It’s been a while since I’ve gone to bed past sunrise, but this weekend takes me by surprise.
When I return from Sweden, I spend a week on the essentials: laundry, cleaning, repairing the fence which has once again busted open in the brutal winds. I piece together a crude attempt at a reel to accompany an extract from Colours. I shop for birthday gifts for the three birthdays we’ll be celebrating this weekend. All the way through I’m tense, rushed, forgetting to breathe properly.
Relax, nothing is under control.
But – perfection… Perfection. No?
The rain keeps coming down.
𑄷
Saturday I wrap gifts for the seventies-themed birthday party that will kick off the festivities. I wear a bright orange pantsuit and a face full of flower gems. It’s more nineties than seventies but I decide aesthetics will win over accuracy.
I’ve been on edge for a week and have to force myself to stop crying so that I can apply my makeup. Why do I always get so panicked before going out? Shoulders rigid, breathing shallow, jittery and catastrophising and spilling things. It always seems easier to skip the eyeliner and the bra, to just stay in and wrap myself in a protective layer of fluff.
I’m too anxious to eat, so when I start on the vodka tonics at 3pm they go straight to my head, just how I like it. (Of course, I will pay the price tomorrow morning. “What’s so easy in the evening, by the morning’s such a drag.” I know, but it won’t stop me.)
I need everything to be perfect. I need the gifts to be on point, beautifully wrapped, and coordinated with pretty and funny cards (let’s hit all the marks at once, shall we?). My outfit must be just right (although how could it be with that belly?!) and accompanied by colour-coordinated and theme-appropriate accessories. The makeup, of course, has to be matching, flawlessly applied, and just the right balance of glamour and flaunt.
What is going on? Who am I trying to impress? This isn’t me – not the real me, the everyday me who claims to be so tolerant and laidback. I’d be happy to turn up in greasy hair and a hoodie, as long as I can have a good time with my dearest friends. But there’s something deeper at play; survival instincts imprinted at the root of my reptile brain. You’ve got to please and appease or you won’t receive love. You’ve got to be perfect or you might not survive.
B r e a t h e .
You’ll be okay.
~
Yep: sometimes it takes an existential crisis for me to leave the house.
But – once I’m out, it’s always worth it.
I finally arrive to a perfect seventies shindig. In the kitchen, we take pictures with the mandatory upside-down pineapple cake and of our friends who accidentally look like they’ve just walked out of Annie Hall. They don’t even know each other and neither has seen the movie. I am all over it. I quickly create a compare-collage and show it to everyone in my vicinity.
My flirtation with the seventies vibe has to be brief, because other plans are knocking. Once I’ve had my fill of choke-risk flying saucers and orange rum punch beneath a glinting disco ball, I rush up the hill to see M’s drama showcase. People stare at my decidedly non-theatery sparkle-flower tangerine togs, but I’ve had enough vodka to not care.
This is only M’s second term of acting classes, but seeing him on stage feels natural. Like he belongs there. We’ve run his lines so many times that I know them by heart, but it’s different seeing him perform them with his partners. The energy between them is soft, gentle, electric.
A few of my friends are performing too, and I admire their courage. I’ve been on that stage before; I know the guts it takes. If I can barely sort myself out to get to a party, imagine the terror preceding an acting performance. One term was enough for me.
𑄷
After three hours of scintillating scenes, I leave the thespians to their drinks and congratulations. The birthday party has resumed at the pub, and I traipse back down the hill, pulling my hood out against the pesky drizzle. I’m back into threat mode, my body tense, my breathing shallow, my mind in a tornado of everything I could, should and shouldn’t say or do. This keeps happening. I know it keeps happening. Yet, somehow, I’m helpless to stop it.
𑄷
The birthday and drama parties eventually all converge at our house. We’ve never had a house party before; I didn’t think our wonky little mid-terrace was suited for it. But it’s perfect. The best nights always happen when you least expect them. People pour in and I zip back and forth, handing out wines and vodka tonics and filling bowls with crisps and nuts and grapes. Anything anyone wants or needs, I’m determined to provide it. (I know: it regularly occurs to me just how much I am like Monica in Friends.)
I put Billie Eilish on the telly and discover we have several fans among us. This delights me way more than it should and we turn the volume up and howl along to Happier Than Ever: Made all my moments your own / JUST FUCKING LEAVE ME ALOOOONE
Meg is up on the sofa, screaming along in unadulterated joy. Emily and Mayan are joining in from my right. I’m filming a shaky video of the whole thing because this – at this vodka-soaked and sparkling moment – seems to be the peak of my life. We’re surrounded by friends and wine and stories. Everyone is singing along to the song I've been obsessively listening to for the past two months. People are sticking face gems all over each other, just to make the night glitter that bit more.
It’s a night of dancing and singing, 5am oven snacks, earnest arm-around-shoulder confession times with friends alongside interdimensional journeys with strangers (looking for the jesters – if you know, you know). It’s been a while since I partied till sunrise. Too long. It’s still winter and cold and dark, but the energy of summer is finally seeping into our shivering bones.
We party on until Sunday night, with only a brief few hours in between to try and sleep off a vicious hangover. Monday I’m dead to the world. But I’m glad I went out. It would have been so easy to succumb to blankets and movies. Instead I made new friends, laughed with old ones, and finally put my gazillion face gems to excellent use. There is a price to pay, as always, but this time it was worth it.
𑄷
This seems to be the general shape of my everyday: straining and resisting, finally surrendering, then invariably loving it. This goes for commitments, parties, travel, writing, all of it. When will I learn to cut straight to the surrender; make a beeline for the love?
My astrology app keeps reminding me that the cycle I’m currently in is all about facing my fears. You’re being asked to consciously think about how irrational angst is preventing your growth. Uh-huh, yeah, no shit.
For years, I’ve had a vague and tantalising idea of what life could be like without this jackhammer of anxiety. I’m a girl of extremes: sometimes I’m dancing on tables, glittered and twirling, marvelling at the insane magic of this universe. Other times I’m curled up in a cupboard pleading with the void, clutching a bottle who’s my best friend at night and my enemy by dawn.
My days and nights and moods change so rapidly that no post ever feels authentic, because the next moment I am someone else with different troubles and new perspectives, and everything old feels irrelevant, replaced. I try to keep up, assembling as best I can these posts from rambling drafts; scraps and shards of life lived at a hundred miles an hour.
𑄷
A week after our sleepless weekend, M finds a blue gem stuck to his hip. “How long has that been there?!” I’m still finding them on floors and stuck to the sides of our furniture. They are nice reminders. The evenings are growing lighter. Our dog runs, ears a-flapping, across the field at sunset in pure and innocent joy. The universe keeps pulling me through its mangler, and all I can do is try to hold on.