Trying to be honest
and sharing an essay from Ordinary: The Reality Issue
Good writing is honest writing. I think I haven’t been writing lately because I’ve failed to give myself the space to know what is true. I’m too busy letting myself get chewed up by London’s mirrored molars, whizzing around its small intestine from Streatham to Kensal Rise to Hackney Wick, the screech of the underground drowning out my thoughts as I wait patiently for the signal on my phone to come back.
It’s not like I haven’t been feeling. But feelings become thoughts and then become nothing again in a whoosh, expelled via voice note and forgotten in a puff of black fumes as I cycle down the high road; blaming the city like I haven’t been outsourcing introspection to Instagram Reels and swapping out contemplation for dancefloors and DJ Assault. I find it tempting to praise myself for not spending so much time in my head, but I’ve not been in the world, either.
Presence, I am often reminded, is just as difficult to grasp as it is easy to lose.
Late last year, I got so swept up by my thoughts that I lost all sense of reality. It took some time for me to float back down to earth. I wrote about the experience for The Reality Issue of Ordinary, which is only available in print, but I wanted to share a version here. Six months on, it's a bit of a hard read for me, but it’s a good reminder of what can happen when you let yourself get dragged under the waves. If you like it, consider buying a copy. There aren’t many left.
Floating Back Down
Dispatches from a mind in disarray
I’m lying supine, suspended in a dollop of refrigerated custard. To the left, a fuzzy strip of blue mould. A ceiling of whipped cream overhead. Stuck inside a suffocating trifle which tastes like ‘home’. The cold descends down the back of my ribs as I sink into the gelatinous goop and I float there a while as my thoughts come in thick and fast before settling on my mind like the light white mist of Boxing Day. My body catches up and I feel it and it cries. Tired and guilty and burdened, but underneath it all just sadness. I pick up my journal and write.
I’ve been home just five days but it feels like more. I left London in a sad, frenetic state having spent the last month-and-a-half existing only in my head. When I got there last summer, I fell right into place. I wasn’t tempted to peek into the wing mirror, peer around the corner of what was. Then winter came and I lost my footing and spent weeks buzzing in some space between my thoughts and the telecom tower in Crystal Palace Park. Home, I felt, would be grounding.
But when I touched down in Manchester, the ground opened up and swallowed me whole. My train arrived into Piccadilly at 4:06pm, a damp Friday night. The calmness of my spirit in the familiar hum of traffic and trams cast an illusory haze over my memories of the last few months. All I can think is that I made the wrong decision. Not just moving to London, ever leaving home in the first place.
I can’t for the life of me get a grasp on the truth. The antihistamines don’t help. I have a severe allergy to dust mites. Which is funny when I think about it because we always had dogs growing up, and dust mites live in animal fur. My mum still has a dog. My nan has a cat and so does my brother, and my dad doesn’t have a bed for me. It’s all fair enough because I left home nearly 10 years ago now, so why would they accommodate me over the cat or the dog or the new family? Regardless, the eight or so prescription-grade antihistamines I have to take to stop me from losing all breathing capacity do not help the feeling that I am only half-existing. There is a quiet fear to it all.
I planned to stay home for 10 days but seven was quite enough. I’ve barely been able to think, what with the antihistamines and the obligations and the tentative atmosphere. I’ve had enough wallowing and I want to go home to the room I cleaned and saged before leaving and the reality, my reality, that so easily melted into a frightening treacly puddle. It’s funny how the grass glows fluorescent when you’re a hundred miles away. It’s a little like the past.
On my way to the station, I look up to find the St Helens sky ablaze with the most vibrant orange sunset. Of all the days for the sky to show its unblemished face, of course it’s the day I decided to leave. I can see the negativity seeping out from under my skin in the form of dark circles and cracked lips. I haven’t drunk enough water in months.
My memory betrays me as I attempt to cast my mind's gaze back over the jumbled moments of the last 12 months. It’s New Year’s Eve and I feel as though I should ‘take stock’ of the year that preceded this current state. The whole year seems to have carried the same tone as those final few weeks, as though it never really happened. Of course, there are things that I know for certain did happen, yet those events feel less like true memories and more like implanted ones, like the ‘memory’ you might have of a photograph from a holiday you went on aged four.
I’m getting ready for a party, but I feel far from ready. Jamiroquai beckons the rapid pulse of excitement, yet all I can do is sit here and write about my bad mood.
Last night I couldn’t sleep because I took a jiu-jitsu class late at night. I try not to do any jiu-jitsu after 7.30pm because I always struggle to sleep. Even when I don’t spar, something happens in my brain which means I can’t turn it off. I’ll think about jiu-jitsu for hours, and then when I’m done thinking about jiu-jitsu I’ll think about everything else. I woke up late and disoriented and had no time for the morning routine I’m trying to keep up. On the way to work, I sent my friend a long voice note talking over, for the millionth time, my feelings about this one situation and how lonely I feel. I turned up 20 minutes late having not drunk a single sip of water. At work, I listened to my 19-year-old colleagues talk about their on-again-off-again ‘situationships’ and then on my break I read an essay about how we’re all too introspective and it’s stopping us from living life and felt the familiar pull towards self-abandonment under the guise of self-love.
But when I left work the January sky was as clear as it was cold and I could see Saturn, Jupiter and Mars aligned along an invisible, cosmic tightrope. I took my usual route home through the common, past the busy road, taking regular breaks to stop and gaze up at them, bright white and orange. I turned back to the bustle of the city and it felt like I was in this huge Lego set. Suddenly I was struck with how incredibly bizarre it all is. I followed Saturn all the way home, weaving through parents and commuters and babbling toddlers, seeing the world for what it was, simultaneously removed from it but so profoundly in it. There’s still a spectral mist over top, but it's there, it's all there, and I'm here. I can feel it.
In Mary’s flat, I watch as the smoke from an incense stick pools under a Monstera leaf and feel how the cold tap warms my icy fingers. I fill a glass and take a sip to feel the crisp truth glide down my throat. I take the train to Battersea Park and feel the pulse of the tracks in my gut. I notice how my chest tightens when my heart wrenches open from pain and how my belly hurts when I laugh. I breathe in the sweetness of freshly baked banana bread and let the taste roll along my tongue. I think of the infinite possibilities, the chance to experience them all in the vast non-linearity of our universe, and remember where I am.
Keep being open and honest with yourself! ✨