Do you drift to feel ok?
I think I write to feel ok. More of my feelings about me come out when I'm writing about others, and my feelings about others come out when I'm writing about me. Does that make sense?
A week before the semester starts I go to my doctor to make sure my immune system isn't planning a coup. I have this theory that she makes me wait only to see me sweat. She's alright, other than the fact that she'd old, and skinny, and bird-like, and one time I had to explain to her that no, I didn't want to talk about about how I've gained five kilos, that's actually a good thing, I'm recovering from an eating disorder. I'm actually just here to talk about my bronchitis.
When I get in there she gives my health the ok. Says, once again, that they don't really know what's wrong with me. My immune system just has an overactive imagination. It's an attention seeker; it acts out by giving me whichever illness of the week seems most inconvenient for me to work a thirteen-hour shift with. She says, look, love, you'll get over the stomach infection (again) but there's not a lot we can do about the fatigue. You want me to write up a certificate?
I say nah, I can't afford to take any more time off.
Two days before the semester starts my mum gets sick instead and I take some time off to help her out. Standard stuff, in between looking for a place with affordable rent and running sick animals back and forth to our vet in Canterbury. (It's that time of the year, my nan says, speaking in soft whispers when I go to visit her and she's sucking on a cigarette in the backyard like her life depends on it. Everyone's a bit sick, aren't they?)
There are train delays, so it takes a year and a half to get into the city and get to class. I mess up the attendance sheet and then have too much social anxiety to say anything about it. I meet a friend at Starbucks and she tells me she's thinking of becoming a kindergarten teacher. I scald my tongue on a hazelnut latte. Say go for it. Go for it. She's so pretty. The kind of kindergarten teacher I'd have had a crush on and really behaved for.
We go out one Saturday night when I'll have to start work the next day at 8 am and a different friend buys me a round of shots. Later I dance with a drunk girl in some corner who says men are all cunts and she's ditched her boyfriend and how good is the music, they don't make music like this anymore, do they? The lights are all low and smoky. I stand shell-shocked and dissociating for about a minute just watching people. Two men shouldering through a path to the bar. An older woman with condensation running down her fingertips. Somebody's pudgy cheek electrified under neon lights. I breathe and breathe. The club breathes with me.
I call in sick at about 7:30 am and decide, even though I'm a vegetarian, to Uber Eats about thirty chicken nuggets to my home and stay in bed editing my manuscript all day. I end up getting distracted writing plot outlines for a completely different project. I've got uni tomorrow and all I can think about is how badly I need to vomit. Jaeger in the gut and writer's block like some sick second skin, peeling back like a film only to adhere again. You don't get second chances at being a writer. Dad says you don't get second chances at university, either. Dad says don't drop out and write more horror and aren't you sick of that genre already? I say I am I am I am. Sick of YA. Sick of this genre, sick of that genre. Sick in general. And then I am sick. I have to clean it out of the grout hours later, when I can be bothered moving again.
The new meds for my ADHD work great, and my friends make jokes about me needing the same pills as hyperactive young boys. Say you look like one too, you tragic little dyke. I'm in a Bowie shirt and haven't taken my makeup off from last night yet. Looking like little Timmy trying drag while his mother is at work. My girlfriend says hey you haven't taken your makeup off yet. I peel a false lash off of my fingernail and smile at her because she is the sun.
In an afternoon class I drift off and feel like I'm in a boat on the sea. The Melbourne Winter wind rocks and creaks the building and it sounds, to the black of my eyelids, like a pirate ship, the howl creeping through the cracks a sea shanty that wakes me gently to the boy on my left giving me a Look. I'm embarrassed, and that old anxiety claws up my throat again, but I bury it in my notebook. Snap the spines of it shut and feel it rattle in my teeth.
But I sometimes still drift. I drift. I feel my body drifting through bodies in the club, the packed train carriage. In class I wake and the boy looking at me drifts a little too. The wind rocking the building sings its sea shanty and I drift some more. When I wake the next time, I am staring at a blank Word document. And I think my immune system has staged another coup.
A week before the semester starts I go to my doctor to make sure my immune system isn't planning a coup. I have this theory that she makes me wait only to see me sweat. She's alright, other than the fact that she'd old, and skinny, and bird-like, and one time I had to explain to her that no, I didn't want to talk about about how I've gained five kilos, that's actually a good thing, I'm recovering from an eating disorder. I'm actually just here to talk about my bronchitis.
When I get in there she gives my health the ok. Says, once again, that they don't really know what's wrong with me. My immune system just has an overactive imagination. It's an attention seeker; it acts out by giving me whichever illness of the week seems most inconvenient for me to work a thirteen-hour shift with. She says, look, love, you'll get over the stomach infection (again) but there's not a lot we can do about the fatigue. You want me to write up a certificate?
I say nah, I can't afford to take any more time off.
Two days before the semester starts my mum gets sick instead and I take some time off to help her out. Standard stuff, in between looking for a place with affordable rent and running sick animals back and forth to our vet in Canterbury. (It's that time of the year, my nan says, speaking in soft whispers when I go to visit her and she's sucking on a cigarette in the backyard like her life depends on it. Everyone's a bit sick, aren't they?)
There are train delays, so it takes a year and a half to get into the city and get to class. I mess up the attendance sheet and then have too much social anxiety to say anything about it. I meet a friend at Starbucks and she tells me she's thinking of becoming a kindergarten teacher. I scald my tongue on a hazelnut latte. Say go for it. Go for it. She's so pretty. The kind of kindergarten teacher I'd have had a crush on and really behaved for.
We go out one Saturday night when I'll have to start work the next day at 8 am and a different friend buys me a round of shots. Later I dance with a drunk girl in some corner who says men are all cunts and she's ditched her boyfriend and how good is the music, they don't make music like this anymore, do they? The lights are all low and smoky. I stand shell-shocked and dissociating for about a minute just watching people. Two men shouldering through a path to the bar. An older woman with condensation running down her fingertips. Somebody's pudgy cheek electrified under neon lights. I breathe and breathe. The club breathes with me.
I call in sick at about 7:30 am and decide, even though I'm a vegetarian, to Uber Eats about thirty chicken nuggets to my home and stay in bed editing my manuscript all day. I end up getting distracted writing plot outlines for a completely different project. I've got uni tomorrow and all I can think about is how badly I need to vomit. Jaeger in the gut and writer's block like some sick second skin, peeling back like a film only to adhere again. You don't get second chances at being a writer. Dad says you don't get second chances at university, either. Dad says don't drop out and write more horror and aren't you sick of that genre already? I say I am I am I am. Sick of YA. Sick of this genre, sick of that genre. Sick in general. And then I am sick. I have to clean it out of the grout hours later, when I can be bothered moving again.
The new meds for my ADHD work great, and my friends make jokes about me needing the same pills as hyperactive young boys. Say you look like one too, you tragic little dyke. I'm in a Bowie shirt and haven't taken my makeup off from last night yet. Looking like little Timmy trying drag while his mother is at work. My girlfriend says hey you haven't taken your makeup off yet. I peel a false lash off of my fingernail and smile at her because she is the sun.
In an afternoon class I drift off and feel like I'm in a boat on the sea. The Melbourne Winter wind rocks and creaks the building and it sounds, to the black of my eyelids, like a pirate ship, the howl creeping through the cracks a sea shanty that wakes me gently to the boy on my left giving me a Look. I'm embarrassed, and that old anxiety claws up my throat again, but I bury it in my notebook. Snap the spines of it shut and feel it rattle in my teeth.
But I sometimes still drift. I drift. I feel my body drifting through bodies in the club, the packed train carriage. In class I wake and the boy looking at me drifts a little too. The wind rocking the building sings its sea shanty and I drift some more. When I wake the next time, I am staring at a blank Word document. And I think my immune system has staged another coup.
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