Month: April 2022

Hayley

The only woman I’ve ever really viscerally wanted to be is singer-songwriter, Paramore frontwoman and ‘hair dye tycoon’ Hayley Williams. And that’s not a thing borne out of fandom, especially, though I have come to appreciate her work in recent years. It’s because part of me resonates so keenly with her, in a way I can’t really explain. Part of me believes I could have been her – should have been – if only, if only I hadn’t failed at being, in all the necessary ways.

When I was younger I was downright jealous of her, and I masked it with disdain. But I was the one who was scared to sing. I was the one who was scared to be in community. I was the failure, and I knew I had no right to criticise her, so the disdain ate at me, and wouldn’t let me forget it.

As I grew older and wiser, I let myself admit that I even enjoyed Paramore a bit. But they remained a ‘guilty’ pleasure. I didn’t want anyone to know I listened to them, and any time I did, which wasn’t often, I felt oddly on display. Who can hear this and what must they think!? As if anyone would think anything at all.

Her solo material was what let me reconcile my complicated feelings about her. We have some important similarities. We’ve had some importantly similar experiences in our lives. We have similar faultlines. We’ve learned similar lessons. But through that and despite it, she was able to continue becoming the success that she is and deserves to be. And I…well I never even seemed to begin. I had been holding that against myself, and she, more than most, reminded me.

What were the differences between us that led to our divergent paths through life, even as we traversed similar terrain? How was she able to build and maintain a fulfilling career, while every avenue I even thought of pursuing collapsed around me in short order? Why could she sing and I couldn’t? Why could she integrate and I couldn’t? We were both in pain, so my pain wasn’t the reason. How could she do it, and do it so well, and I couldn’t do it at all?

Well, there are very good explanations, of course. But that’s another tale.

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Someone

Sometimes I try to work out if I could still be someone. Do I still have time to become Neil Gaiman? Or have I already fucked it? I definitely can’t be Elon or Sufjan or Jason or Guy. But there are a few options left on the table.

Why are all the people I want to be men? We’ve grappled with this before, Yve, and now is not the time to get into it.

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Half

I am sick of living in half-weeks.

I need an expanse. I need space. I need an organic, unrushed rhythm. Instead of this endless, stuttered churning.

A half-week isn’t long enough for anything. So I’ve filled it with other things. Things that aren’t anything, but aren’t quite nothing either. Noise. Clutter.

None of it is soothing, but it’s become a compulsion. An attempt to blur the edges of the half-weeks. It’s more likely to blur the edges of my sanity with chronic stress and poor quality sleep.

I don’t know how to fix it.

It’s not such a big thing, surely. It’s only one thing, among many other things, and all the other things I like. It’s just this one thing. But it somehow taints all the rest. A low-grade, background malaise, radiating, seeping into every surface.

But changing it is out of bounds. The immovable object. The unstoppable force. I am neither immovable nor unstoppable. I am frail. And I am waning.

It’s time to find a way around. A redirect. The noise isn’t helping, but I can’t cut it out until I have some sort of clear channel forward.

How to flow? How to sweep past the half-halt and focus on where I’m going?

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Will we destroy it?

I am an eternal, relentless optimist.

I cannot help but believe that, no matter how much shit we might have to trudge through first, things will always work out for the best in the end. And I cannot help, either, but to believe in the best of everyone’s nature, no matter how hidden the good stuff may be.

But there is a peril hanging above our heads that my relentless optimism cowers in the face of, even if it tries not to show it. Will we destroy this precious gift we’ve been given?

I can’t bring myself to believe we will, but I also cannot deny the very real possibility. The options for such a deliverance are plentiful. We keep coming up with more. And once they’ve been thought of, surely, they must be resolved. One way or the other. How long until one resolves decidedly not in our favour? Just how many, in fact, lurk, unfinished, in the shadows up ahead, like long snakes we haven’t yet met the fangs of? Could one wrong move be all it takes? We’ve made plenty already, bumbling around into things we had no business bumbling into. Is it already too late? Did we already destroy it, and we just don’t know it yet? Were we already bitten, and now we’re simply waiting for the venom to overcome us?

Life is so resilient, yet so precarious. And faced with the choice of progress or perish, I’m not sure we’re capable of discerning which is which. So what will become of us?

I can only speculate.

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An ache

Do we all ache for more time?

I’ve heard people hypothesise that death is a blessing specifically because if we had time stretching out into infinity we’d grow disinterested and depressed with life – no urgency, no impetus, nothing to make the endeavour worthwhile.

I proffer a disagreement.

I can see that being an option, of course – it’s easy to see how that could develop. But JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THE WORLD IS A MAGICAL PLACE THAT IT WOULD TAKE MILLIONS OF LIFETIMES TO SCRATCH THE SURFACE OF AND THAT’S JUST THE BEGINNING OF IT! So many things unlike all the others, how could you ever get bored? I would like to dig and dig and dig.

So give me infinity. I’ll risk depression and stagnancy to find out how it feels. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.

At the very least I think it would be nice to decide when the time should run out. But I also suspect that, if we had all the time in the world, our nature would gradually become less human and more like that of our universe. So, rather than transitioning from day to night, life to death, we would, inch by inch, transcend the dichotomy until, like the world around us, we simply were.

But what do I know? The Universe itself may ache for more time.

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Dull the shine

In the garden centre today I saw they were hiring and I thought ooh, maybe I should apply, maybe they’ll have some hours that fit around my current job but don’t cut into Makaloo time, and I thought about what a nice time I’d surely have working at the garden centre. And then I started working out just how many hours I could squeeze in, and what kind of rota I could accommodate, and how I could rejig my responsibilities to make more space for my imaginary job at the garden centre. I don’t know why I do this. The best object is always the shiny object, apparently. Every emergent possibility is the most compelling. I have more or less learned not to follow the instinct to chase these possibilities, but I still waste an inordinate amount of time excitedly considering them.

Working at the garden centre would absolutely not fit into my life, or take me in any direction I want to go. I’d be stressed out, smothered under a pile of dirty dishes, and I’d spend all the extra money on plants. If I had a few dozen avatars, it might make sense for one of them to work at the garden centre, because I like it there. But I don’t have a few dozen avatars, or even a couple, so I should really fix my gaze on the things I actually want, in this single life that I have the privilege of living. I have three active endeavours right now, and three is altogether too many. I can’t feasibly make it less, but I certainly shouldn’t be trying to make it more.

What must it be like for one’s deires to be immutable?

I can’t say for certain that mine aren’t, actually, it’s just that they are so profuse I routinely forget the order of them.

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