I fear I’ll be transmuted into a millstone – rough around the neck, with an interminable grind that erodes temper and tether.
I’ll become sickly sweet, cloying and claggy even as the mouth gets rinsed again and again.
I’ll be a duty, one to tick off each day with a plummeting stomach and stiffening shoulders.
I’ll be an unreachable thorn latched in a once smooth flank. A ball and chain without a lock. An albatross that was shot without understanding just how heavy it would feel once wrapped around the neck.
And mostly I fear that all the while, I will know.
Bolt from the blue, soul deep recognition, and cat noises.
It feels like we must have had some kind of tie in those former lives I don’t believe in – Sisters? Partners? One soul cleaved in two?
The harpoon that runs heart to heart feels ancient.
There’s something wonderful about being able to love wholeheartedly without careful gauging of the other.
There is no watching the other person’s speed as we run toward each other, no careful dosing of affection in case the wrong message is given, no swallowed thoughts or stymied feelings.
We’re a collision for the ages, stars plotted our meeting, bird guts had it writ large for centuries.
You’ve got those sharp edges I love, snarks spark under your skin, and that heart of yours glows incandescent.
I always talk about not having a real role – no jobs with my initials, no tasks that are mine and mine alone. The baby quite often doesn’t, especially when surrounded by Gods of Practicality. I’ve always pattered around and lent a hand where needed: I hold up planks, check ovens, weed unruly patches, carry washing, grab people when it’s time to eat.
But I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that it’s okay for my role to be invisible rather than practical.
I am the glue. And occasionally, the WD40.
I trot from one workplace to the next – shed, garden, house – find a perch and begin my work.
I listen for the things that create frustration, the needs unmet, and when I move on to the next person, I carefully pollinate ideas to improve understanding.
I translate when you’re listening wholly with your assumptions and pipette an appropriate amount of humour into the situation, defusing the tension.
I acknowledge frustration and gently attempt to lend you someone else’s shoes to try on.
I tease, peeling up the edges of sunken spirits until the hulking mass begins to rise upward.
I soothe ruffled feathers, am silent when you need it, and my arms are always open.
And in return, I am the recipient of such utterly uncomplicated love that it flows from heart to heart with no hesitation.
*This is basically one long piece about vomiting, probably not a great accompaniment for food… (Unless that floats your boat).
Ah Cathay Pacific. Forever wedded to vomit in my mind. It was a very unhappy union.
I was on a long haul flight from China to London and had been cramping merrily for hours. Ibuprofen wasn’t making a dent, despite inadvisable dosages.
My main mistake was choosing to eat airplane food in a belated attempt to line my stomach.
My gorge rose with no warning. Gargantuan and whale like, it buckled my face in a wild bid for freedom. I attempted to keep all orifices closed but was scuppered by my nose, which released a high speed spray of tiny pasta bows – all over the business man next to me.
His suit was wrapped in a lap blanket (he’d clearly done something right in a former life), but he didn’t seem particularly comforted. He reached to prod me, caught sight of my bulging cheeks, and wisely opted to call the air hostess instead.
At this point, the flood gates opened.
A stream of hostesses approached me in masks and gloves with dozens of tiny Cathay Pacific wet wipes, the scent of which promptly launched another volley of vomit.
I assume they thought I was carrying some virulent disease that could land them all in quarantine, so I appreciate that they were willing to come close enough to drop the wet wipes off.
Interminable hours later, I arrived in London on wobbly legs and in a nose-hair dissolving cloud of scent (though I had been wearing a mustard and brown striped jumper, which turns out to be the best vomit camouflage gear you could ask for). I was left very much alone on the coach back to Oxford, free to concentrate on willing my stomach contents to stay put.
My parents picked me up (they were even willing to make physical contact, which is a sign of true love), and watched me with worried faces as I wove toward the car.
I arrived at the boot, and promptly booted over the back wheel – much to the shock of various tourists who clearly hadn’t spent much time in a university town before.
My parents, ever the heroes, actually let me inside the car rather than strapping me to the top, and got me back to safety and a shower at record speed.
I still find Cathay Pacific wet wipes lurking amongst my things. A small plasticky reminder of this proud occasion.
When I’m with you, I’m lit by the blazing sunlight of your presence. Everything becomes more entertaining, more challenging, more exciting.
But I fade from your brain as soon as my footsteps recede, and I only buzz a mental alarm clock when you encounter an overt reminder.
I know it’s just the way you are – I’ve always known. It’s an integral part of you and it couldn’t be changed without everything else changing.
I learned to let go of expectations because there was only ever one result: I would get hurt and then the same thing would roll around and happen again. Expectations form a wedge of resentment that slides between your heart and mine, but I’m the only one who knows it’s there.
I catch myself now and then, caught between hope and waiting. Gilded with the bladed edge of bitterness. And then I remember that there is no decision between you or the lack of you. I cannot live without the sun.
So I store up those glowing hours and let them cast light on darker times. I absorb apologies into my skin and know that they are completely sincere in the moment, for all that they may scatter into ashes in the next.
And when I walk into the sunshine once more, it will burn away all but the heart you hold in your hands.
I came here rootless, one of those here-one-day-gone-the-next millennials that weevils into your roots when you’re not looking. We’re generally a toxic bunch, hollowing out localities with our disinterest in history and community, turning homes into places to sleep and neighbours into parcel collectors.
So it meant something when you welcomed me with open warmth and a hefty handful of humour.
You let me piggy back your stories, rummage through the memories you’ve collected, and become part of something that began before I was born. You gave me rides, sent me emails and offered company when I had no one else nearby, weaving a net that would catch me without a second’s thought.
And you always keep a weather eye out for anyone sitting alone.
I find the ecosystem you’ve created utterly beautiful – you’re a bastion for my faith in humanity.
This is what kindness can build.
No longer a parasite, you’ve let me graft to your trunk, so I can begin to call your roots my own.
I’d never encountered anything that I couldn’t achieve so long as tried.
So I tried.
I held smiles on lips that no longer worked, turned precognition to maximum to put things in place before they were needed, and tried to follow the rules spoken on a million forums (not too much, not too little, not too keen, not too distant, be less annoying, be less pathetic).
I tried harder.
Helplessness began to claw its way up my throat over and over again, refusing to be swallowed back down. Wet footprints trod cheeks at first in darkness and then began to march in daylight.
I tried harder.
My heart was rubbed raw with myriad microscopic failings. My ears began to ring with siren calls that drowned every scene with portents of failure.
And when I finally cut myself loose, I still didn’t get it. I couldn’t understand that the problem was not one of effort but one of being:
I needed to not be me.
Stuck with me, as it were, I came to recognise the futility of trying.
And yet sometimes those sirens still whisper sweet nothings.
No matter how hard you try, you will never be enough.
It’s the tenderness of a piglet’s belly, the nestle of warm sheets, the helpless puddling of ice cream in summer sun.
It feels like I’ve only just realised how stabbable I am, how all these knotted organs are wrapped in flesh rather than the spined armour I always assumed I wore.
Like the Emperor’s new clothes, once I realised it wasn’t there, I was left naked and flinching at how easily a word could slip between a rib to puncture or nick.
Fear wraps his arms around me, holding me immobilised as I see your words approach. But they slip over my skin, loosening the clutch of those bony fingers and soothing the bruises beneath. They glide over ribs with the softest of pads, slow and gentle until the tide of anxiety is reversed.
Fear returns the next day, and the next, and yet your words never sharpen with impatience. A disgusted part of me watches the floundering and shrieks for me to weave back the armoured illusion I once wore.
She’s a no holds barred, shits ungiven, unbridled pillar of purest sass.
She’s got more eye twinkles than a children’s poem, a laugh that’s seen you without your trousers, and a tongue that can choose to dice you or nice you.
Mountains cower at her command and slink off at the jab of a finger; chaos parts before her, scrabbling frantically to order at a single glance.
She’s got a heart that gives and gives and gives, and she writes no return address on the back.
Her love feels like the rise of the sun on cold skin, a warm pair of arms after years at sea.
She’s hidden in plain sight so only the luckiest can see her.
I used to form relationships with a locked chest, living in fear that the lid might open or a rib might crack to reveal an uncurated and unsanitised heart.
That heart still had expectations and needs, but they were tattoos etched invisible under my skin. Those who failed to read these imperceptible instructions were subject to imperceptible resentment and anger – thick jagged lines that boiled beneath my skin’s surface.
It took pain to unlock the chest and strip away the opaque and callused layer that covered my feelings. I emerged raw and vulnerable from my shed skin, tattoos meeting the eyes of others for the first time.
I began to form relationships with my ribs spread wide open, the catch broken and hanging by a single rusted screw. My inner self was finally congruent with my outer self and my relationships were no longer rent by disparity.
One sharp tug by a pair of knowing eyes and my heart spills onto the table with a wet thwack, pulling itself toward those eyes with a hundred bloody arms.
The extremes of life scrape and soothe more loudly than they did before, and sometimes these tattoos cause burning shame or fear of rebuff.
But that old skin with its suffocating shielding would never fit me anymore.
I can’t get between my ribs to that stuttering heart.
(I think there might be something wrong with it, but the warranty ran out a while ago.)
My brain seems to have turned into one of those big glass bubbles with ping pong balls of thought flying in every direction.
New thought: utterly irrelevant.
New thought: completely nonsensical.
Lungs still seem to be working though, focus on that.
There’s familiarity, sure, but also a realisation that there’s so much unknown behind the line you toed. Familiar never felt so strange.
In air cooled by rain long due, risk marries possibility and spins excitement into anxiety’s arms in a nauseatingly glorious waltz.
I can’t find another footing, the next handhold is in the dark, and it’s a bit of a bloody nightmare for someone who likes to satellite view every journey before she takes it.
That’s life, apparently.
I’m not sure I’ve been designed to the necessary specification to cope with it.
There’s a constant skittering, hollow clatters, the gentle knock of a skull against the door.
They’re pretty well behaved really. There was this one guy in the building next door who had a mammoth skeleton that he couldn’t close the door on, so it used to just follow around behind him. Man, you’d know he was walking down the street by this constant knocking sound, loud enough to shake your knees. He went crazy, that guy. Always screaming for the hulking thing to leave him alone. That’s what happens when you don’t deal with your skeletons.
I took time to get to know mine after I saw what happened to him. That one, the one that’s scraping on the closet hinges, it hatched that time I turned someone down while in queen bitch mode. That one, with those elongated digits, it showed up when I didn’t send a message to someone I once loved.
Skeletons hate being shut away, they want to lick up every drip of negative emotion you leak. That’s how they grow, tastes of guilt and shame and fear and regret. Sometimes mine escape the closet and run cool and smooth over my skin, chittering with delight when guilt blooms over me. They’re a bloody nightmare to get back in until they’re fed. Once they’re high on emotion, they slump into snoring piles on the mattress. I can scoop up a softened handful of bones and dump them back in and close the door.
Sometimes I pull open the closet door to take them out. It’s kinda perverse, I know, but there’s something about staring right at the scabs of your past mistakes and wanting to peel them off till they bleed. Probably not so smart anymore, some of those old bones are getting hefty.
Some folks say they don’t have anything in their closets, that you can beam pure positivity and starve those skeletons till they shrink up and die. Seems pretty unlikely to me, seeing as they’re dead to start with.
But I do know that one of mine once disappeared.
It had been made up of all these articulated segments of regret, they’d click one after the other against the door when it slithered free in the night. I’d first heard it after I’d lost someone I love in a messy puddle of pride, confusion and misery. It was years before luck struck and healed the heart wound that had brought that skeleton into being. And then the next night there was no click of coils in the closet.
I don’t know if I could heal those other wounds. Don’t know if I’d want to try either. That might just land me with something bigger clawing its way out.
And there’s something to be said for my skeletons.
Medically Unexplained 