It's an 'end of the rainbow' sort of deal

I bought a car. I've been trying to do so for 6 weeks now and it's proved an incredibly frustrating to find something I can buy. I've walked away from two cars that were in someway dodgy. One that was completely fine but I found too uncomfortable to drive (exceptionally hard suspension). And innumerable cars that sold before I even got to see them. The used car market is moving at a breakneck speed right now.

Right now, a car means freedom - in much the same way it did when I first passed my test when I was 18 and I could suddenly leave my village whenever I wanted. I have been on a train twice in the last month and it's been quiet and easy, but those are journey's under an hour and did not require pre-booking. Many routes from Southampton require seat reservations and as these services are running massively under capacity, they are sold out almost immediately after the tickets are released; which amounts to the same as these trains not running at all in terms of being able to travel.

I live on the doorstep of some truly beautiful beaches which are inaccessible on public transport, with or without the complicating factor of a pandemic. One of the things I've struggled with most in Southampton has been the loss of coastal time. With a car, I get it back.

On Friday night my downstairs neighbour, with whom I am tending a blosoming "neighbourship" (what a charming portmanteau that is) drove us out to a strip of beach I'd never heard of and we had a wonderful stroll along the cliff top and beach in golden hour. I can offer to take him next time. Or I can go alone. And that is dizzyingly wonderful to imagine.

 It's been a draining week for lots of small reasons which add up to just feeling done in.

Some things will be resolved by the end of next week, some things have already been worked through and made light, some things I'm choosing to step away from for now.

I don't want to give more energy to detailing any of it. But it's useful to me to note that some weeks you're just running to stand still. And remember that not every week will be this week.

This time next week I'll be one night away from seeing Teddy. I'll be on annual leave. I'll have crossed a job off my work to do list that's been nagging for months. And I hope I'll be feeling lighter.

There are still loads of wonderful, good things in my life. There are WhatsApp messages pinging away on my phone from lots of different people who are letting me know in lots of different ways that I matter to them. There are people who have gone out of their way today, been generous, and made my life better. And those things are cumulatively huge. When my energy restores I can pay all that care forward again. The cycles of generosity and random acts of kindness which shape my days are spectacular and make me marvel at what we can all do for each other with such small steps 

Yesterday I went on a road trip with three women I met via Meetup stuff (so lesbians, and vaguely connected to the group I mentioned previously without being in the centre of it). We went to Charleston which is in...Sussex. Not just in Sussex, but all of 20 mins drive from Brighton. It took us just under 2 hours to get there. So well done me on living right near it all these years and only going to visit once I moved all this distance away from it.

Wikipedia makes obscure reference to an "unconventional family" living in the house which fucks me off for a number of reasons. Firstly, the stupidity of calling anything other than a traditionally nuclear heterosexual family "unconventional" when almost no families during the entirety of human history have fitted that shape. Secondly, because the tour you go on at Charleston, and all the literature on the history of the place on offer, could not be less coy about the arrangement of the relationships between adults in that household.

Vanessa Bell (Virginia Woolf's sister) moved into the house with her lover/boyfriend/beau Duncan Grant. She was married, but amicably seperated from her husband (Clive Bell) and brought her two children with her. Duncan Grant brought his lover/boyfriend David Garnett. The three adults, plus two children, all lived happily there during WWI when Grant and Garnet were conscientious objectors and worked as farm labourers. Whilst there, Vanessa Bell gave birth to a daughter (Angelica) by Grant (but she was raised believing Clive Bell was her father). After a few years back in London, Grant and Vanessa Bell moved back to the farmhouse and this time Clive Bell came to live with them as well. Ultimately, Angelica ended up marrying Garnett, and then found out he'd been her biological father's lover, which she felt as happy about as you'd imagine

There is, therefore, a very queer connection at Charleston and I was really pleased that all the adults were introduced to us, with photos, at the start of the tour and there was absolutely no value judgements on the relationships between them as more or less valid or significant. This was a welcome way of telling history and the women I went with all felt similarly.

After this, and as Storm Dennis started making itself known, we piled back into the car and headed into Brighton. Evidently this was a pre-agreed part of the plan but it hadn't been communicated with me so I suffered a gut kick/wave of homesickness as we drove in. Was difficult not to call any one of a number of people to ask if I could come crash at theirs that night/abandon my road trip people and catch a train back to Southampton on Sunday instead. I ended up playing tour guide because large groups of people/lack of leadership on where to go/my deep familiarity with the city versus their passing or out of date knowledge/a low level anxiety which had nothing to do with any of this meant I just needed to sort everything out.

I thought I was doing ok for not being too bossy - and maybe I was - but when we got back to Southampton and they dropped me off they thanked me for being "leader" which made me squirm. Later that night one of them contacted me to say a few things including; "you must be everyone's number one travelling companion - you notice everything!"

In principle this is a lovely compliment and I thanked her for it. But it contrasted with how I had felt all day - that I was completely exhausted, overwhelmed with the number of things I felt I needed to keep managing (time keeping, social interactions with people I hardly know, directions for driver in and around Brighton, suggestions and directions for where we could all walk whilst on foot in Brighton), and I was really 'switched on' sensory wise and unable to stop noticing everything. It's like an assault.

By the time we got back into the car to drive back to Southampton it was mercifully getting dark and I could sit silently and rest a bit. Except they noticed I wasn't joining in with the conversation and ask if I'm asleep and blah. 

Everyone is really nice, and then I have just nothing left. And even things which are compliments end up being about things I've noticed about myself to but am not finding enjoyable/pleasurable/don't want to continue.

All of this was especially interesting - odd? - because of Charleston. That farmhouse, stuffed with books and paintings and a beautiful garden, tucked away from the pace of life all around it, with this wonderful set of romantic and platonic relationships at the heart of it represents just the most perfect way of life I can imagine. It was pure sanctuary. The best future I can imagine for myself does include a lot less noise and movement, and a lot more connection to creativity and nature, and space and time to do that. Not individually isolated, but not needing to be in the midst of this kind of pace of social interaction which demands (or perhaps prompts) so much energy from me.

 Had a fairly dreadful couple of weeks.  I'm still not sure if I was going through a downswing/having depression or had a particularly nasty virus or, most likely, both but today I woke up feeling OK.

Spent most of week of 16th Feb laying on sofa feeling knackered and, on Wednesday, dashing to uni campus for an emergency GP appointment because I couldn't catch my breathe.  Mystified GP concluded it was either weird virus causing breathlessness, or some peculiar presentation of asthma, either way I was prescribed an inhaler and used it frequently for about 4 days before symptoms tailed off.  The nurse who triaged me asked if it could be anxiety and I said I didn't feel anxious and she was happy with that but I really don't know if it was anxiety or not.  It wouldn't be the first time I've had all the symptoms of anxiety without consciously feeling stressed.

That weekend was my best friend, Becky's, hen do.  She's not into the pink wings hoopla, and we travelled up to her home town of Oxford to take over the pub she and her friends used to drink in as teenagers and get squiffy.  I was apprehensive about the entire thing but it turned out to be a lovely weekend and I felt I got to know my fellow bridesmaids which is nice ahead of her wedding in May.  It's a bit of an odd group as with the exception of 3 wives and girlfriends, I am the only outsider to join their friendship group since they were at school.  I went to a wedding of another couple from this group several years ago and was the only person at the wedding who wasn't either a family member of the bride and groom, or had gone to high school with them.  It's quite a compliment, and they are a lovely group, but it can feel a little strange setting foot in a group I've only been connected with for 12 years, when they have known each other for closer to 20 years.

Last week I continued to be utterly, utterly exhausted.  My parents visited on Tues and Weds and due to my teaching schedule at uni I only actually spent one day with them even though they were here for 2 nights.  It was nice and I didn't get aggro as I so often do around them.  

Thursday and Friday I was desperately sad, and slept for hours and hours across those two days and nights.  On Friday morning I realised that my building sadness over the last two weeks was due to a subconscious awareness that it should have been Lu's 30th birthday.  Instead, of course, her sister, mother, and friends, all experienced - to different degrees - that gnawing sense of pointless loss for the day.

It shouldn't have been this way.

And then I learnt that Leonard Nimoy had died and I went through the peculiar distanced grief which comes with the death of a celebrity you've had such a deep, life-long connection with.  Star Trek has shaped my imaginative world since I was god knows how old and watching Star Trek TOS on my brother's knee.  Spock is what Star Trek TOS is all about.  And Nimoy was Spock.  He put so much of himself into that character and raised the entire show above the realm of cheap sci fi into the force for good and hope and dreams I know it as today.  I adored his appearances in the Star Trek reboot-movies and I can't quite accommodate the idea he, and his special aura, are gone from our screens save for re-runs.

Saturday was hard too.  I was still exhausted, still feeling the paranoia and anxiety I associate with a particularly brutal downswing.  Forced myself out of the house to Asda which was very nearly the end of me.  Home again for the evening, sadness, introspection.

And then, this morning, I woke up before my alarm and didn't feel exhausted.  The fog has lifted and my brain can think.  I've been accepted to a conference in Ireland in June which may well make a lovely holiday (if I can get funding from the department to go!) and I cleaned the flat and tidied the detritus of a fortnight of inaction. And then I made dinner, wrote some emails...I came alive again.

And I remember why I get up in the morning and why I speak to other human beings and why life keeps on turning.

It's been an awful couple of weeks.  I want to weep for my past self, because I feel bruised from the sadness which has been following me around.  It hurts.  And it scares me every time it comes back, and every time it won't leave.

 Had a bit of a meltdown this week, ended up throwing myself on mercy of supervisor about the impending deadline (Monday) that I was definitely going to miss.  He took one look at me and said I should take a month off from PhD stuff and just focus on teaching (which right now is taking up 3 days of my week, oh my is it time consuming!) I'm not willing to flat out stop work on the thesis, but I am abandoning attempting to write anything for the next couple of weeks and just catch up on transcription.

I keep trying to do little things to remind myself how far I've come (like downloading a programme that counts the words in multiple word documents and discovering I've transcribed 242,000 words so far) but mostly I feel I've just taken on way too much this year.  I'm teaching which - based on feedback today after a lesson observation - I'm doing well, I'm organising a fortnightly seminar series with external speakers, I'm organising a big internal conference, I'm thesis-ing, I'm teaching on a Widening Participation programme, I'm still travelling around the country interviewing.  

It's a lot, by any standard.



Today would have been Lu's 29th birthday and it hasn't been as bad today as I feared - the beginning of the week was me bursting into tears a lot - I think lingering sense of grief and over-worked brain combined in emotional ways.  This morning I had Hepburn's I Quit stuck in my head.  I was boogying around my flat getting ready whilst singing, laughing, remembering jokes and singing to it when we were 14, then I left the flat and somehow my own silence overwhelmed me and I got a bit teary, then I smiled again remembering something else.  Her not reaching these birthdays brings things into sharp focus - I feel such a sense of loss - her loss, her family's loss, her friends' loss.  



I've decided to pursue private therapy at same clinic I went to previously here in Brighton and have an assessment appointment next week on Friday.  The following Monday I finally have my ultrasound guided steroid injection - I'm properly worried for potential pain after last time's agony but I also have cautious hope it could either resolve issue, or reveal a structural issue which can be resolved in another way.  My supervisor recently had 3 slipped discs and upon hearing I was also awaiting treatment to resolve chronic pain redoubled his entreaty that I take a break.  God I hope this injection fixes it - I'll even take steroid flare again if it subsides to no pain.

So, life.  Painful and sad and odd, but sometimes still beautiful - like the tiny break in the cloud today with sunshine crashing down around the pouring rain.

You sit, in a worn down but well loved, lived in living room, you shout from there to the kitchen down the corridor.  The soul you feel most drawn to and most forgiven by shouts back to you; you laugh till you cry.

Text messages buzz, the doorbell rings, the landline dings; "I think I'm standing outside?"

The temperature rises as bodies pack into the insufficient but perfectly workable space.  The thrum of laughter, and smiles - smiling has a sound - and conversation drifts from the floor upwards, filling the whole room with a pleasant din, like a fog which envelops but also multiplies as it spreads.

It is tactile, and comfortable, and it is home.  

It is home.  Far more than 'home' was ever home.

All those idiosyncrasies which were shameful and hidden are jokes - shouted across the room.  All those insecurities which were poured over cease to exist.  Home.  This is what home feels like.

It's a knowledge that happens in the core of the bones and spreads outwards.  And then, suddenly and gradually, there has never been any doubt about where here is.

You catch yourself: just once in a while, standing there, amongst the din, smiling and feeling, even for a few precious moments, perfect contentment.

Home.




It is 11 days until I get to go home.  It is too long, and my retreat will be too short.

I really have missed you.

And tonight was brilliant.

I realised so much about us both, stuff that should have been obvious years ago, but perhaps it is only now that I am ready to see it.

I'm not in love with you any more.  And I'm not in love with her any more either.  Isn't that huge? Isn't that glorious?

For a while I thought my broken heart would always mean I was still in love with her.  But somehow, tonight, a little bit of me that was reflected back at me as I sat talking to you was the bit that showed me the truth;  no love.

I can't wait to see you again in February.  I'm sorry we've lost so much time over the past few years - I think a lot of it came from how she changed me; but I know there was a girl changing you too.  We've both arrived somewhere better.  I'm glad that we are in each others future.

You're the keeper of half my memories.  I forget how much I forget.  Then you tell someone a story about something I did, or something we did together and the little portraits you paint release memories I didn't know I had.  Sometimes the story is as new to me as the person you are telling it to - I wish my memory was better, I really do, but it is such a relief to know that you, and a few other people, are keeping close guardianship of my youthful excesses, my triumphs and the many and various ways in which we got to this point.