my sciatica is acting up again
for real, this time not like usually when i’m just depressed and don’t want to explain it to people it’s fascinating how much more appropriately people respond to pain that they find visible and “valid” either way it gets me upstairs, under the cover, and without interruptions so i’m happy or well. not happy. not the opposite of happy, either just… my back hurts like a MF anyway, and i’ve done literally nothing physically strenuous for the past week or so. fucking stupid body fucking precious vessel i want to start over again and tenderly acknowledge every inch of myself, reverently as i hobble up the stairs, rubbing aspercreme into my ass or whatever it’s called. aspercreme. i obviously know what my ass is called. bernice. just kidding. ass ass ass. my cat doesn’t care that my back hurts, because she is a cat it doesn’t bother me so much that she wants the same things no matter how much pain i’m in or if i’m horrifically grumpy or crying my eyes out there’s something nice in the familiarity of a paw batting my nose and her reedy little meow (not cute) precious, perfect no matter what i’m about. i threw out my back sometime in 2017 during a dance class and when i told the teacher about it she patiently and meticulously explained why it was my fault for not doing the movement right. maybe she was on to something. i went to the hospital then, because i was told to and england has the NHS so i wasn’t terrified of bills. they checked me out and told me it was sciatica which i thought was something old people got, or maybe something to do with your eyes (it is not). i took the tube back “to my flat” but two stops before i got there, came the stop for my stupid ass drama school and the doors opened and i felt my whole upbringing flash before my eyes and i knew what i would do before i’d even made the decision. and i got off the fucking train and went back to school because the devil works hard. and i -
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i hope you don’t mind the lateness of the hour
but sometimes i can’t sleep at night because i am haunted by the knowledge that this life isn’t it for me i see my future unfolding as a series of days and i don’t know that i’ll ever get to where i want to be and it haunts me i spend my days moving stacks of textbooks from one shelf to another and i am an actor i spend my days lifting heavy packages and sorting mail and i am an artist does any of this matter? some months ago, while writing my collaborator made mention of that story about a person walking down the beach throwing sea stars back into the waves it’s especially of interest to me, this story, because i was born on an island and live on an island and every time i sit down to make something i imagine myself, standing at the shoreline, a delicate starfish cupped in my calloused hands and i am the hero of that story but it’s late and i’ve been sad all week, remembering things from the past that i did poorly and things that it’s far far too late to go back and change or apologize for and i am suddenly struck by the feeling that i’m not the person on the beach at all but one of the starfishes, dry and gasping and waiting to be rescued, gently. like a ghost, the knowledge of my smallness haunts me at nights and stands over my bed, making it impossible to sleep so i reach for my phone to text my best friend. at this late hour, i can admit things freely my fingers flying fast across a luminous phone screen things like: i’m scared. i’m scared that i’ll never be successful, whatever that means. i’m scared that people are not interested in my art, my words, my thoughts. i’m scared that i will never become the person that i want to be i am haunted by visions of my future, and the knowledge that there are parallel universes where my left sock is red instead of blue and i have everything that i ever wanted at my fingertips. my best friend is smarter than me, and better, and she always has been so she writes back (many things) and of all of it, i hear this: “life matters, too.” and so maybe it’s enough to strike that fine and flinty matchpoint balance and swallow down one hundred disappointments and show up: not backlit, or on the silver screen, or in a limelight but on sidewalks and roadsides and train station platforms and fields and beaches and wait softly as the tide creeps ever closer. |
Authornew creative challenge to write a thing a day. just a ten minute thing. Archives
April 2023
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