teawithtwosugars - Tumblr blog

teawithtwosugars · 8 years ago

Text

at the risk of being repetitive, here are the re-edits of ‘Ollie’ (now called ‘Quiet Day’) and Rule Four. They aren’t that different than the originals, but even a little improvement feels worth celebrating c:

Quiet Day

Mama’s having a Quiet Day. She had one yesterday, too. I don’t remember if the day before that was a Quiet Day, but I think maybe it was.

The best thing about Mama’s Quiet Days is that I can play trains and build Lego and watch cartoons quietly and do drawings all day. The worst thing about Quiet Days is that sometimes, Mama doesn’t get out of bed and I have to eat only cereal. I can make cereal all by myself now, but yesterday I spilled the milk, and I didn’t want Mama to be sad so I cleaned it up with the dishtowel. Now there’s no more milk left, and cereal without milk is too pointy and sticky inside my mouth. Some of my baby teeth fell out already, Mama said they were early, and cereal without milk hurts the soft, squishy parts where the teeth used to be.

So I’m playing trains. I’ve been awake for a long time, but Mama isn’t getting up yet and my belly is all growly and achey. My favourite train is called Ollie, like me, because he’s big and red and shiny and In Charge, and if I was a train, I would be big and red and shiny and In Charge, too. A piece broke off of Ollie when I was smaller, maybe I was four, but Mama fixed him good and now he’s like a brand new train, but really it’s still the same Ollie. My belly makes an I am hungry noise and I tell it that it’s a Quiet Day and to shh, but then it starts to twist like that time when I really needed to go to the bathroom but Mama was in there, sleeping in the bath, and I didn’t want to go in while Mama was sleeping so I had an accident in my pants and I cried, but Mama said it was okay and she gave me a Big Hug. My belly twists that same way now, but I don’t need the bathroom. I try to keep playing with Ollie and I imagine that it’s not my belly that’s hungry, but Ollie just wants to zoom around, and I don’t want to zoom around. I take Ollie in my hand, because he’s In Charge, and I tiptoe into Mama’s room.

Mama’s room is dark because she doesn’t open her curtains on Quiet Days, but I open my curtains every morning, so the flat is not too dark and sad. She is lying in bed and sleeping and making small sounds. I watch her there and hold Ollie tighter. My Mama is the prettiest Mama in the whole world. Even in the dark I can see her long hair, which is like doll hair but better because doll hair doesn’t smell like Mama, or feel like Mama, and I can’t hide in doll hair if I have a bad dream. I’m not supposed to be in Mama’s room so I try not to look at anything except her hair and I walk across the room really slow, because if I knock something over, Mama will know I was in here when she’s done being Quiet.

I’m really good at tip-toeing super quiet, so I reach Mama’s bed without making any sound and Mama is still sleeping. I give Ollie a small high-five on his wheel for being so quiet with me. Mama’s face is looking at me so I twist my body so my face can be close to hers but my feet stay on the sticky carpet. I feel Mama’s breathing on my face. I don’t think she did the full brush-teeth song before bed last night because her breathing smells really bad, but that’s okay. I put Ollie down on the bed and put my hands on Mama’s cheeks.

When I was smaller, Mama didn’t have Quiet Days, I think. But now she has lots of them. I asked her once if she is sick, because when I was sick one time I stayed in my bed for a whole day, but she said she’s not. She said that sometimes, some Bad goes inside her and it takes some days for it to go out. Those are the Quiet Days. Mama said that to me on an Up Day, and she told me she was never going to do The Bad again, but I think it’s hard not to do The Bad because she still has a lot of Quiet Days. Up Days are my favourite days. Mama showers and cooks nice food, like fish fingers and chips, which is my favourite, and she hugs me tight and says sorry to me, but she doesn’t need to say sorry because the hugs aren’t too tight for me. I told her that, but she still says sorry. I think Mama likes saying sorry to me. We play trains together, too, on Up Days. Ollie loves Mama, and Mama says to him “thank you, Ollie-train, for looking after my Ollie-baby.” I’m not a baby anymore, which I tell Mama, but she says I will always be her baby. I hope that’s not true, though, because I don’t think they let babies be train-drivers.

I squish Mama’s face, gently, with my hands and whisper, Mama? She doesn’t hear me so I whisper louder and squeeze harder. After lots of loud-whispering and hard-squeezing, Mama opens her eye. Just one first, so I help her open the other one with my fingers. I try and be gentle but Mama’s eye is sticky with eye-bogeys so I have to pull a bit harder, and then Mama is awake! I start to tell her about how I played with my trains this morning while she was still sleeping, but she’s making sounds, kind of like I am hungry belly sounds, but she’s making them with her mouth. I don’t know what sounds these are, but they don’t sound like happy sounds. They sound like Ollie be quiet sounds; they don’t sound like Up Day sounds. I stop telling Mama about my trains, and instead ask her if she can make me some toast with jam. Toast with jam is also one of my favourites and Mama always makes it so good without any black on the toast, ever. Mama says something in a small voice and I press closer to her to put my ear near her mouth. Her voice is quiet and muffly and sounds squishy in the sheets. I laugh at her for being silly and she hides under the blanket, making more sad-sounds. I think my laugh hurt her head, like it does sometimes on Quiet Days. I ask Mama again for toast with jam. She tells me to wait in the kitchen.

While I’m sitting and waiting for Mama, I teach Ollie the counting I learned on Mama’s last Up Day. I can count to 100 and get it mostly right, so I count things in the kitchen to see if there is more than 100 of anything. Eight dirty cups, four dirty bowls, and five dirty plates are in the sink, but that isn’t more than 100. While I’m counting the squares on the floor, Mama comes in. She is wearing yesterday’s day-time clothes and the blanket from her bed, which I think is silly, and her hair isn’t smooth. Mama said once that when I was small she had to teach me how to walk, but I don’t think that’s right because I’m really good at walking and Mama isn’t good at walking on Quiet Days. Mama isn’t really good at anything on Quiet Days. Like now, she has to lean on the table because she’s not very good at standing up. She moves like a tree in the wind and closes her eyes and does big breathing. I do my silly voice and ask Mama for toast and jam in case she forgot. Mama always laughs at my silly voice, but today she just looks at me quietly and starts making toast. I think The Bad stole my Mama’s laugh. It’s never done that before, but it’s the kind of thing The Bad does.

I remember one time, maybe when I was four (a lot happened when I was four, I think), The Bad stole our TV away. I think I was sleeping when It came in, because when I woke up, Mama was having a Very Quiet Day and the TV was gone. I asked Mama about it, and she said she had to get rid of it for The Bad, but sometimes Mama doesn’t say things right on Quiet Days, so I think The Bad stole it. The Bad always steals things like TVs and laughs.

Someone knock-knock-knocks on our door, and I jump down from my chair to see who it is, but Mama grabs my arm to stop me. She tells me to get back on my chair, her voice the same croaky-sad it was this morning, but also faster, and goes out of the kitchen. I want to follow her to see what is happening but she left my toast in the toaster and I’m scared that if I leave it, it will go black, so I stay. I’m half-watching the toast and half-listening to Mama’s slidey, shuffley steps, and the door is still knock-knock-knocking.

I carry on counting floor squares and play with Ollie-train, who is good at driving on the lines on the edges of them, while Mama is gone. My toast smells finished but I’m not allowed to touch the toaster so I just watch it, trying to make it stop with my brain, like Matilda can in the book Mama read me one time. The floor squares reached 100 a long time ago and I start making up my own numbers but Mama still isn’t back and the toaster has gone smokey and I’m scared so I stand up, not even taking Ollie with me, to go and find Mama.

A few weeks ago probably, Mama took me to the park, which is really close to our flat but Mama says I can’t go by myself until I’m eight, which is ages away, and we played on swings and slides and roundabouts and did some running and it was probably the best day ever. It was an Up Day for Mama and while we were at the park we were like the family in We’re Going on a Bear Hunt where they all play outside together, and I asked Mama if we could go on a bear hunt and she started singing we can’t go under it, we can’t go over it, we have to go through it! And we both did splish-splosh-splish-splosh together and I laughed really loud, and because it was an Up Day, it didn’t hurt Mama’s head and she laughed too. Mama saw her friend at the park, which was weird because I didn’t know my Mama had friends except me, and she went to talk to him next to the dirty park-toilets that I’m not allowed to use. I stayed on the swings and moved my legs a lot, but I couldn’t swing properly, so I watched Mama talking to her friend. They didn’t talk very long, but Mama gave him something, and he gave Mama a small present, which she put in her pocket, and then he left. I wish I had friends that would give me small presents in the park. Mama is so lucky.

Right now, Mama is standing outside - in her bed-blanket! - and talking to a man. She put a shoe in the way of the door so it wouldn’t close. Once, Mama went outside to talk to someone, and the door accidentally closed and I couldn’t reach the handle-thing to open it, so she was stuck outside and had to call Mr. Morris who is in charge of our flat to open the door. That was a little bit scary, but also I felt grown up because I was in the flat by myself. So now Mama always leaves the door open just a little bit. When Mama is talking to people outside, I’m not supposed to go out with her, but the toast-smell followed me out of the kitchen all the way to here and I’m scared that my toast will be all black, so I pull the door open. Mama is standing a little bit away from the door and doesn’t see me at first and keeps talking to the man.

Mama gives him some money, I don’t know how much, but it’s more than one paper-money, so I think that’s a lot. The man takes the money and puts it in the pocket of his big jacket, and then straight-away takes something else out of the same pocket, which is like a magic trick, and holds it out to Mama. She tries to take it, but the man doesn’t give it to her and holds it away from her, like bullies on TV, too high for Mama to reach. She tries to get it but while she is doing a big stretch to reach it, the man puts his other arm around her like a hug. I think this is nice-teasing, and I start to laugh, but Mama doesn’t look like she’s having fun. She pushes the man, but I think he’s stronger than her and he doesn’t let her go. She starts making angry sounds, and says some bad words while she’s telling him to get off. My laugh goes away and I start to scream because Mama looks scared and like she doesn’t want the man to hug her anymore. Mama and the man both stop moving and look at me.

I guess the man isn’t being strong anymore because Mama pushes away from him and comes to me. She picks me up and takes me inside and shuts the door with a slam! I’m crying now, and Mama is shushing me and giving me a Big Hug so that her bed-blanket is around us both, and saying sorry. I try to say words but I’m crying and snotting and Mama is telling me sh. She is half-way through saying it’s okay when she stops rocking and talking, and I stop crying too because I think she is going to talk, and Mama says, the toast! She runs into the kitchen and plops me on the table, like when I fell down and hurt my knee, and runs over to the toaster. She makes the toast come out and it’s all smokey and the toast is the blackest toast I’ve ever seen. I think the black toast is going to make me cry even more, but it makes me laugh instead and Mama laughs too while she opens the window to get the black-toast smell out. We laugh and Mama wipes my eyes and my nose with her blanket and puts more bread in the toaster.

While we’re eating the new toast with jam, I ask her what the present was. She doesn’t remember about the present, so I say, the present the man outside was giving you. Mama’s eyes go funny and big and she hits her pockets and looks around her, like when she loses her keys, but I don’t know what she’s looking for now because she doesn’t need her keys to eat toast. She gets up from her chair but doesn’t go anywhere, before putting her hands in her hair and scrunching it all up like she does when it’s nearly Rent Day. She doesn’t look happy. I wish I didn’t ask about the present now. She’s making those noises again, like she did in bed, the sad, hungry belly noises but with her mouth, and she’s walking all around the kitchen with her hands in her hair. She leaves the kitchen and I hear her open and slam the door, and for a second I’m scared because I think she’s gone, and I don’t know how to call Mr Morris, but then she comes back again and it looks like her eyes are trying to cry, but she won’t let them.

I get up to hug her, but she pushes me away. She bends down so that she’s the same tall as me, like when I’m in trouble, and shouts, Ollie, why did you come outside when you know you’re not supposed to? And she grabs my arms and pulls me close so that she’s shouting real close to me and I can smell her shouts. I start to cry again and start talking about the toast being black but my words aren’t doing what I want them to and she’s shouting again, saying the same thing, Ollie, why did you come outside? and shaking me, ollie why did you come outside and her hands are squeezing my arms too tight, olliewhydidyoucomeoutside. I am crying hard, from her shouts and her grabs on my arms, and she isn’t even shouting anymore she’s just making noises and shaking me and grabbing me tight and I’m scared.

My arms are hurting so bad it’s like they’re screaming, MAMA LET GO, and it’s like she hears them because then all of a sudden she isn’t grabbing them anymore and I run away into my room and close my door. Slam. I’ve never run away from Mama before. I climb into my bed and hide under my blanket but Mama doesn’t chase me. I remember now that I left Ollie-train in the kitchen and I start to cry about everything: Mama, Ollie-train, Ollie-me, the man outside, the black toast, The Bad. The Bad. The Bad. This is all The Bad’s fault. Mama wouldn’t be like this on an Up Day. I thought it was turning into an Up Day when Mama laughed with me about the black toast, but I think The Bad is still inside her. I’m scared that Mama will hurt Ollie-train. She likes Ollie-train usually but I don’t know what The Bad is going to make her do. Should I go and save him? I wipe my nose on the blanket while I think. I don’t think Mama will hurt him, but I can’t be sure, and I know Ollie-train would save me because he’s big and red and shiny and In Charge, so I have to save him. I put my batman pyjamas over my daytime clothes because they have a cape and this is a Rescue, and slowly and quietly open the bedroom door.

I can’t hear Mama so I don’t know where she is, so I have to be extra careful. I’m scared, but I have to be brave. I tip-toe, like in Mama’s room, all the way to the kitchen, and then when I get there I stay in the door because I can see her.

Mama’s sitting on the floor in the kitchen and crying. I’ve seen Mama do small crying before, but never big crying like this. I stand frozen and watch her. She doesn’t look like my Mama anymore. She looks small, all scrunched up against the cupboards. I wonder what the present was to make her cry like this. I think she left it with the man outside. I think about how sad I would be if I had a present and I left it with someone else. I would be sad, too, I think, so I decide to leave Ollie-train - I can see him now, he looks fine - on the floor near the kitchen table and go to Mama.

She doesn’t look up when I go close to her, so I reach out and, even though I’m still scared, put my hand on Mama’s hair. She stops crying when I touch her and she looks up at me. Her eyes are red and puffy, like mine go when I do a big cry, and she is snotty and shaking. I keep stroking her hair and nobody says anything until Mama’s body opens up back to normal size and she wraps me in the blanket and a Big Hug again. She tells me she’s sorry probably more than 100 times I think, even though I don’t count it, and she cries again. I cry as well. And we stay there for a long time, hugging and sorrying and crying. When I think Mama is feeling a little bit better, I get up from her lap and grab Ollie-train. I take him to Mama and make him kiss her cheek, making the kissy sound myself, and she smiles at me and kisses Ollie-train back.

Mama starts to say something else, but her phone rings out of nowhere. She stands up quickly, which means it must be an important phone call because Mama never moves quickly on Quiet Days, and I fall back a little bit because I am so close to her. She answers the phone and puts a hand on my head, scrunching my hair a little bit. I think she is going to stay scrunching my hair, but she walks around me and her hand goes away. A quiet little man-voice talks in the phone, and Mama talks back, but her voice is cry-ey. I hate the man-voice in the phone, because I just helped Mama stop crying and now she is back to a wobbly voice. She leaves the kitchen, and I hear her go into her bedroom and shut the door. I can’t hear her or the man-voice anymore. I climb onto my chair and start eating my toast with jam. It’s cold and chewy, and a little bit too pointy for the squishy bits in my mouth. I wonder if Mama is on the phone with the man from outside. Maybe he wants to give her present back. I hope so.

Rule Four

First, you must boil the kettle. The amount of water you’ll need depends on how big your mug is. If it’s big, you’ll need a lot of water, and you know you should have a big mug of tea. But this, you’ll have to figure out for yourself.

Now, boiling a kettle may seem simple, but there are some important rules you must always follow.

Don’t stand too close to the eruption of blistering steam

Don’t touch the sides

Don’t try to remove it from the heat before it’s boiled

Don’t think about the last hour - don’t think about that drive home

You’ve filled the kettle; flicked the switch. It will take time. You have time. Find your mug if you haven’t already done so. Your hands are shaking, that’s okay; just find a mug. A nice mug. A very you mug as your mother called it when she bought it for you. Don’t look at the red polka-dots on startling white. Don’t look at anything red at all, likewise white. Go and find a different mug, a blue mug, a mug that’s less you but is still perfectly good. Sometimes less you is perfectly good. Get a teabag. You can have any kind of tea you like, but you take black Assam tea. A good choice. Your favourite. People buy it for you as a gift now, isn’t that funny? Drop the teabag in the mug of choice. The blue mug. The not-so-you mug.

Next is the sugar, but your hands are still shaking and you know that this is a challenge you can’t face just yet. That’s okay. You lean over the kettle and breathe in the scalding steam. It feels like it’s clearing your airways and your mind. Rule One: Broken. You try and steady your shaking hands by cupping the sides of the cheap plastic kettle. It’s not so hot yet that it burns, but nevertheless, Rule Two: Broken. Rule Three you cannot break, for if you do, and you remove the kettle from the heat then you won’t get your tea, and if you don’t get your tea, who knows what will happen next? So all that’s left is Rule Four. Don’t think about Rule Four.

Broken.

Driving really feels second nature now. You’ve been doing it for years. You’re old enough now that you’ve been driving for years. It doesn’t seem that long ago that you were itching to get your feet on the pedals and the wind in your hair. Years! Who’d have thought? But lots of things that are second nature sometimes go wrong. Speaking is second nature, and yet we all remember the presentation you gave about extinct animals that one time. Remember? You said dildo instead of dodo! Don’t forget that one. Don’t think about that drive home. Sometimes even things that are second nature can go wrong. It is a second nature after all. It is fallible.

The kettle is getting too hot, take your hands off. You leave them on just a moment too long and close your eyes to the burn. They’re still shaking, but let’s give the sugar a go anyway. Take a teaspoon - a clean, dry one; there’s nothing worse than when someone puts a wet teaspoon, or worse a teaspoon with coffee on it, in the sugar - and take however much sugar you want. Two spoons is good. Some people say it’s too much, it just tastes like sugary water when you have two sugars! they tell you and you laugh because what else is there to do in that situation? You don’t tell them you used to have four sugars but you stopped because your dentist yelled at you and you got so embarrassed that you stopped eating chocolate for months. It didn’t make a difference anyway, she yelled at you at your next check-up, too.

Two spoons of sugar, then. You spill some, but it’s alright. Maybe you should go with three spoons. One for luck, as they say. The mug is fully prepped - teabag is in, sugar is in, water still on the boil. Do something else. Wipe down the crumbs on the breadboard from the toast you made this morning. Wipe them onto the floor because it somehow feels like less of a mess if it’s down there. You know you’ll hate yourself later when the crumbs get stuck in between your toes, but this nightly crumb-induced-self-hate is ritual by now and, honestly, where would you be without it? While you’re at it, you wipe the sugar you spilled onto the floor as well. Hell! Why not wipe everything off the countertop? There goes the sugar bowl! It shatters on the kitchen tiles but it was ugly anyway and seeing it fracture is pleasing. The box of tea bags also has to go, you decide. You have to clear the countertop. The tin jar that hold the wooden spoons and the spatulas is next. It doesn’t make enough of a mess, so you kick it across the floor for good measure, scattering the cheap plastic utensils. You realise you’re still wearing your shoes, and pull them off one at a time. Slowly, because some things should only be done slowly. Your socks offer little protection against the porcelain shards of the sugar bowl, but you don’t mind. You press down a little harder on them, feeling the pressure of the points against your soles before that moment when the skin finally tears and there’s a flash of relief before the pain.

You think about broken things as your feet burn on the ceramic coals you laid out for yourself. Some things are so beautiful when they break, you think. When you cut your finger on a knife as you wash it, for example, and the blood spreads along the lines on your skin that are too fine to see usually, but become so prominently intricate in that moment, outlined in red. The flower of shattered glass, somewhere between a spider’s web and a galaxy. Don’t think about your windshield. The blood found the lines there, too.

Rule Four: Broken.

The kettle is close to done. You overfilled it, it’s taking a long time, but you mustn’t break Rule Three. You don’t want to descend into total chaos. So you take off your socks and throw them, bloodied, in the trash. You brush the mess you’ve made under the wheeled metal trolley you bought because you thought it would make your kitchen look trendy. You keep woven baskets on it, because the contrast of the wood and the metal is aesthetically pleasing, so you read in a magazine. Now it hides your mess. The kitchen is as good as new.

Don’t look at the floor. Don’t look down. You can feel the blood between your feet and the floor, oozing up between your toes, but you tell yourself that isn’t what it is. It’s merely dishsoap, right? Like when you were little and your mother wouldn’t take you ice skating so you covered the kitchen floor in dishsoap and iceskated around the room until she found out and sent you to Aunt Helen’s house because she can’t deal with this right now, God damn it!

You close your eyes and think of dishsoap and Aunt Helen and not of the drive home, not of the drive home, not of the drive home. Click: the kettle is finished. Next step: pour the water. This is hard, mind your shaking hands. Hold the mug with one hand, pour with the other, but mind your shaking hands! Burn yourself, it’s okay. What’s a blister here? A scar there? Really? Knowing when to stop pouring is an art in itself. You want maximum tea, so you want it full, but you have to leave enough space for the milk. Bear in mind that when you take out the teabag, the water level will drop ever so slightly. Now is the worst part. Steep.

What a word: Steep. You chew on it and spit it back out again. Steep. You lengthen it and shorten it and mull it over until it’s no longer steep. It’s screech; it’s stop. It’s tyres on asphalt and a slam on the breaks. It’s a sickening thud as a small body hits a bonnet, and then a windscreen, and then dances over the roof of a car. Driving is second nature to you now, you’ve been doing it for years. You don’t even think about it when you inch over the limit or look away, just for a moment, to change the radio station. You don’t know if she had freckles. Or green eyes. Or blue. You know she wore white, and her hair was brown and loose and long. She was a ragdoll against a metal monster.

The tea steeps to a deep copper, and now you have to take the spoon and squeeze the tea bag between the spoon and the side of the mug. The not-so-you mug. Get all the flavour out, and take out the tea bag. Drop it in the teabag dish; it makes a sad, wet thud as it lands and the sheer limpness of the sound makes your stomach turn. The milk is in the fridge, and as you walk over to it, your bloody feet slide on the tiles. You hope you’ll slip but you catch yourself. Pour the milk until the tea is a good colour. The perfect colour. You saw a chart once of tea colours online and the way you drink yours was called Classic British but you didn’t like the sound of it so you tell everyone you drink Builder’s Brew even though you never have in your life. You reach the perfect shade but your shaking hands betray you; you’ve spilled just a little too much milk into the tea. It’s too light. No matter. Put the milk back in the fridge and stir your tea. The clink of the spoon on the mug is soothing – your tea is almost ready to drink, it tells you. It establishes its rhythm. You get swept up in the stirring. You look into the middle of the vortex created in the mug and drown in it.

Drown in it. There is a fine line between swimming and drowning, you think. On the one hand, it can be freeing and in it, you can taste weightlessness. On the other, it can be constricting to have something completely encompass you as the water does; there’s nowhere it doesn’t touch you. Even your insides feel engulfed, like all the gaps inside you are also full of water. Like now, in your own kitchen, you feel like you can’t breathe even though you know you can. You get that way a lot. On rollercoasters. During a break up. When you slam the breaks on just a little too late. When there’s a moment of silence after the car has finally stopped and the crumpled figure in your rearview isn’t moving and you wait for a moment in the unbreathable silence but nothing moves. Nothing moves. You think you must have stopped breathing for an eternity in that second. Seconds can do that sometimes, confuse themselves with eternities and drag disgustingly on and on and on. Your insides are clay.

You should get out the car.

Your mother said never to make big decisions without first sitting down and having a cup of tea and a biscuit. Ideas and solutions live in tea and biscuits. Of course, at the time, she was talking about going to a party that you were dead-set against because you’d argued with your wardrobe again, but surely, it must apply here too. Tea, then. That’s the right thing to do.

You wait a moment longer. Still nothing moves: not you, not the car, not the ragdoll on the road. Nobody saw you - she was out on her own, probably on her way home from the shop having spent her £2 pocket money on a Twix and a milkshake, or maybe she was a daydreamer, exploring her town just a little outside of her comfort zone because that’s the kind of kid she is (was) - but that doesn’t make this an escape. You aren’t getting away with anything. You are going home to have tea and a biscuit because the answers to big decisions lie in dregs and the crumbs, and then you will come back. Because you couldn’t deal with it then. You couldn’t possibly get out of the car. No one could possibly survive the crack of bone you heard even from safe within your seat, even with the radio on, even when you were so lost in your own thoughts you didn’t see the road. You think about deep red on white. You must smash the polkadot mug, you think, with its grisly red on white design, as if red on white is a joke. As if it’s nothing more than a pretty pattern.

You drown in the tea a moment longer, but you manage to save yourself from the oppressive force filling your lungs. The tea is done. Step one complete. Now, a biscuit. You know you should be good, just have a regular old Digestive biscuit and be done with it, it is the best for dunking after all, but you know really you deserve a chocolate Digestive. Maybe two. The chocolate will melt over your fingertips when it goes near the steaming tea, but that’s half the fun.

Take your tea and biscuits, just bring the whole packet, and sit on the sofa. Shut your eyes. Don’t shut your eyes! Your torn feet sting more on the carpet than they did on the tile.

Now, dunk your biscuit. Don’t think about blood or the fragility of young bones. Don’t think about long brown hair, matted and sticky and spilling around a caved-in skull. Dunk your biscuit and ignore the mother’s cries that now echo around your mind. You’re far away. You can’t hear it, really. But you can. You can hear the she should be home by now and the phone ringing and the audible break of a heart. You can hear a choking sob, so much worse than a dramatic cry. You can hear the crack of bone. It reminds you of when you were younger and you fell out of the tree your mother told you not to climb. It had rotted away on the inside, long dead she told you, and you climbed it anyway because you swore you knew better. Don’t think about rotting insides.

Dunk your Digestive and watch as it soaks up the tea, too hot to drink but the perfect temperature for dunking. You test your limits, hold the biscuit in a little longer than you should, and it dissolves in the beautiful brown liquid. Dunk. Eat. Ignore. Drink the tea and let it burn your tongue, your teeth, your insides. Break Rule Four over and over and over again and dunk, eat, ignore. Think about the drive home until you can think of nothing else, as if you’ll ever think of anything else. Your feet bleed and your tongue feels raw and you sit and you sit and you dunk and you ignore.

0 notes

teawithtwosugars · 8 years ago

Text

i feel sick today and right now, i’m lying in bed with two different kinds of tea on the go at once

#me #rant

0 notes

teawithtwosugars · 8 years ago

Text

Rule Four

Now, boiling a kettle may seem simple, but there are some important rules. While the kettle is boiling, for example, don’t stand too close to the eruption of blistering steam. Don’t touch the sides. Don’t try and remove it from the heat before it’s done. Don’t think about the drive home.

You’ve filled the kettle and it is boiling. It will take time. You have time. Find your mug if you haven’t already done so. Your hands are shaking, that’s okay; find a mug. A nice one. A very you mug as your mother called it when she bought it for you. Don’t look at the red polka-dots on startling white. Don’t look at anything red at all, likewise white. Go and find a different mug, a blue mug, a mug that’s less you but is still perfectly good. Sometimes less you is perfectly good. Get a teabag. You can have any kind of tea you like, but you take black Assam tea. A good choice. Your favourite. People buy it for you as a gift now, isn’t that funny? Drop the teabag in the mug of choice. The blue mug. The not-so-you mug.

Next is the sugar, but your hands are still shaking and this is a challenge you can’t face right now. That’s okay. You lean over the kettle and breathe in the scalding steam. Rule One: Broken. You try and steady your shaking hands by cupping the sides of the cheap plastic kettle. It’s not so hot yet that it burns, but nevertheless, Rule Two: Broken. Rule Three you cannot break, for if you do, and you remove the kettle from the heat then you won’t get your tea, and if you don’t get your tea, who knows what will happen next? So all that’s left is Rule Four. Don’t think about Rule Four.

Broken.

Driving really feels second nature now. You’ve been doing it for years. Years! You’re old enough now that you’ve been driving for years. It doesn’t seem that long ago that you were itching to get your feet on the pedals and the wind in your hair. Years. Who’d have thought? But lots of things that are second nature sometimes go wrong. Speaking is second nature, and yet we all remember the presentation you gave about extinct animals that one time. Remember? You said dildo instead of dodo! Don’t forget that one. Don’t think about the drive home. Sometimes even things that are second nature can go wrong. It is a second nature after all. It is fallible.

Two spoons of sugar, then. You spill some, but it’s alright. Maybe you should go with three spoons. One for luck, as they say. The mug is fully prepped - teabag is in, sugar is in, kettle is still boiling. Do something else. Wipe down the crumbs on the breadboard from the toast you made this morning. Wipe them onto the floor because it somehow feels like less of a mess if it’s down there. You know you’ll hate yourself later when the crumbs get stuck in between your toes, but this nightly crumb-induced-self-hate is ritual by now and, honestly, where would you be without it? While you’re at it, you wipe the sugar you spilled onto the floor as well. Hell! Why not wipe everything off the countertop? There goes the sugar bowl! It shatters on the kitchen tiles but it was ugly anyway and seeing it fracture is pleasing. The box of tea bags also has to go, you decide. You have to clear the countertop. The tin jar that hold the wooden spoons and the spatulas is next. It doesn’t make enough of a mess, so you kick it across the floor for good measure. You realise you’re still wearing your shoes, and pull them off one at a time. Slowly, because some things should only be done slowly. Your socks offer little protection against the porcelain shards of the sugar bowl, but you don’t mind. You press down a little harder on them, feeling the pressure of the points against your soles before that moment when the skin finally tears and there’s a flash of relief before the pain.

Rule Four: Broken.

Don’t look at the floor. Don’t look down. You can feel the blood between your feett and the floor, oozing up between your toes, but you tell yourself that isn’t what it is. It’s merely dishsoap. Like when you were little and your mother wouldn’t take you ice skating so you covered the kitchen in dishsoap and iceskated around the room until she found out and sent you to Aunt Helen’s house because she can’t deal with this right now, God damn it!

What a word: Steep. You chew on it and spit it back out again. Steep. You lengthen it and shorten it and mull it over until it’s no longer steep. It’s screech; it’s stop. It’s tyres on asphalt and a slam on the breaks. It’s a sickening thud as a small body hits a bonnet, and a windscreen, and dances over the roof of a car. Driving is second nature to you now, you’ve been doing it for years. You don’t even think about it when you inch over the limit or look away, just for a moment, to change the radio station. You don’t know if she had freckles. Or green eyes. Or blue. You know she wore white, and her hair was brown and loose and long. She was a ragdoll against a metal monster.

The tea steeps to a deep copper, and now you have to take the spoon and squeeze the tea bag between the spoon and the side of the mug. The not-so-you mug. Get all the flavour out, and take out the tea bag. Drop it in the teabag dish; it makes a sad, wet thud as it lands and the sound makes you vomit into the sink. The milk is in the fridge, and as you walk over to it, your bloody feet slide on the tiles. You hope you’ll slip but you catch yourself. Pour the milk until the tea is a good colour. You saw a chart once of tea colours online and the way you drink yours was called Classic British but you didn’t like the sound of it so you tell everyone you drink Builder’s Brew even though you never have in your life. You reach the perfect shade but your shaking hands betray you; you’ve spilled just a little too much milk into the tea. It’s too light. No matter. Put the milk back in the fridge and stir your tea. The clink of the spoon on the mug is soothing – your tea is almost ready to drink, it tells you. It establishes its rhythm. You get swept up in the stirring. You look into the middle of the vortex created in the mug and drown in it.

You have a complicated relationship with swimming. On the one hand, it’s freeing and in it you taste weightlessness. On the other, it is constricting. To have something completely encompass you as the water does; there’s nowhere it doesn’t touch you. Even your insides feel engulfed. Like all the gaps inside you are also full of water. You feel like you can’t breathe, even though you know you can. You get that way a lot. On rollercoasters. During a break up. When you slam the breaks on just a little too late. When there’s a moment of silence after the car has finally stopped and the crumpled figure in your rearview isn’t moving and you wait for a moment in the unbreathable silence but nothing moves. Nothing moves. You think you must have stopped breathing for an eternity in that second. Seconds can do that sometimes, confuse themselves with eternities and drag disgustingly on and on and on. Your insides are clay.

You should get out the car.

Your mother said never to make big decisions without first sitting down and having a cup of tea and a biscuit. Ideas and solutions live in tea and biscuits. At the time, she was talking about going to a party that you were dead-set against because you’d argued with your wardrobe again, but it must apply here too. Tea, then. That’s the right thing to do.

You wait a moment longer. Still nothing moves: not you, not the car, not the ragdoll on the road. Nobody saw you, but that doesn’t make this an escape. You aren’t getting away with anything. You are going home to have tea and a biscuit because the answers to big decisions lie in dregs and the crumbs, and then you will come back. Because you couldn’t deal with it then. You couldn’t possibly get out of the car. No one could possibly survive the crack of bone you heard even from safe within your seat, even with the radio on, even when you were so lost in your own thoughts you didn’t see the road. You think about deep red on white. You must smash the polkadot mug, you think, with its grisly red on white design, as if red on white is a joke. As if it’s nothing more than a pretty pattern.

Take your tea and biscuits, just bring the packet, and sit on the sofa. Shut your eyes. Don’t shut your eyes! Your feet sting more on the carpet than they did on the tile.

Now, dunk your biscuit. Don’t think about blood or the fragility of young bones. Don’t think about long brown hair, matted and sticky and spilling around a caved-in skull. Dunk your biscuit and ignore the mother’s cries that echo around your mind. You’re far away. You can’t hear it, really. But you can. You can hear the she should be home by now and the phone ringing and the audible break of a heart. You can hear a choking sob, so much worse than a dramatic cry. You can hear the crack of bone. It reminds you of when you were younger and you fell out of the tree your mother told you not to climb. It had rotted away on the inside, long dead she told you, and you climbed it anyway because you knew better. Don’t think about rotting insides.

Dunk your Digestive and watch as it soaks up the tea, too hot to drink but the perfect temperature for dunking. You test your limits, hold the biscuit in a little longer than you should, and it dissolves in the beautiful brown liquid. Dunk. Eat. Ignore. Drink the tea and let it burn your tongue, your teeth, your insides. Break Rule Four over and over and over again and dunk, eat, ignore. Think about the drive home until you can think of nothing else, you’ll never think of anything else. Your feet bleed and your tongue feels raw and you sit and you break Rule Four.

#me #writing

0 notes

teawithtwosugars · 8 years ago

Text

ollie

Mama’s having a Quiet Day. She had one yesterday, too. I don’t remember if the day before that was a Quiet Day, but I think maybe it was.

My belly makes an I am hungry noise and I tell it that it’s a Quiet Day and to shh, but then it starts to twist like when I really needed to go to the bathroom but Mama was in there, sleeping in the bath, and I didn’t want to go in while Mama was sleeping so I had an accident in my pants and I cried, but Mama said it was okay and she gave me a Big Hug. My belly twists that same way now, but I don’t need the bathroom. I try to keep playing with Ollie and I imagine that it’s not my belly that’s hungry, but Ollie just wants to zoom around, and I don’t want to zoom around. I take Ollie in my hand, because he’s In Charge, and I tiptoe into Mama’s room.

I’m really good at tip-toeing super quiet, so I reach Mama’s bed without making any sound and Mama is still sleeping. I give Ollie a small high-five on his wheel for being so quiet with me. Mama’s face is looking at me so I put my face close to it, twisting so my face can be on the mattress but with my feet still on the carpet, which is a bit sticky. I feel Mama’s breathing on my face. I don’t think she did the full brush-teeth song because her breathing smells really bad, but that’s okay. I put Ollie down on the bed and put my hands on Mama’s cheeks.

I squish Mama’s face, gently, with my hands and whisper, Mama? She doesn’t hear me so I whisper louder and squeeze harder. After lots of loud-whispering and hard-squeezing, Mama opens her eye. Just one first, so I help her open the other one with my fingers. I try and be gentle but Mama’s eye is sticky with eye-bogeys so I have to pull a bit harder, and then Mama is awake! I start to tell her about how I played with my trains this morning while she was still sleeping, but she’s making sounds, kind of like I am hungry belly sounds, but she’s making them with her mouth. I don’t know what sounds these are, but they don’t sound like happy sounds. They sound like Ollie be quiet sounds; they don’t sound like Up Day sounds. I stop telling Mama about my trains, and instead ask her if she can make me some toast with jam. Toast with jam is also one of my favourites and Mama always makes it so good without any black on the toast, ever. Mama says something in a small voice and I press closer to her to put my ear near her mouth. I think she’s asking me what time it is, but Mama wouldn’t ask me that because she knows I’m too small for Time Telling. I laugh at her for being silly and she hides under the blanket, making more sad-sounds. I think my laugh hurt her head, like it does sometimes on Quiet Days. I ask Mama again for toast with jam. She tells me to wait in the kitchen.

While I’m sitting and waiting for Mama, I teach Ollie the counting I learned on Mama’s last Up Day. I can count to 100 and get it mostly right, so I count things in the kitchen to see if there is more than 100 of anything. Eight dirty cups, four dirty bowls, and five dirty plates are in the sink, but that isn’t more than 100. While I’m counting the squares on the floor, Mama comes in. She is wearing day-time clothes and the blanket from her bed, which I think is silly, and her hair isn’t smooth. Mama said once that when I was small she had to teach me how to walk, but I don’t think that’s right because I’m really good at walking and Mama isn’t good at walking on Quiet Days. Mama isn’t really good at anything on Quiet Days. Like now, she leans on the table and stays there for 77 seconds, which I can also count, because counting seconds is nearly the same as counting dishes or floor squares. I do my silly voice and ask Mama for toast and jam in case she forgot. Mama always laughs at my silly voice, but today she just looks at me quietly and starts making toast. I think The Bad stole my Mama’s laugh. It’s never done that before, but it’s the kind of thing The Bad does, so I’m not surprised.

I count seconds that Mama is gone and play with Ollie-train, who is good at driving on the lines on the shiny tablecloth. My toast smells finished but I’m not allowed to touch the toaster so I just watch it, trying to make it stop with my brain, like Matilda can. My seconds reached 100 a long time ago and I start making up my own numbers but Mama still isn’t back and the toaster has gone smokey and I’m scared so I jump off my chair, not even taking Ollie with me, to go and find Mama.

Right now, Mama is standing outside - in her bed-blanket! - and talking to a man. She put a shoe in the way of the door so it wouldn’t close. Once, Mama went outside to talk to someone, and the door accidentally closed and I couldn’t reach the handle-thing to open it, so she was stuck outside and had to call Mr. Morris who is in charge of our flat to open the door. That was a little bit scary, but also cool because I was in the flat by myself. So now Mama always leaves the door open just a little bit. When Mama is talking to people outside, I’m not supposed to go out with her, but the toast-smell followed me out of the kitchen all the way to here and I’m scared that my toast will be all black, so I pull the door open. Mama is standing a little bit away from the door and doesn’t see me at first and keeps talking to the man.

Mama gives him some money, I don’t know how much, but it’s more than one paper-money, so I think that’s a lot. The man takes the money and puts it in the pocket of his big jacket, and then straight-away takes something else out of the same pocket, which is cool because it’s like a magic trick, and gives it to Mama. Mama tries to take it, but the man doesn’t give it to her and holds it away from her, like bullies on TV, too high for Mama to reach. She tries to get it but while she is doing a big stretch to reach it, the man puts his other arm around her like a hug. I think this is nice-teasing, and I start to laugh, but Mama doesn’t look like she’s having fun. She pushes the man, but I think he’s stronger than her and he doesn’t let her go. She starts making angry sounds, and says some bad words while she’s telling him to get off. My laugh goes away and I start to scream because Mama looks scared and like she doesn’t want the man to hug her anymore. Mama and the man both stop moving and look at me.

I guess the man isn’t being strong anymore because Mama pushes away from him and comes to me. She picks me up and takes me inside and Mama shuts the door with a slam! I’m crying now, and Mama is shushing me and giving me a Big Hug so that her bed-blanket is around us both, and saying sorry. I try to say words but I’m crying and snotting and Mama is telling me sh. She is half-way through saying it’s okay when she stops rocking and talking, and I stop crying too, and Mama says, the toast! She runs into the kitchen and plops me on the table, like when I fell down and hurt my knee, and runs over to the toaster. She makes the toast come out and it’s all smokey and the toast is the blackest toast I’ve ever seen. I think the black toast is going to make me cry even more, but it makes me laugh instead and Mama laughs too while she opens the window to get the black-toast smell out. We laugh and Mama wipes my eyes and my nose with her blanket and puts more bread in the toaster.

While we’re eating the new toast with jam, I ask her what the present was. She doesn’t remember about the present, so I say, the present the man outside was giving you. Mama’s eyes go funny and big and she hits her pockets and looks around her, like when she loses her keys, but I don’t know what she’s looking for now because she doesn’t need her keys to eat toast. She gets up from her chair but doesn’t go anywhere, before putting her hands in her hair and scrunching it all up like she does when it’s Rent Day. She doesn’t look happy. I wish I didn’t ask about the present now. She’s making those noises again, like she did in bed, the sad, hungry belly noises but with her mouth, and she’s walking all around the kitchen with her hands in her hair. She leaves the kitchen and I hear her open and slam the door, and for a second I’m scared because I think she’s gone, and I don’t know how to call Mr Morris, but then she comes back again and it looks like her eyes are trying to cry, but she won’t let them.

She doesn’t look up when I go close to her, so I reach out and, even though I’m still scared, put my hand on Mama’s hair. She stops crying when I touch her and she looks up at me. Her eyes are red and puffy, like mine go when I do a big cry, and she is snotty and shaking. I keep stroking her hair and nobody says anything until Mama’s body opens up back to normal size and she wraps me in the blanket and a Big Hug again. She tells me she’s sorry probably more than 100 times I think, even though I don’t count it, and she cries again. I cry as well. And we stay there for a long time, hugging and sorrying and crying. When I think Mama is feeling a little bit better, I get up from her lap and grab Ollie-train from the table. I take him to Mama and make him kiss her cheek, making the kissy sound myself, and she smiles at me and kisses Ollie-train back.

All of a sudden, Mama’s phone rings in her pocket. She stands up so quickly that I fall a little bit. She puts a hand on my head while she walks past me out of the kitchen, answering her phone with her other hand. I can hear a quiet little man-voice through the phone until I can’t hear anything. Mama goes into her bedroom and I climb back up onto my chair and start eating my toast with jam. It’s cold and chewy, and a little bit too pointy for the squishy bits in my mouth. While I’m chewing, I listen to Mama’s far away voice. She sounds shout-ey. She sounds cry-ey.

I think she’s on the phone with The Bad.

#me #writing #mywriting #creative writing #short story

0 notes

teawithtwosugars · 8 years ago

Text

I'm going to take some pictures soon of my house and room and stuff and put them on here so you can see

but first i have to tidy my room

0 notes

teawithtwosugars · 9 years ago

Quote

Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.”

Jane Smiley (via inspired-to-write)

98K notes · View notes

teawithtwosugars · 9 years ago

Quote

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” ~Haruki Murakami

(via quotesndnotes)

210 notes · View notes

teawithtwosugars · 9 years ago

Text

a little piece of a story

While I’m sitting and waiting for Mama, I teach Ollie the counting I learned on Mama’s last Up Day. I can count to 100 and get it mostly right, so I count things in the kitchen to see if there is more than 100 of anything. Eight dirty cups, four dirty bowls, and five dirty plates are in the sink, but that isn’t more than 100. While I’m counting the squares on the floor, Mama comes in. She is wearing day-time clothes and the blanket from her bed, which I think is silly, and her hair isn’t smooth. Mama said once that when I was small she had to teach me how to walk, but I don’t think that’s right because I’m really good at walking and Mama isn’t good at walking on Quiet Days. Mama isn’t really good at anything on Quiet Days. Like now, she leans on the table and stays there for 77 seconds, which I can also count, because counting seconds is nearly the same as counting dishes or floor squares. I do my silly voice and ask Mama for toast and jam in case she forgot. Mama always laughs at my silly voice, but today she just looks at me quietly and starts making toast. I think The Bad stole my Mama’s laugh. It’s never done that before, but it’s the kind of thing The Bad does, so I’m not surprised.

#me #writing

0 notes

teawithtwosugars · 9 years ago

Photo

it snowed

#me

0 notes

teawithtwosugars · 9 years ago

Text

~small update~

Two things characterise the semester so far:

it’s busy

every little thing that can go wrong, has gone wrong

my classes are good. Philosophy is hard, but it’s so interesting that it’s almost worth the 4-6 hours of reading a week and missed participation points because I’m awful at joining in the class discussions. The Psychology of Religion class isn’t what I thought it would be, but it isn’t too bad, either. The two English classes, of course, are amazing.

Being a TA is fun, although it’s a bit weird because I know a bunch of the kids in the class, and the ones I don’t know, are older than me. Nobody really asks me for help with anything, but that’s fine. I don’t get to look after the rats until I think March, but that’s fine too because I’m busy with initiation stuff right now.

Initiation stuff for an honour’s frat I just joined. It’s a lot of meetings and a lot of learning the history and songs and logistics, but hopefully it will be worth it.

I also have meetings with the Diversity Council, and I’ve joined frisbee because I’m disgustingly unfit and it looked fun, so I have practices for that on the evenings I don’t have work in the international centre. I like being busy, but it's stressful.

I just submitted my first short story for my Writing Fiction class, so I’m feeling simultaneously relieved and on edge. Now, though, I’m going to watch the rugby, write an essay, and try and get the week’s readings done, because I have a busy week ahead.

✽✾✿

#me #rant

0 notes

teawithtwosugars · 9 years ago

Text

Being Back on Campus

It’s 8:47am, and my first class of the year starts at 10. I got up at 8, but my jetlag woke me up around 4. After class, I have to go and get the keys for the Psychology building, then I have another class, and then I have work. Nice.

Being back on campus is nice, although it’s strange. It definitely still doesn’t have the homey feeling that muwci had, but nor is it as bad as going back to muwci felt after that first winter break. Maybe it’s just that I’m older now. Or maybe I’m just more used to being away from home.

I’m excited for this semester, though. I think it’s going to be tough and busy, but I’m determined to make it good and rewarding and worth it. I’m taking two English classes, which is super exciting, a class on Psychology and Religion, and a class on Philosophy and Religion. On top of that, I have a new job which I think will be really fun (and I found out yesterday that one of the guys on my hall will be a student in the class that I’m a teaching assistant for - so that will be funny.) I’m also going to take more opportunities this semester, I think. But I’ll see; my schedule is already pretty busy...

It’s 8:55 now and I don’t know what to do with myself before class starts. It turns out I don’t have much to write here.

#me #rant

1 note · View note

teawithtwosugars · 9 years ago

Photo

cute jumper don't have a link tho

0 notes

teawithtwosugars · 9 years ago

Text

“As humans, we are built from our interpretations of others reaction to us.”

#me

1 note · View note

teawithtwosugars · 9 years ago

Photo

I have no words for these Dr.Marten heels

Style 1 is here Style 2 is here

#me #want #fashion #shoes #drmartens #docmartens #doc marten #doc martens #dr martens #dr marten #hippy #hippie #boho #heels #leather #black #black leather #heeled boots #boots #ankle boots

1 note · View note

teawithtwosugars · 9 years ago

Photo

the snuggliest jumper around? I wouldn’t wear it with fishnets, though. Probably...

find it here

#me #want #fashion #handm #hm #sweater #jumper #knit #winter #stripes #boho #hippy

1 note · View note

teawithtwosugars · 9 years ago

Text

Like Watching Paint Dry

Mum made a joke that I could write about paint drying and she’d like it.

So I thought I’d try.

Like Watching Paint Dry

When you’ve just finished, it’s still wet. You can’t touch it now. The brush strokes are visible, but you’re pretty sure they’ll smooth out by the time it dries. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you have something else to distract you, although I find paint drying to be a distraction in itself. You’ll check it once or twice. It will still be wet.

Cup of tea, that’s what you need. Two, maybe. How long does it take to dry, anyway? You start to notice the smell more. Surely that will go once it’s dry, won’t it? It doesn’t stay smelly, does it? You want to touch it to check if it’s still wet, but it’s still shiny. Is that a drip? Don’t touch it. Wait. All good things, and all that. Just wait.

You pretend to be doing something else, but one eye stays securely on the paint. Is it dry? No it’s not dry, don’t be silly, it doesn’t dry that fast. Maybe you should just touch it. It’s still shiny. Oh, but there’s a bit that isn’t shiny. Should you repaint that part? No, leave it. Don’t touch it, don’t touch it, don’t touch it. Touch the bit that isn’t shiny. Don’t! Another cup of tea.

It isn’t shiny anymore. Dry? Touch it. Not dry. It’s tacky; it feels dry but you can leave your fingerprint in it if you press hard enough. A little harder. A little harder. Too hard! Oh you fudged it, now it has your fingerprint. Oh well, nevermind, it might go away once it’s properly dry. This is a good time to notice that there are some bristles from the brush under the paint. They’re going to mock you. Is it worth the risk trying to pull them out? That one there has a lot sticking out, surely you can pull that one. Gently. Gently. It looks like an open wound now, but that’s better than having a bristle under it, isn’t it? Whose idea was it to paint with brushes rather than sponges, anyway? There’s a bulge there. Press it. Don’t press it! I bet that part is squishy. If you press it, it might pop, like a pimple. That would mess up the whole paint job, but it would be okay, wouldn’t it? Distract yourself. Drink a cup of tea. Oh, you’ve dropped some tea on the paint. A nice long orange drip right down the middle. No matter, no matter. It’s barely visible. Look away.

You’re pretty sure it’s dry now. Is it dry now? Press that bulgey bit, if that’s dry, it must all be dry. It’s pretty much dry. Almost there. Should probably wait, but really, will it matter?

Time for another coat.

#writing #my writing #mywriting #short story #descriptive writing #creative writing #stream of consciousness #stream of consciousness writing

0 notes

teawithtwosugars · 9 years ago

Text

Before I Leave

I don’t know if I’m supposed to put this stuff here, but I’m going to, because it’s mine and I’m proud of it. It isn’t done, but that doesn’t matter.

Before I Leave

The plants weren’t dead. Dying, but not dead. I dropped my heavy bag next to my feet (not believing that, even including the big suitcase my brother had carried upstairs for me, my whole life for the past two years had been condensed into a bag), and stared at the plants. Not dead, but dying. I hadn’t thought of them for months. The bookcase, I’d thought of that. The bed, the wardrobe, the mirror, the lamp with the shade that never sat straight; I’d thought of all of them, but never the plants. Someone had been watering them; must have been, plants don’t survive 10 months on their own, do they?

The bedroom – my bedroom – felt foreign to me. Where was that rush of comfort, of homeness, I’d been looking forward to? Everything was the same as I’d left it, but it felt unfamiliar. I stared at the window, half at my reflection and half at the dark street outside. My street.

There’s a strange kind of discomfort when your home doesn’t feel like home anymore. Like a jigsaw that you almost fit into, but not quite. I felt like that for weeks, like I was trying to force myself back into the family picture, but I didn’t fill the gap the way I was supposed to. It wasn’t my family’s fault; they did everything they could to make me feel at home, but it didn’t feel right. Mum kept making dishes she’d invented while I was away, she was excited to show me, I know, but every mouthful was a reminder that I’d been gone for months and things had changed. My friends were still in school and so I spent most of my days rattling around the house. Mum asked me to sort my bedroom out; she said my brother wanted it when I left again and I needed to throw away all of the useless stuff that I’d accumulated, but as I sat in the middle of the floor and looked around me, I couldn’t see a single useless item. The metal dragons draped in front of the books on the shelves, the straw hat I’d been given by a person I didn’t know on a night I didn’t remember, the notebooks my friends and I had filled as we suppressed our giggles in Maths and Welsh classes that felt like they had taken place lifetimes ago, a box full of bus tickets; it all felt necessary. As I sat in the middle of the floor and looked around me, I saw little pieces of myself in everything, but it was a self I didn’t really recognise, and I certainly didn’t feel like. The plants were dying.

I had come home last summer, too, but it had been easier then.. Within days of being back, I felt like I’d never left; my friend Emma practically moved in with me for the first two weeks, and we devoted ourselves to making up for the time we’d lost while I was away in India. This summer was different. Nothing around me was different, I admitted sadly, which meant it must have been me. I was different. Hopelessness started to set in, until I realised that Gottwood festival, to which my family got free tickets every year, was coming up.

The festival was on the grounds of a manor house, which my mum cleaned every week. I used to, too, until I moved away. I’d been looking forward to it for weeks; the festival fashion, dancing until 4 in the morning and waking up early the next day to do it again, the food-truck in the campsite that made the dirtiest, greasiest burgers I’ve ever seen, that seemed to be able to cure any hangover. I packed quickly, throwing in anything that was flowery and bright, the new raincoat I’d bought specifically for this weekend. This was the first time since coming home that I’d looked forward to something. My mum and I cleaned the house during the day, while my brother and his girlfriend set up the tents. After hours of changing bedsheets, cleaning toilets, and vacuuming up nameless white powders from bedroom dressers in what were, for the course of the weekend, DJ’s rooms, we returned to our campsite to change, and the festival truly began.

My family is close. Not sitting-around-the-dining-table-tell-me-about-your-day close, but close all the same. We genuinely enjoy each other’s company, and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling as my mum, my brother, his girlfriend, and I walked out of the campsite and through the forest to the lakeside main stage (in my head it looked very movie-worthy, the four of us in a line). The sun was setting over the canopy and there was a tangible excitement among the crowds as we all felt as though the fun was going to begin.

I don’t remember much of that night, but I remember the next morning. I woke up in my mum’s tent. It turned out another of my brothers had snuck into the festival sometime during the night and had passed out in mine. It had been raining for hours already – what time is it? – but I didn’t mind since it gave me an excuse to wear my new raincoat and festival wellies. There was a Moroccan tea tent in the campsite where we got breakfast – what about the dirty burger? – and Mum and my brother complained about the weather. I sat quietly as they discussed leaving the festival that day once Mum and I finished work. I didn’t want to leave. This was the first thing I’d been truly excited about since arriving back in Britain and no one was acting the way they should have been. I felt hot tears prick behind my eyes but I wouldn’t let them fall – you’re eighteen, Kayleigh, you’ve lived alone for two years now, you don’t get to cry about this – and I drank my tea silently. It was decided that we would leave and all of a sudden I felt sapped of energy. The buzz I was still riding from the night before evaporated along with the excitement I had for the night ahead. I took down my tent, my brother gone just as mysteriously as he’d arrived, and left it in the car while I went to do my shift.

The year before, the festival had been the highlight of my summer. We’d done all the things we were supposed to, and went home at the end of the weekend dirty, with sore feet and heads that felt twice the size. It had been a disorderly patchwork of food, drink, and dance, and I remember feeling so close to my family as we lost and found each other in crowds and flashing lights. In fact, the whole summer had been the same. I’d had fun and felt like I was coming back to something, but this year, that feeling just wasn’t there anymore.

I found myself sitting in the middle of my floor again. The plants were dying. I’d watered them before the festival, but they were dying. I unpacked my festival bag, dumping everything straight into a basket and carrying it downstairs to be washed, despite not having worn most of it, before taking my place back on the floor. I was dejected. Did I have the right to be this upset? I’d had a wonderful night with my mum and brother, I was home. But I didn’t feel like I was home. Did this mean I didn’t have a home anymore? A tiny campus on top of a hill in the Western Ghats had become my home, and now I wasn’t going back there, and my old home just felt wrong. I couldn’t seem to get over the festival. No one had followed the script I’d had in mind, and now what? I was on a stage with no direction. I felt lost and alone.

I’ve never been particularly interested in football, and Wales have never been particularly good at it, but when we made it to the semi-finals of the Euros that summer, I became interested. The whole country did. That night, my friends wouldn’t let me stay in and mope. All of the local pubs were showing the match, and we decided to go. The Red Dragon hung proudly from windows in every house, and my spirits lifted. This was home. Welsh chatter filled the streets in those final minutes before kick-off as people rushed to wherever it was they were watching the match – be it pub or the home of a friend, this match deserved to be watched and celebrated in a group. Emma and I laughed on empty streets – late for the game- as snippets of commentary spilled from every open window.

I promptly lost Emma in the sea of people at the bar, but I knew she would head to the smoking area, so I went to wait in the growing queue for a drink. As I waited, a pair of arms closed around my waist and I was lifted off the ground. It was a friend I hadn’t seen since I’d left my old school two years ago, and whom I’d been close to since we were both four years old. We spoke as though I’d never left, making fun of each other and generally catching up as we waited for our drinks. Pints in hands, we made our way to the smoking area, where Emma was sitting with another group of people I hadn’t seen in years.

Wales lost the match, but that didn’t stop us that night. One of my favourite memories from that summer is walking up the street, all of us in a line, all of us singing the national anthem at the top of our lungs. The familiar melody and sounds comforted me and something inside me fell into place. I could make a new definition of “home”. We went from pub to pub, chasing the night for as long as possible before collapsing with the rise of the sun.

I started preparing to leave again. Little piles began forming in my room; the clothes I definitely wanted to take, things I needed to put in storage. I started decorating with Post-It lists: Things I Need To Buy, Things I Need To Do Before I Leave.

My friends and I went to a beach on a rainy day, we trudged through a forest to find an abandoned manor house, we got lost in a forest trying to find an abandoned manor house, we climbed a mountain and had a beer at the top, we took pictures of graffiti, of fallen trees, of lakes and of seacoast. Nothing I did was new; I’d been to all the beaches before, gotten lost in the same forest looking for the same manor house before, climbed up the same mountain before, but it felt different. I wasn’t the same person who’d done all those things before, and as a new person, I was experiencing everything for the first time, with people who had changed just as much as I had since I’d seen them, but within whom I still recognised the people I used to know. And within whom I still recognised my old self. These were the people with whom I’d grown, some of them had grown with me from the age of four, some from nine, some from eleven. All from before.

The day I had to leave for college hurtled closer, but I pretended not to notice. That is, until I was sitting on my bedroom floor once again, an open suitcase beside me and an intense desire not to fill it. The plane tickets sat atop the dresser, laughing at me. I’d started feeling alive in my own home. I packed my jeans. I’d been going out almost everyday, and still got dressed even on days I didn’t. I packed my shoes. I’d sorted out all of the things in my bedroom, I really didn’t need a bigger bedroom than my brother if I didn’t live in the house and hadn’t for two years. I packed a towel, a washbag, shower shoes. I’d bought more books, and bigger shelves to accommodate them. I packed my laptop and its charger. The only things left in my room were the bed, the books, some clothes, and the plants. Everything else was in the suitcase in the middle of the room, in storage, or just simply gone. I’d repotted the plants, they had outgrown the pots I gave them two years ago. I’d kept them watered. Slowly, but surely, their leaves had become green again and they’d started to look like the plants I’d left behind when I moved across the world. Would they be green when I came home again? Would I have to bring them back to life all over again next time I came home? What about the time after that? I zipped the suitcase shut.

*This is a first draft

#writing #my writing #mywriting #short story #shortstory #story #culture #home #leave #college #student #autobiography #nonfiction #creative writing

0 notes