letsflyfrommelancholyskeep

[letsflyfrommelancholyskeep]

Olympia

So I didn’t manage to really write about my time in Canada and the States at all.....literally all I have is this tiny snippet from the Olympic Peninsula, November 2018. Duhhh.

So you know how in the movies, every time they're in the woods at night, there's all this...weird ground mist drifting around, usually to hide the edges of the studio, and you're watching like WHO PUT ALL THESE SMOKE MACHINES IN THE WOODS AND WHY? Well, it turns out, in temperate rainforest like this, it's actually kind of like that. It took me a while to get to sleep because I was so enchanted by the moon shining through the huge mossy trees, illuminating silvery tendrils of mist curling through the forest and shining dewy drifts of vapour as the trees gently released the rain they'd been drinking all the previous day. It was incredibly beautiful, a nocturnal silvan wonderland that barely seemed real – I felt as if I was in a stage set for a traditional production of Giselle, or that bit in LOTR where frodo and sam see the elves in the shire. I felt that I should probably walk slowly around the campsite holding up a lantern and singing in elvish, but I don't quite have the pipes for it.

I woke again in the early hours of the morning to go out for a pee. The moon had set and the stars shone down from the gaps in the turreted tips of the pines, clear and distant and beautiful. I understood how the elves felt when they first awoke by Lake Evendim and sang to the stars in sheer wonder. Then I went back to sleep and had a dream in which I had a motorbike, but it kept running out of fuel, and my cousin Bryony was dressed like Kylie Jenner and was threatening to set the lawyers on my dad.

I had planned to get up at first light and head up to Hurricane Ridge, but I'd spent so long lying awake looking at things that I slept in till 9. Oh well. The drive up there was surreal – the smooth, wide, two lane road I was on seemed incongruous with the incredible alpine vistas that opened up around every pine-clad corner. Just before the small series of tunnels, which reminded me of Yosemite, there was a pullout with a spectacular view back across the Puget sound to Mount Baker, and I pulled over to stare at it, open mouthed. I believe I actually screamed in amazement. I could see the whole of the eastern peninsula dropping away in rolling valleys beneath me, towns and roads looping through estuaries and across rivers, cargo ships lying at anchor in the sound or progressing dreamily at the head of trailing blue wakes. I could see the cascades, Mount Baker, Seattle, Victoria, the whole of the PNW receding into hazy blue distance.

[letsflyfrommelancholyskeep]

Lemonade

There is bleeding in my head, somewhere

This is not a metaphor.

I can feel it crusting the inside of my nose

feel it in the sharp creaking pangs in one ear.

It's okay, it's okay, it's okay

A guy in a movie once said,

Your childhood is over the day you know you're gonna die

but I think it's the day you really start to feel it

Your fragile flawed body uncontrollably sliding into ruin.

Sometimes we're afraid of things we can't control

we leave people so they can't leave us

starve ourselves so we can't overeat

kill ourselves because we're afraid of the

Roaring, unstoppable approach of death.

I take my antidepressants with lemonade

in the morning, so they taste sweet.

[letsflyfrommelancholyskeep]

Just a dream I had

[letsflyfrommelancholyskeep]

Anxiety, New World, cheese

It's 6.00 pm on a Friday evening, and I'm sitting in the falling dusk in the skate park opposite the New World supermarket, staring across at the bright shopfront. The bench is cold beneath my fingers and the wind is beginning to bite. I've been here for half an hour.

Soon, I have to go into the supermarket. There is food in there. I need to obtain it in order to live, and I need to do it myself in order to maintain my last scraps of self respect. This is my challenge, my weekly personal Everest – go into the shop and buy some groceries. It'd be funny, if it weren't so sad.

Some days it's easier, some days it's harder. I can usually tell how bad it's going to be from how long I have to sit in the skate park beforehand, breathing steadily and mentally walking myself through the aisles, repeating the things that I need like a mantra until it shifts from my short-term to long-term memory. Today looks as if it might be a bad one.

I stand up and walk across the road, repeating just do it, just do it, just get it over with, you'll be ok, in my head. I square my shoulders and try to stride confidently across the carpark, but headlights pick me out of the safe darknesss and the fear comes with them, washing across me in waves, and my mind begins to freeze up. A car reverses and another one is trying to pull in. I'm in the wrong place. Someone beeps, another person yells. At me? I don't know. Which way should I walk? I can't tell what any of these people want. There are so many lights. My eyes stay fixed on the entrance and I walk straight towards it, cars be damned.

The entranceway of the supermarket is so, so bright. There are people in there. They all seem to be looking at me as I come in from the dark. My music is suddenly loud in my headphones. It's too hot and I fumble with the zip of my coat. Someone bumps into me from behind. I try to move out of the way, but I'm more in the way. I go the other way but now I'm in someone else's way. I look around frantically for somewhere where I can just stop and be out of the way, but there is nowhere

nowhere

nowhere to go.

I tug at my zip again and drop my phone. I bend down to pick it up and my headphones fall off my head. The plastic noise is loud on the hard floor. The cover has come off my phone. I pick it up, I pick my headphones up. They are both clutched awkwardly in my hand as I try to scuttle sideways to get out of the way of people walking in. I can't pick up a basket because my hand is full of my phone and headphones. I put them down on the floor again and pick up a basket. Then I pick them up and put them in the basket. I am breathing deliberately and slowly. My eyes are open. Several people have stopped to stare at me.

I drop my wallet and cards, which are clutched in the other hand.

So far, it could be going better.

I'm dropping things because my hands are shaking. It's not a large scale, perceptible shake, more a general vibrating tenseness in the muscles of my wrists and fingers which makes it difficult to hold anything effectively. Also, my mind can only grasp one or two concepts at a time when most of it is busy battling the fear, so one hand tends to forget what the other is doing.

I go through the turnstile. I'm in.

I approach the potatoes. There's a man there. I stand there hoping he'll leave but he doesn't, he turns towards me. I choke out an apology and back into the lemons. Lemons roll across the floor. I crouch down to pick them up and nearly headbutt a woman in the crotch. I yelp “sorry” again and put the remaining lemons in my basket. My heartbeat accelerates to about 100 bpm.

I decide to abandon vegetables.

I walk as smoothly as possible on shaking legs through the meat aisle and towards item 5: Rice.

I had managed to get my coat undone, but sweat starts to run down my face in heavy, cold trails anyway. My face is bright red and completely devoid of expression. I am not able to fake any situationally appropriate expressions while having an anxiety attack; completely blank is the closest I can get, so it's what I settle for. My eyes are too wide and slightly unfocused. Every single person that I pass stares openly at me, at my strange, rigid face and wild eyes, looking uncomfortable and slightly afraid. It's possible that they think I'm on drugs, or a danger to them. The opposite is true; this is what happens when I'm not drunk or on drugs, when I don't have medication. And I'm no danger to them. I'm absolutely terrified of them.

I successfully get rice, and flora buttery spread, and noodles. When I get to the milk, there are various types of milk to choose from. I need to work out which milk is both semi-skim and good value, but the words and numbers in front me mean absolutely nothing. I try to whip my jamming brain into action, but it only returns error messages. I grab a random milk and wobble onwards.

By the time I reach the frozen vegetables, black spots are dancing in front of my vision. The small, faraway part of my brain that looks on and stays sane says in an exasperated voice “you've breathed too much and now you're hyperventilating. Well done. If you don't reduce your oxygen intake, you're going to go down like a sack of shit all over the watties stir-fry range, which will look absolutely ridiculous.” I try to breathe less.

I don't know which vegetables to get. My hands are shaking so much now that I jam them in my jacket pockets. Sweat is running down my face into my mouth, down my back into my butt, down my chest and in cold rivers across my stomach. Time seems to be skipping, jumping forward in quick spurts and rushes. I'm missing seconds all over the place. When did I get here?

You stupid fucking bitch, I growl savagely to myself, do not start fucking crying.

It's too late. A huge sob pushes my chest out, and then abruptly in again; I clench my teeth and don't make a sound, but my vision is blurring. I grab any vegetables and scuttle back up the aisle, banging into several people's trolleys. Only eggs, cheese and bread to go, and then the final battle, the boss fight: Checkout.

When I reach the checkout queues the black spots have receded a little, but there are now tears and snot streaking down my still-blank face. My eyes are even wider as I try to see through tears and stinging sweat. I shuffle towards a queue and try to join it but I've got it wrong, again: it goes the other way and people stare angrily at me. When I realise I back away towards the self checkout machines, but they are all my nightmares, so I push through the people to find another queue. I bump into backs, legs, elbows, trolleys. I bang my shins on shelves.

Somehow, I'm in one of the queues now. It's so bright and so loud. My head is pounding, my ears are ringing. I can't watch all these people at once. I try to focus on just the two in front of and behind me. When should I start putting my things on the conveyor? Is it too soon? The woman in front of me keeps glancing back nervously at me. I try to back away and hit the man behind me. The checkout woman is saying something to me. I stare blankly at her. I do not understand what she is saying. My heart hurts, heaving and thumping so fast it's almost a buzz. I do not understand her words. She's getting annoyed, but I don't know what she wants. It's something to do with my basket.

'What. Do you want me to do with the basket.” I say, through clenched teeth. My voice is flat and steady.

She thinks I'm angry, and this makes her angry. She snaps something back at me. I attempt to follow her instructions and drop the basket on the floor. I bend over to pick it up and drop my cards and wallet.I pick them up and bang my head on the eftpos machine. More hot tears course down my face. I stand up.

Another woman is putting my shopping into plastic bags. I don't want plastic bags, I want it in my backpack. I'm supposed to say this before, I realise.

“Um,” I croak. “Um, can you? I'm sorry, I jbusteh. Aah...the.”

Heat and shame floods through my body in waves. Words aren't working. My brain tries to plan what I'm saying but it's all fighting its way out of my mouth at the same time, strange hybrids of words, monstrous and useless. I take my backpack off and dump it on the counter.

“No bags” I manage, through gritted teeth.

The packing girl looks at me with extreme dislike, sighs, and starts taking everything out of the bags. She doesn't put it in the backpack. I start to push things with my crabbed hands into the too-small mouth of the backpack, I try to fumble through my wallet for my club card. The woman is staring at me impatiently. I abandon the search for the card and pay with shaking fingers. The end is so close! I grab the bag and try to leave but the cheese and noodles fall onto the floor, because I didn't put them in properly. I get right down on the floor and scoop them back in, and then I swing the bag onto my back and walk, step after stumbling step, out into the sweet darkness of the winter night.

Outside, I sink to the ground next to the buskers and breathe in the comforting rubber, dog and cigarette smell of the pavement. I did it. It's over for another week. I emerged unscathed,and now I can walk home under the rising moon with my hard-won food, towards my bed.