(Re)Introduction
"Darling your dreams are your greatest part; I carry them with me in my heart..." - Nick Cave
I started to feel the pull to publicly write again a few months ago. I was starting to wonder if I would again. The lack of needing to write was interesting - a concoction of varied life events in 2022. I ended a partnership, I started a new one, I had a breakdown, my mother had a breakdown, my family moved house, then so did I. I took a new medication. Many around me had deep depressions; one was taken by it. Business got hard. There were arguments, there are still arguments. I lost friendships; I chose to lose some. I became a good snowboarder, a decent climber. I started running again. I chose good self care, over and over again. I journalled incessantly.
Still, thought and finger aren't aligned. Sentences are clumsy. Words feel wonky. It's taking a long time. In the spaces and commas, I wrangle with an odd variety of emotions. What shall I spare, and what shall I bring forward? I avoid the temptation of self-berating (I've internalised the voice of my friend Tom, from our Honeybadgers writing clan, when I slip into this mindset: 'red card'). I sat down to write yesterday and after two hours I went away, my mind exploding in a language I didn't recognise. I have nothing to say, I almost cried out. Perhaps it's gone, after all. I blasted out Duran Duran and drove to the climbing centre and changed into my gear. I dug my fingers into sharp crevices and abseiled back down the wall, over and over. In the car ride back, I pulled over to write. The mind works in strange ways, and if there is a Muse, she visits when she wants. It's that I have so much to say.
So I'll start in the middle, a moment from a few weeks ago, when I really returned to writing.
Monday, April 3, 2023. 6:23 PM, sixty-five minutes before sunset. I wanted wilderness, and instead I’m on the edge of a cow field. For today, it’ll do. It’s other sensations I’ve craved more - the touch of the sun on wind-tugged hair, the trickling of bird song in the cultivated hedgerow. Being by myself - that too.
I find it difficult to quantify when the presence of others gets too much; I listen carefully, to my inner chatter and wobbles, but nothing really tells me I’m tired, drained, I’ve had enough. Maybe it’s defined instead by its positives - the bubbling of excitement when I start the car engine and there's no one in the back seat, when I step out on my own without turning around to check, is everyone okay, is this what you expected, is there some part of myself to sacrifice to make you more comfortable? (I berate myself - if you had children, if you had any real dependents, you’d know what it really means to be caught up in what other people want and need - I’m really quite rude to myself.)
I follow the dirt track around the bend of the hedge. This is a cliff in the south of the county, and it’s where me and my grandparents went several times when I was 6 until when I was 13, maybe 14. We drove here when the last one died, and sat in the chip cafe and looked out at the grey sea. So I know I’ve walked here a number of times before - I remember the metal steps that free-fall into a missing platform, the tides that dictate whether or not you can walk on the beach, the sheerscape of erosion bitten by sand and salt - but I only remember the edges of the details, the start and the end. Like a video game - the kind you walk through and discover new areas? - the map is fuzzy grey cloud within. As I walk, I uncover the stiles, the streams, fill in the gaps, the edges between the final encounters of my memory. Honestly, it’s all brand new to me. I’m slightly alarmed about that. Shouldn’t I remember it more?
I used to feel guilty all the time. I remember an old K-Nex robot that I really wanted for Christmas when I was a younger teenager because my school friend was really into robotics. I started building it but like a lot of things, I didn't have the patience to finish it. I berated myself for a good ten years about that.
The guilt I'm feeling now is not remembering more. I'm sure my grandparents told me many wonderful things as I walked hand in hand with them over this cliff. I'm sure my mother had dressed me in lovely clothes and they probably all bought me an 99 pence Whippy ice cream. I remember the start, because my grandma (Nanny) took off her high heels to walk around the edge of the cliff when the tide got too high. I remember the end where there was the play park and I ran too fast down the slope to the beach and there were caravans everywhere (there's a lot more now). But there were probably pieces in between...
Save for the redness of the cliffs; I remember those. Not a memory, more an embodiment. The sight is eerie and pulling. It’s hard to drag my eyes away, as I squint into the fading sun. The skin of the soil callused and gripping against the rock, the dangerous colour that lies in between blue sea and orange sand.
As if, somewhere along the way, the cliffs got mixed up with the sharp jerk of a grown up’s hand: beware.
There is a sudden burp of cow hooves, a shift of trodden dirt, and I’m back in the field again.
Between this sea and I, somewhere in those cliffs, lingers the ancient sweepings of childhood - somewhere down there, lost to the dust.
With love,
Fallow Dear
Credits:
- Title thanks to Alison who recently sent a post called '(Re)Introduction', and inspired me to write the same :)