Thursday 12 December 2019

Stopped at the Lights.


I found this in my drafts. I'd titled it 'Stopped at the Lights'. It dates back to a little over two years ago. I never completed it but seen as it's just sat there, I thought it may as well just sit here instead. I feel much less precious about words since losing a huge number of these kind of notes, stories and ramblings in my traumatic phone death some weeks back.



Monday, 20 November 2017

She had never planned to suddenly stop writing. It was simply that time lapsed and before she knew it she was that person who used to blog, who used to write. She had once been a person that people had frequently asked 'are you going to do something with your writing?'. Stirred with ambition and feeling a desire to take herself out of her comfort zone, she had even considered presenting a true to life storytelling piece at a weekly arts club. She of course never got around to it. But if she had, her piece which would have to told in situ and without notes and it would have been about her maternal grandmother. Withdrawal from her safe haven began when she had a terrible falling out with members of her family. You see writing had always been what she did to appease a dark mood, something that allowed her to become another self, a thing that gave her both a sense of calm and a great sense of invigoration. A part of her felt that not writing was simply self flagellation, another part recognised this undoing as a physical manifestation of her being unable to process emotional trauma. Some people lose the ability to speak, others refuse to eat or cannot sleep. She could no longer get her words down in a space other than the bubbles in her mind, that cartoon style sprung from different points of her head, filled to capacity with words, words, words. Lyrics from favourite songs, especially ones from numerous mixtapes that she made or was given by an ex boyfriend and an older sister. Loops of conversations gone by, good and bad and almost word for word transcripts of who said what and to whom. To do lists, shopping lists, dates of birthdays alongside the age that the person had reached (she had her mother to thank for this attention to detail as it was her mother who had relayed most of this information in the past). She was still trying to piece together the new version family since the falling out. Mourning the years, the years of buried resentment and denial, of hurt feelings and ebb and flow self confidence. 

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