commencing 3rd november 2025
becoming real again (sort of)
i’ve been trying to articulate what a hard time i’m having - and, weirdly, i’m having a hard time even doing that. i feel very lonely and deep inside myself lately, with my various central nervous system issues, trying to be all, no!! i have to take care of myself!!! except i have no idea what that actually looks like, and everything still feels too loud, too much, too close. i have adapted to sleeping with the ringing in my ears, except for getting to bed too late, which is still a struggle but one i’m having a lot less. my just dance membership is going to lapse in december and i’m going to let it. it’s just not the movement coming to me right now, though i am staying on top of it.
last week i had a guy working in my house who was basically mr bean in a toolbelt. he came to replace a socket and somehow severed every circuit in the room. chaos. fortunately, that led to me finding an actually great and affordable electrician (a true unicorn; we’ll see how long that lasts).
i still don’t feel very real most of the time, but i’m writing this after band practice, which ironically made me feel the least depersonalised i’ve felt in a month. maybe that’s it. i’ve been so AHHHHH about everything that just standing still and making noise felt grounding again. i’m glad to have my house back to myself, more or less. a few finishing touches left: some electric stuff, one more day of plumbing, but god, it’s so close. i’ve been saying that since literally mid september, so i’m wary, but it’s true! it is! and the house is mostly so nice to hang out in now!
today started with me getting turned away from my allergy clinic because, apparently, the hair product i used four days ago still smelled too strong for the nurse to treat me (going nose blind is real, people). i’d washed my hair a bunch of times before going in, but curly girl method apparently lingers. they told me to rinse with vinegar next time and make will smell me to check before i go in. i cried the entire way home - an hour and a half each way, which is actually a very long time to cry. i just feel so crummy about probably being the villain in that story. where she’s probably like, ‘i asserted my boundary and now she’ll think twice about trying to force me to work in poor conditions!’ when it’s like, actually i worked really hard to meet your scent free conditions and i just failed because not all of us have straight hair that doesn’t cling to scent. i am assuming she doesn’t hate me because she rebooked me in next week with the instruction to not go near a lush product before then. so i guess things are okay for now.
last week’s main event was being in wild mix, a show my choir leader jenny wrote over the last few years. it’s a ritual about becoming alive again, and i loved being in it, but it also cracked something open. it made me want to explain myself - hence the mystery google doc i started over the weekend that’s now eight pages of monologue. who knows what will come of it, but it made me feel like i’ve spent my whole life trying to understand, and maybe it’s time i start demanding to be understood.
i’ve always moved through the world thinking, oh: i could do that. start a band, start a choir, self-publish a book, write a comic, write a play, make a pot, run a 5k, decorate a house beautifully (let me dream). i realise something is possible, then i go do it. the epitome of ‘why not?’ this doesn’t feel that different - just another form of trying. maybe, by the time i die, i’ll understand what it actually feels like to have a thought, to feel it form instead of chase it from the outside in.
oh, and i went to madrid with will for a long weekend! it was great. we didn’t plan much, so a lot was booked up, but we hit the big three art museums: reina sofia, prado, thyssen - and i cried in front of a picasso from the guernica era, which felt very art girl of me. we saw flamenco that absolutely blew my mind. the rhythm, the intensity, the mutual respect between the dancers and musicians. i get now why my friend emma once came back from valencia wanting to learn it. it’s the epitome of fancy footwork.
we wandered retiro park and talked a lot, watched a couple of episodes of columbo, saw a huge aqueduct in segovia, ate all the patatas bravas and pizza and sandwiches we could find. it was fleeting, but lovely.
