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19/01/17 - 25/01/17

“Stones and bones, snow and frost.”

Like cold fire, winter air rushes into my lungs. The smell makes me feel hopeful - it is freezing now, but a thaw will come. My sister has been sitting in the garden again reading her books - but then, that’s not really any testimony to the arrival of spring. The Chappell girls walk barefoot in the first snow of every winter. We trudge to the doctors’ surgery together - our appointments are within ten minutes of each other. I have always been scared of doctors. The monsters under my bed have all graduated from medical school. The vampires that lurk behind trees all brandish stethoscopes. Werewolves stretch latex gloves over their claws, and advise bed rest and plenty of water. It’s not rational. In the waiting room, a TV screen glowers at us. It’s always playing the same film, Mondays or Thursdays, Decembers or Julys - and today is no exception. The Polar Express streams silently from above a poster about arthritis. It’s very comforting to come here with Imogen. We abandon the uneasy silence we assume when we come here alone, and gabble and giggle until our names are called. I suppose I’m getting used to talking about my health - today, despite the trepidation I carried in with me, I accept another prescription as if it’s a certificate. Fluoxetine capsules look a little like the tiny plastic cases that hold lucky dip prizes.

“Seeds and beans and polliwogs.”

Home - returning still feels like diving into a well; like throwing myself into warm black ink. Here, I can sleep. I remain affected by the extent to which I struggled when I lived independently, sufficiently so that the smells of my Momma’s cooking and my father’s fleeces are overwhelmingly, swaddlingly reassuring. I don’t remember the scent of my flat, but home is sweet and heady, and I feel very grateful. In Edinburgh I became a big sick baby, which is what I am here too - but at least I’m a big sick baby with a mother. And medicine.

“Paths and twigs, assorted kisses.”

My body is getting better now, I think. For nearly two months I forgot to eat for days at a time, and I became physically hollow to match the way my mind felt. I don’t think I insinuate beauty or ugliness on my body anymore. It’s a tool to carry me; an animal I have to feed and exercise and medicate in order to keep useful. I am neither good or bad, but perfectly designed. White branches are arranged haphazardly, slotted together. Inside my chest, they sit in parallel curves: claws outstretched, or an iron church organ wrapped around the noise - the clatter - of my heartbeat and breathing. They extend through my limbs in pretty symmetry, and are folded into crackling portions within my hands. My body is vast and warm, and moves clumsily: a caravan filled with soft pillows, or a library - book lungs and a narrow spine.

“We all know who Susie misses!”

January has been writing me a love letter. I’m seeing it bit by bit, tiny miracle by tiny miracle. After weeks of effort, I’m finally well enough to have a morning routine: - Wake up, and look! Here we are! Existing! - Take meds, drink water, shower, dress - Moisturise, make-up, with some comedy show playing in the background so that I manage to laugh before 9am - A cup of tea on a good day or coffee on a bad day, and a banana, and space to plan what’s ahead It’s really goofy, but it feels like an immense luxury. I’m being set free, little by little. I’m reading again, and actively learning again, and I’m not always good at replying to texts but I am talking to my friends, and spending time with them. Last week I went to the Rooms with Imogen and Heather. It was the first time I’d been out at night since moving home, and I loved every minute of it. I was in some sort of wonderland - everyone was in drag, and there was a boy who’d covered his entire face in gold glitter. Drunk girls floated around me in ridiculous make-up, spitting compliments in every direction. The music pounded through the dark. I watched Heather flutter between crowds of people, making friends instantly in that charmingly messy way of which she’s a master. The three of us had spent the evening getting ready and talking about what we know and the people we are. I’m starting to understand new things about love. One of them is something I thought I knew already: I don’t think loving someone or something has anything to do with what you’re like or what another person, or an idea, is like. I think it just happens. The second is something that seemed obvious as soon as I expressed it: loving someone or something, no matter how intensely, doesn’t make it or them any kinder or more lovely, or make anyone else love it or them more. Since love arrives with no regard to rationality, I think it may often be important to separate your feelings from objective truth about a person or an idea. Love will ebb and flow and ebb and flow, and this is no illustration of who or what you are. Compassion has become more of a priority to me than it ever has been before. I’m starting to enjoy the sensation of getting myself back. I have missed myself.

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In exactly 16 hours I’ll be leaving for Glasgow which is my favourite place in the world for a big audition

A year minus exactly 16 hours ago I left granton to get the train home because I couldn’t stop crying and screaming and I knew it’d be over if I stayed where I was

That sunday morning I missed a glen event and texted my mum to tell her I was having a breakdown and I needed to spend a few days at home. I sobbed on the train and I got home at 9 and fell into my own bed like it was a black hole

This Sunday morning I’ll get to perform and meet new people and have breakfast in the best city. I’ll get home in the evening and my bed will just be my bed

Cool contrast

I survived

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What u missed (chronology reversed)

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Class week 2

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Alex moves out again 7/9/17 I spent a lot of the last week with Alex. We went to see our friends in Sister Act, we went shopping for presents for their girlfriend, we napped together, ate together, cried together a little bit, mostly talked and joked and goofed. They liked the art I made for them which made me feel very warm and good. I like it when we giggle together. Every little laugh feels like it might as well be my first breath. We were walking through town together and I was saying something ridiculous and scathing and they told me they loved me with such conviction in their voice that I felt BEWILDERED. When did I become something this lovable? So far the theory about sleeping while holding hands to share dreams has not held fast. Alex dreamt that I was part of a scientific research team trying to cure autism ("but that's not what you're meant to do with autism!", they protested) while I dreamt something mundane and absurdly detailed about rice crackers. They told me about it as soon as I crawled back into bed after my shower. Something really good: Alex's voice when they have something funny to say. It's all GOOFY and excited. I enjoyed doing my makeup enough but it was a bit subtle because I only packed one eyeshadow palette. Like a coward. I went to class and was happy to find we were finally doing some work that wasn't practical. It's real nice to listen and take notes now and then, and it's something I really miss. I worked with Kyle for the twenty minutes of practice we did do. Kyle is very creative and focussed, but our piece was supposed to be silent, and he kept adding sound effects. Right arm up, lean back, left arm forward, lean - "Skidoosh!" "C'mon man." Shannon, Aleceia and I left together, and half the class clustered on the steps for a while chatting. When I said goodbye Adelle and Megan called after me in not only ringing tones, but also Russian accents: "Thalia! No! Why do you leave us! This is too tragic! This is too tragic!" Alex's brother let me in and we sorted some of their packing. I tried to remember doing it a year ago. I moved out before Alex did, but was back the weekend after for the DSMT awards and came to see them. I remembered almost immediately that we'd both cried that night, no packing was done, and their half-full suitcase looked a little resentful when I left. These are... better days. SO MUCH better. The present they've been making for Muz is utterly lovely. We sat snuggled in the quiet together for a long while, breaking it just to laugh and share whatever we were laughing at with one another, and then listening to music. I love you! We said several times. I feel very lucky. When we conceded defeat last year and left each other's sides to let ourselves heal, I gave up most hope of seeing my soulmate again. Outwith our friendship, my life is much better now anyway - I got to go home today, rather than to a grey cage bedroom in Granton - everything is different. It feels really odd and gorgeous and satisfying to help Alex get ready for uni for the second time, knowing now and believing with a lot of confidence that 1. I will remain safe this year and 2. we will remain in touch and our friendship will remain healthy and helpful and whole. We've both grown tremendously. Buzzing to do some more. Having a soulmate is the coolest. These are better days.

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I didn’t find writing helpful for a while but I think I’ll try it again now! I haven’t written any journal entries since the end of July. Since then August has passed, which was show month, and it was hectic and the days between were just sort of flavourless and hot. September arrived, abbie moved out, my course started. I am very tired because I have been functioning daily beyond the standards I usually hold myself firmly to and responding to pressure for nearly two weeks. I feel like taking a break, but I know I can’t, and I’m not going to.

I like my classes and I’m learning quite a lot. Nothing I’m learning is too difficult yet, which is lucky because the living and moving part is the difficult bit really.

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wednesday

26/7/17

When my boots hit the concrete outside the theatre, it was as if I had connected myself to some kind of magical force. Like scoring a try, like a static shock from socks on tiles, like stepping into a fire. The familiarity of my surroundings completely engulfed me, heady and homely, the raindrops tiny kisses on the top of my head. 

The door of the theatre block pushed open, the one everyone always tries to pull. The bright yellow light and the speckled white laminate flooring. The sounds pulling me forward - thirty-odd voices chattering and laughing, music emanating tinnily from a speaker. We strode towards the staff-room door, but I was stopped in my tracks by the yells of three or four kids, who screamed my name and barrelled into me like bulls. I hugged them all, let them chatter around me excitably, feeling so solid and grounded and home. 

The leaders were sitting in their circle in the staff-room listening to Hedge speak, a few of them clutching cups of tea. I knocked gently on the door as I popped my head in, and was pulled inside by Ley immediately. I stood leaning against Andrew in his chair while they finished their meeting, his arm wound around one of my knees. Everything was as I remembered - the room crawling with the detritus of half a week of beautiful chaos. The whiteboard was covered messily with messages, some official and important looking - “Matt H off-site. DD and AP Suzi” - and some in handwriting I recognised, or else accompanied by goofy illustrations - “To do: Have fun (risk assessed), Boo Hedge (she doesn’t need to talk)”. I’d only ever been in here momentarily before - as a delegate catching odd glimpses into life as a leader, to call home with exam results or to help clean up after the week.

We cleared the room to head to the theatre, where Lindsay’s house group, lead by Rachel, were hosting worship. I sat with my sister, right behind the Rebeccas. Nothing felt different. 

“Come to house group with us!” Megan clamoured, tugging on my arm, Rhona and the two tiny curly-haired girls I can’t tell apart turning around to echo her. It was so difficult to say no. There is nothing better than a house group meeting, especially one with my favourite delegates and leaders. But I shook my head, so full of affection, and headed back to the staff-room as Hedge had asked me. There I found the other visitors - four of us in total - and Alexander, who I flopped down beside. He told me all about his week and his life in London, which suits him very well, and we managed to fit a couple months of catching up into ten minutes or so. When Hedge was ready, and after we'd loaded a car with packed lunches, we trudged up to the AP room in the rain. Water pooled onto the plastic folder I held over my head. 

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July II - Imogen's birthday and amble day

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July I

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24/7/17 A day later, I leave the house in my favourite dress and let the honeyed light drench me. It's Monday. I am a year older, the hardest year so far, and I survived. This time last summer I cried after the ceilidh and my friends picked me up in their arms and carried me around, singing and laughing until I was too. I settle down on the grass outside the church where my mother works. I get my book out, but don't read it. I lie in the sun until that gorgeous feeling washes over me, the feeling I get when I float on my back in the cold seawater in Jersey with my sisters splayed out like starfish around me, salt in my nose, the feeling of a reward after a struggle, the feeling of a forgiveness, a welcoming back into my faith. It's the same feeling that hits me Friday nights at Glen, standing in a circle with all of my people. This time I'm on scratchy dead grass, not the sea or the lawn outside the chapel, but what remains to be true: as I lie here feeling grateful and blessed, the waves are rumbling and crashing softly on the shores of my grandma's island, and my people are together in the same sun that's making me lightheaded, and they love each other, and if they don't already feel this divine, lovely feeling, the feeling of home and belonging blossoming inside their chests, they will soon.

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latter half of june

It’s been a delicate mix of confusing and jumbled emotions, which have left me a little confused and disorientated. I’ve been ruffling my feathers trying to shake off new bitterness, while simultaneously trying to process alarm and delight about my luck recently. 

I’ve been spending so much time with my beautiful, astonishing friends this month. Wine night has happened in my living room, in the park outside my house with a barbecue, with Alex, and my godfather nearby. 

Paul came to visit for five days, and I ran into his arms when he walked through the door, and immediately we realised we were wearing the same shirt. We spent the weekend talking and drinking tea, going for walks and telling the same stories we always tell each other. He met my friends at the barbecue and rolled his eyes and grinned at me when I emerged from my room at eleven am. He watched my makeup routine with fascination and said it was truly art. He told me he loved me four times and kissed the top of my head before he left for the train station.

My soulmate is here again. We’re always going to gravitate towards each other, and I’m so sure of that now that I don’t feel remotely scared or insecure anymore. The vulnerability that comes with someone whose heart knows yours inside-out is nothing compared to the certainty of the understanding that those two hearts are knitted into each other. We both cried when we finally collided again, and we talked about everything we needed to talk about. I’m very happy to have them back.

Heather came back from her adventure with Kirstin in Berlin, and her usual stock of stories to wow me with was tripled. We walked around town together talking shit like we always do. I love Heather!

DSMT finished for summer with a bang. Witnessing a fight is weird and gory and frightening. Helping to break up a fight is weird and gory and frightening. 

We celebrated Fin’s birthday with a quiet but lovely party. Gillian and I couldn’t believe our luck just to be with each other. William was perfect and beautiful and making him laugh felt like giving him a gift. I met a very tall girl who told me she loved my eye makeup and wouldn’t stop offering me cigarettes. Olivia lay splayed over mine and Paul’s laps, talking loudly and happily despite the drama of the day before. Dylan fell asleep on the sofa next to me. 

It all got better, and July will be less dramatic.

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a good day in granton felt like

It’s five am when I wake up. Five thirty if I’m especially sad. The alarm jangles and shakes me, and I fumble for the light switch above my head. When I’ve climbed to my feet, I throw on clothes under the harsh white light, which doesn’t quite dissipate the darkness from outside, without looking in the mirror. I’m wearing leggings and my big red tshirt, something that drowns me and makes me feel even smaller. My bones hurt. I sneak to the dark kitchen to fill my water bottle. The lino floor is solid and reassuring underneath my socks and the fridge stinks of Alice’s ham. Wine glasses and unwashed plates litter the table, none of them mine. I don’t bother to turn any of the lights on; I feel like the bunch of bananas I bought two weeks ago, the last time I shopped for food, is staring reproachfully at me. The open fridge glares into my face and I grab my lunch box from the shelf. I escape the flat in silence ten minutes after leaving my bed, bundling myself down the stairs and out of the door, my key cold in my fist.

The sunrise creeps up behind me as I walk down the long long Granton road south. My legs hurt so much, but I stomp through the forest trail in silence, because my walk to class is the only time my head feels busy enough to let me breathe. I can see the flowers, and the sun dripping through the leafless trees, and the autumn dust spilling across the path. I stop an hour in to get water. At some point between the edge of the woods and the gates of the private school grounds I have to pass through, the endorphins kick me in the teeth. Feels good. Maybe I’m not sick at all.

Sighthill is a crumbling mess. The Heriot-Watt building that my classes are held in is plonked incongruously in the middle of an industrial estate. I stride past swarms of schoolkids and commuters. It is half past eight. The sun is halfway up. I’m sweating, and the hour or so of fitful sleep I managed last night is an elevator door closing fast on my mood, but I’ve opened a can of some kind of energy drink and I’m gulping it as I walk. I’m hopeful it’ll beat the anxiety into my control, so that I can widen my eyes and stare at the board in chem lab and think too fast for the sadness to keep up.

Half an hour later I’m forcing my aching legs up seven flights of stairs. I don’t take the lift anymore. The mirror that lines the back wall frightens me. I look so thin and ashy, like I’m already dead. I can see the glands in my neck protruding, my collar bones like scalpels even through my baggy shirt, my cheeks hollow. It’s better to climb.

Noelia is standing in the corridor outside our lab already, her books wrapped in her arms, stacked solidly against her chest. She greets me in her sing-song Canarian accent and rolls her eyes at my messy hair and my hands, which are already trembling from the caffeine. Our tutor, Val, storms along the hall, a five-foot-nothing vision in a lab coat and crocs, white hair on end, face pink and smiling as she swings her keychain menacingly like a pair of nunchucks.

She unlocks the door and we pile into the room, me and Noelia favouring the lab stools at the back, behind Dale and Charlotte and James. Our friends. It’s a Wednesday, and the most boring class on our timetable - Laboratory Techniques. Val yawns her way through a powerpoint about health and safety and PPE, snacking on Tangfastics as she goes, slugging coke from a bottle that she stows carefully out of sight lest one of the stricter lecturers should pop their balding heads around the door.

We perk up towards the end of class when Val shows us, for the millionth time, the scar in the middle of her left hand, which she impaled on a broken glass pipette. Everyone rolls their eyes and grins as she tells us that it’s the mark of a true chemist. I’m not really worried about being a true chemist, I think as I scribble down the homework and try to make a study plan for the afternoon.

On Wednesdays, the class has orientation sessions for the remainder of the day, and because I already have a place at university, I’m not required to go. I wander to the tram stop and wave my student card at the barrier. It beeps contentedly, and I board the tram towards Princes Street. I get off in the west end so that I can walk to the library on George IV bridge, where Catriona is meeting me in an hour. In the silent reading room, which is how I always pictured the exam hall at Hogwarts, I study hard. I am so focussed and motivated. My phone lies abandoned next to me and I tear through my pamphlet of notes. I’m studying organic chem, bio, and maths. When Catriona arrives we work harder, our reading punctuated by the occasional whisper or giggle.

The library closes at eight pm, and I try to work for as long as possible, but the hunger pangs are getting harder to ignore, and so is the mounting anxiety, so just after seven I hug Catriona goodbye at the bus stop and find the neglected lunch I shoved into my bag this morning. It’s a tortilla wrap with a tablespoon of peanut butter and a handful of spinach, and I eat it slowly, like it might bite me back. I sit on the top deck of the bus and check my messages. My flatmates are asking where I am, when I’ll be home, can I pick up binbags on my way. Nervously, I try to make a joke in the groupchat, and of course no one replies. I close my eyes so I don’t have to watch Edinburgh sliding past me. It’s pitch black already and a crack in the bus window blows cool air onto my face, colliding with warm tears. After a few minutes I open the messages from my friends, and feel a little warmer, although no less afraid.

The bus pulls into Granton after nearly an hour, and I try to collect myself, scuttling down the stairs and into the bright shelter of Morrisons. I swerve away from the food aisles, and pick up binbags, a bottle of water, and a soft, pink towel. My head spins as I pay. I feel unsteady.

The lift seems to be closing in around me. The floor is tacky and dirty as I press the red number three, shutting my eyes tight and shaking my head like I’m a horse clearing flies. A ping, and I’m here. I brandish my key and let myself into Flat 22, breathing in hard and readying myself for the noise.

“Thalia!” Alice shrieks from the kitchen, and I kick my bedroom door open and dump my shopping on my way. I toss the binbags into the cupboard under the sink, saying some kind of greeting sleepily and hoping the eyes fixed on me will dart away quickly. Alice is here, and Anna, and Maddy, Holly, Rory. Maddy is pinch-faced over a curry, holding a glass of wine. Holly sits on the sofa in her pyjamas on her laptop, headphones on, smiling up at me but continuing to type furiously. Anna is slumped at the table on her phone between Rory and Maddy, and Alice stands in the middle of the rug in her shiny new Vans, her keys and cigarettes in one hand and a juice box in the other.

“You’ve been out for ages! How was your day?” asks Maddy, and of course I barely say a thing. She tells me about hers and she and Rory laugh at a joke I don’t understand. Alice spraffs some gossip to me about people she knows at work, talking very fast. She’s eaten my peppers again, she broke my plate, Nina almost got fired today, it was so funny, she’s going to Hive tonight, she thinks Holly should come too, Holly’s being a bore.

“Did you eat yet?” Rory asks, gesturing to the cold chips left untouched on his plate. I smile my thanks but don’t take them, making myself a cup of tea so that I can turn away from everyone. Alice turns up her music again. After ten minutes I feign a yawn and say I’m going for a shower, and then I can run away to my room.

I lock the door out of habit - Alice often won’t leave me alone in the night - and collapse onto my bed. I pour half the hot tea down the sink and top it off with vodka. I peel my clothes off and open my laptop, let an episode of Gilmore Girls play. I let the bathroom steam up before clambering into the shower. My whole body aches and shakes, bruises blooming up my thighs, which are so much smaller than I’m accustomed to now. I catch sight of my spine before the mirror fogs, and my first thought is that it looks like the pier at Havre des Pas - narrow, curved, columns jutting through my skin. I let the muddy-smelling water gush over my face. I step out just before the shower basin overflows, and bury my face in the new pink towel. I bought it because I’m very low on money, and it was cheaper to buy a towel than to put a wash on.

My wrists itch as I slide into bed, damp and cold and too sad to care. I feel as if I am crumbling from the inside out. I watch Gilmore Girls with unfocussed eyes. I shiver not from the cold, but from the sheer weight of my loneliness. My irrational, unprecedented loneliness. I turn the volume down, so paranoid, so scared to make any semblance of noise anywhere in this flat. When Alice bangs on my door I hide underneath my duvet and turn the light off. I drink until I fall asleep.

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two weeks into june

i’m sick of being sick and i want to be a lantern, like i want to be a painter, like i want to be in danger. 

June hit me like a hot, summery, gorgeous kick in the teeth. I’ve been eating breakfast on the front porch, getting sunburnt in the garden, waiting through days of cloudless temper for the rain to finally break through. I like dragging my hands through the dry grass; I like squinting up at the violent blue. My legs are grazed and muddy and a ladybird crawls across one of my thighs. I can’t believe I used to cry about their size. 

The first two weeks have been busy and relentless, and I’m sure I haven’t had a single introspective thought since I last wrote. How strange and decadent it feels to forget to deliberate on the quality of your existence. I have nothing to worry about, as long as I keep making art. 

My friends have finished school, and I’ve been to too many parties. My phone is broken, I have no money, my room is a mess. I am drinking too much, spending too much, vomiting too much. Painting just enough. Thinking a smidge too little. 

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May III