I’m sitting in my mothers kitchen eating a salad I made in a few minutes and I’m thinking about the knot I feel in my stomach. It’s been a few weeks, maybe months since I had my last therapy session. And it’s been months since I’ve had the space to write. It always feels like go, go, go. Do, do, do. Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do.
Today’s been a day for thinking and ruminating and writing and thinking again. Mom says I can’t complain and do the opposite of what I’m complaining about but it seems like that is my MO. I think about all the things I want that are not material and wonder how I can achieve them if what I am working on is so far from that.
I wonder why I want to do it all. This is a recurring feeling. I have a hard time prioritizing, or rather, I have a hard time not being able to do it all. I have a hard time making choices even if it seems like I make them all the time. God, I have to make choices for a living for fucks sake. Yet it sometimes feels like I’m pushed and pulled in directions I haven’t chosen consciously and here I am, sitting in this table. Wondering. How I’ve gotten to the place I am, thinking I wasn’t specific or that I never truly made any choices, but rather that the universe chose for me.
That, I know is bullshit. I just have a hard time staying still. I like being specific, I try.
I sit in this table that I’ve sat for over 20 years, where I’ve had breakfast, where I’ve blown candles, where I’ve scribbled my homework, where I’ve cried. This table that’s seen me grow and expand. I sit in this table and can’t feel anything other than a specific, silent anxiety. A whisper. A nervousness. So I get up and I sit outside and it’s dark and I smoke a joint while I have a face mask on, something to make me prettier, something to take care of my skin, something to put attention on something other than my brain. I sit and I get a text from my boyfriend and I laugh and I forget for a second about that nervousness. I think I hear my mother cry- maybe it was a neighbor. Maybe it was a ghost. I hear it again. And then my dog barks and the train swishes by loudly and my boyfriend texts again. And I know its summer and the bugs are biting me. I go up to my moms bedroom and ask her if the show she’s watching has anyone crying. She says no, and high, I smile at her and kiss her forehead. My mom says- you know you were having an anxiety attack, right? And I nod and smile again and go downstairs and I’m ok. Weed gets me out of my head.
Hello again. I never disappeared but did somehow. I’m back in Madrid for good now. Last Monday was the first day I’ve felt still, settled. And that is something I’m really uncomfortable with. Sitting still. Staying still. Not doing, or doing differently I guess. I have also learned that I have a really hard time processing shit in an openly way. I swallow it whole and then I get sick. Or something like that. It’s always hard to define stuff that’s hard. It’s hard and then it gets hollow. And then it gets superficial. And then it goes back to the back of my head and I pretend I forget about it. But it’s always there. We all do this thing where we pretend while we know, we always know.
I’m sitting on the sofa with my dog and he’s asleep. The bottom of his ears have been chopped off and I feel for him because he probably doesn’t understand why, why he has less ears now, but hopefully he’ll just forget, like I do. Sometimes when he’s sleeping I stare at him and worry he’s dead. Like he’ll suddenly die and I won’t know when or how or why. And that’s my head going again. That’s my head. That’s my brain. I anguish over not knowing how or why. As if knowing how or why would allow me to fix things or change things or prevent them. Information as a guardian angel. Knowing as means to have control. Knowledge as power, and power as a way to control situations. I can be a control freak disguised as something else. I can be is a fraise that is a lie, I am.
I’m sitting on the sofa in my childhood home with my mom next to me and she’s making tomato sauce and it smells delicious, and outside Madrid is burning. Madrid is burning. It’s 37 degrees and it’s 10.30 pm. I’m hungry but I don’t want to eat because I had a chocolate sandwich as a snack this afternoon and I want to be slim. I want to be slim but I’m not exercising. I want to be slim but I eat a chocolate sandwich. I want to be slim as a way of life, as a way of being, as a constant, never ending sentence on the tip of my tongue. Never on the tip of my brain because I try to be conscious, always, forever. It’s not nutella, it’s nocilla, nutella has palm oil and in this house we do not buy things with palm oil.
I’m sitting outside in a black bathing suit and a pink and blue hat and the aftermath of a wonderful Sunday surrounds me. I’m in the house my dad looks after-not his house, but someone else’s-and its hot but this heat feels like an embrace rather than something to run from. Flies keep flying around my ankles and not matter how many times I swat them away they keep coming to me. There’s a giant strawberry and watermelon floating in the pool. Bottles of sunscreen. Bags of empty beers and silence, when yesterday was all about laughs and music and dancing. Friends making friends. A different energy in the air. A constant state of blissfulness, something to rejoice in, forever, for as long as possible.
I’m sitting outside in the same black bathing suit and I have therapy tomorrow, and I’ve argued with my mom and I feel lost and helpless and frustrated. Arguing with family usually stings the most. I am sitting outside and I know this will pass. I am sitting and I know I’ll fall asleep and things will feel better, I will feel better, we will all feel better. I am sitting outside and I’m alone but my dog’s complaining. I am sitting outside and I should go to bed and think of the new people I’ve met lately or the conversations I had yesterday, with my friends, my wonderful group of friends.
I am sitting outside and I’m thinking of late night swims and cold slaps in the face with water instead of hands. I am sitting outside. I sit.
I am always sitting.
Madrid is always burning.
I know just how you feel! The thing about thinking about what you’re thinking about. And not being so very clear, or hopeful, or approving of what you’ve been thinking about. There is an art to turning these things off. And there’s an art to understanding that sometimes we have to listen to these thoughts. But hey, Chloe, you’re an artist! You’re going to figure it out.