages that may or may not have an effect beyond the psychological) (though H swears i look different since). the idea of it being too late is the entire third act of the film so hence, the feeling of being seen, and the devastation / beauty of that.
my birthday is in two weeks exactly. and for the first time since high school i will be in the place i live for it (i have always managed to be outside of london even if just for a day trip somewhere) and H is planning a birthday picnic / get-together for me, which is one of the most loving gestures i’ve received but also i feel vulnerable, because i have so few friends? or at least i have so few close friends. so many just… people i know? i used to blame this on not having a home town / moving around countries growing up. but i’ve been in london for almost… 14 years now (fuck) and there may only be like 3 other friends besides us at the picnic (vs one of these 3 friends who is having a birthday the week before and has 60 guests?!). i feel embarrassed and i know i lost years as an unpaid carer and my world got smaller and i’ve only been rebuilding it in the last 18 months but still. in mexico, i found it so easy to make friends, to make such intimate, instant connections, it felt so validating, but it feels so hard to translate that here. and it’s not like i don’t go out. yesterday, i played football with the queer team i’m part of, the day before i went to a pub quiz with a friend, i go to the community garden once a week, and tonight i have a poetry workshop, and in the near future a dance class, and on and on and on. busy yet not busy. social yet not social, and on and on and on.
all of this ^ reminds me of an exposing realisation i had in my therapy last year, which is that my past two relationships (H and J) have been with people i knew initially from tumblr. and that these relationships have been the strongest of my life. that dating apps never worked. nor did meeting people in real life ever offer anything besides brief romances or mild friendships. and that i thought perhaps it was because tumblr afforded me a space to be anonymous and so, for better or worse, i was my most genuine and authentic self on tumblr, that i could share my interests, my hopes, my innermost innermost, without shame / fearing judgment, that it didn’t matter because i knew no-one on here (without my brain cutting me off like it would in real life, or without the voice in my head telling me to stay quiet, or shape myself to suit the person i was hanging out with), it was in effect a darkened confession booth, and when people saw that, saw me, and liked me still, it felt okay to be myself, to be vulnerable [as embarrassing as tumblr being my most effective yet accidental dating pool is] [i am still working on being that ‘shameless’ about my self with others and it is so much better than it was, even a year ago, but still, something sooner or later always gets caught when i try to speak] [a w-i-p]
other things in my life
i performed poetry at the barbican centre a couple weeks back (and performed for the first time in front of my parents - after first performing maybe seven years ago?) (and my dad, stereotypically repressed, kept saying how proud he was of me, and i can’t remember if he has ever said that before]
my police station bail date was moved a month back, and my bail conditions might even be dropped ! [blocking your nearest immigration van soon]
the day after my birthday, H and I go away for almost three weeks and i can’t wait. but at the same time, i am conscious of wanting to be as present as possible this summer.
i was arrested a few days ago for the first time (thank you, press photos) (bail date hanging over me) (the process is the punishment, the legal advice team tell me). difficult to process (the pride of the action working on a practical level, and on a movement level) (the treatment from the cops; the hours spent in detention).
i woke up the next morning and it was as if nothing had changed and yet it had; as in, i could return to my world of day-to-day routines and errands. which just added to a surreal sense of being. the only parts that linger is the soreness on my wrists from the handcuffs and cuts on my back. i’m so lucky that i had a friend who was there during the action, the arrest, and was even in the cell opposite me at the station (!) i don’t know how i’d navigate it without her.
still, my life has returned to normal in all ways since then (went to a pub with friends the night after. to chekhovs cherry orchard the night after that), except the moments that still come to me in dreams.
what i hold onto is the love and support from strangers, who checked in with me during my arrest. who waited for me outside the station for my release. who were there in the first place, to protest against the horrific acts of government and stand up to a violent state.
though, i do wish i had more of a guide of how to handle the aftermath of this. i sway between thoughts of:
i am main character-ing myself too much (i should not be the focus here / i am thinking about myself too much)
to
i underwent an experience that’s hard to relate to or share in my immediate circles, the arrest and detention and unknown consequences hanging over me
a dense fog of struggling + exhaustion interrupted by moments of clarity in the last 24 hours: pancakes with friends in north london; celebrate the surprise sunshine by playing football last night; a spark of beautiful solidarity this morning when shutting down the uk trade department as part of a may day demo for palestine.
still, i am finding solitary passions harder to sustain. i come up with short story ideas on my cycles home that i doubt i’ll have an energy to ever start. an out-of-the-ordinary level of exhaustion and burnout and fatigue over the last couple weeks means i have a phone call with a doctor later today.
i feel spent by the early afternoon, always, and all i can do is daydream of what i want to do. imagine a morning writing. an afternoon swimming. an evening learning languages or replying to friends on time. it’s not like i don’t have the time, for which i’m grateful for, but it’s just the lack of any will, or energy, or something i can’t name. the fatigue has also reached my imagination, and i’m finding it increasingly difficult to think beyond the day-to-day.
i can’t remember if this is how i always was. that the trip to mexico was just a blip out of the mundane stress that wears me down. i feel an irritableness which seems new, and a sense of being overwhelmed but without knowing what, if anything, is hanging over me.
it’s been over a month since i got back, and stopped taking antidepressants, and resumed hormones - i’m not sure when i can stop blaming my shift in moods on that but i think five weeks is enough to unlink the two maybe maybe maybe. and there will also be messy influences, like housing a kitten for the last two and a half weeks.
more so, i worry, perhaps part of my exhaustion is a loss of passion and motivation, but it’s hard to tell what came first. i hope the gp orders blood tests and the blood tests show something like iron or white blood cells or something gone awry. because then at least it’s something i point to and say oh it’s something physical, and something a change in diet / pills will remedy etc etc. i’m worried they won’t find anything and this is just how my body is, and how i have to feel living in it, for now.
