Vignettes & Vinaigrettes

My favourite kind of memories are the ones evoked by food and how we are transported to specific times, places and (especially) people through it. Sometimes I find myself talking about my favourite restaurant and lighting up with the sheer joy of the thought of salted butter on warm bread or the wasabi laced mayo that dresses a well made ceviche.

I've created this very personal relationship with the idea of well roasted meat and balanced accompaniments that it isn't a wonder that no real diet of cutting joy out has stuck for very long. I have, through food, wandered through many journeys of the heart and also journeys of loss too. This may just be a half-finished quilt of stories that happen to tie into food, but they are my favourite stories about very simple feasts.

 (Also featured: doodles about food and my associated anxieties)

The Chicken And Chip Roll

A month or two before I started high school, a family friend whose daughter went to the same school gave me some kind advice. The conversation digressed suddenly when she remembered to tell me about the chicken and chip rolls they sold at the tuck shop. Of course, it was the thing I bought on orientation day because it was the only thing that seemed like a concrete clue in a world that was very strange and unfamiliar.

The roll itself is now a thing of the past, phased out in lieu of healthier options I believe- but it was a work of art to a 13 year old in 2009. Picture a soft bread roll (the long kind) split down the top and not the middle. It is filled with slightly soft slap chips and then covered in a concoction of chicken pieces prepared in a strange brown sauce (maybe BBQ, maybe something else). I liked to add the vinegary and sweet notes of cheap mustard and tomato sauce. I won't really understand the allure but there's something about the sharp notes of the mingling sauces and the softness of the roll that would bring a smile to my face if ever I had the chance to encounter it again.

 Millennial investments: Avos and Avos and Avos

My best friend’s mother makes this salsa that is sublime. It has buttery chunks of avo and a melody of corn and coriander and citrus notes running through it. It is a happy salsa because I have always eaten it in the company of someone I love very much. But the memory avocados invariably invoke are ones of being very young.

My grandparents have this garden, you see, and I spent a large portion of my infancy in it. I sometimes think I was born, then left in the soil for a time before being pulled out with carrots and left to grow amongst the tendrils of bean plants along a fence. My Appa had a tree that occasionally bore an avocado and like all other fruits in his garden, it was creamy and sweet the first time I had a piece.

 I didn't really like it.

Ismashed it up in my little hands and rubbed all over my arms as if it wasn't precious. I washed my arms in the sun-warmed water of a tap that is on the side of the house that faces sunset. I cannot eat avocados now without smelling the metallic water that gushed out and often rinsed away muddy toes and hands that had been made sticky from eating fruit under the trees.

There are some rather firm, stubborn avocados in our fruit bowl.

Simple feasts

My mother's mother makes the best toasted cheese. It is always perfectly golden; the cheese has melted and it was always just perfect. It tastes like every day after school when the relief of coming home felt like something that almost didn't happen because the days feel so long when you are young.  She has a sandwich press that would crisp up little bits of cheese that melted out of the sandwich. When I am desperately homesick for my childhood (rather, when I have hiraeth for that time of my life) I can make a toasted cheese sandwich and feel a little less lost. I used to see my Ma every day until I was 18.

 She lived close to us throughout my life and then for two years when we were in the midst of moving our lives across the country she lived with us. Sometimes the world feels like so much and all you want is a sandwich and her very small soft hand giving yours a squeeze. Because then it would feel alright.

Let's Get Coffee... Or?

I once fell in love with a boy who met me in a coffee shop with exposed copper piping, that served their coffee with cardamom biscuits. Of course, I didn't know it at the time, I just knew he was beautiful and fascinating and that I almost forgot to order coffee because I just wanted to talk to him. He called the biscuits medicinal tasting which is how I knew he had never been exposed to the delights of milky vermicelli or buttery soji with hits of elachi laced through them (I always prefer calling it elachi).

The combination of the spiced biscuit dipped in the warm dregs of coffee were an afterthought until months later I remembered that the root of my habit of mixing cinnamon and elachi powder into the coffee grounds I had, came from a rainy afternoon that turned to sunshine. And from a taste so familiar to me, that when he called it medicinal I almost laughed, I think.

I take my coffee the way I take my romances- bittersweet, stirred with spices and reminders. It isn't always wise to fall in love with boys who have candyfloss hair and captivate you over a simple cup of coffee. But we do it anyway.

Chops and mash

My father’s mother died when I was in my third year of university. She liked expressive words, bold lipstick and I fear that for a long time I misunderstood a lot about her. I think of her often but my happiest memory of her was tied to food.

It was a weekend my cousins, my sister and I stayed with her and my grandfather in their flat near the beach. We had all lived about 45 minutes away from her and up until that point we mostly just visited when we went into the city. The entrance of the block of flats smelled of mothballs and floor wax, her flat had parquet floors and a fluffy white carpet that lost its grip. I didn't think of it until now, but I have a similar fluffy white rug next to my bed. On her dining room table was a black metal teapot that had been issued in WWII I think when her uncle was a cook in armed forces, she loved to tell stories about those things. I hope that someone took a moment to make sure her teapot was left safely on her table when they organised her things in the weeks after the funeral.

My sister cried the first night we stayed over when we went to see the cricket and she desperately missed home without the distractions of the flat or the milkshakes my uncle bought us. That weekend I recall eating chocolate covered peanuts and watching (with confusion) Leonardo DiCaprio in What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

The next morning, she cooked and packed a picnic basket. We walked to the beach and sat at one of the bench and table sets and ate mash with soft rolls, baked beans and these lamb chops fried in onions and spices. It might have been a mutton chop because there was a lovely crispness to the fat and a pull to the juicy meat.

Even as I mourned her passing, I remembered the bright pure joy of being eight or nine years old and sitting on the beach, having a breakfast with someone who was pleased as anything to have her grandchildren visit.

 And I think that maybe that's the point of it all. That we can't forget.

Mythical Women and a cardboard man

When you are young and in love, you let them weave stories for you. Of their past, present and future. He loved to weave stories about her, the smile and art of her until I couldn’t help but see her as half myth, half nightmare. She was the one before me, the girl he loved despite the odds.

He would tell me how he had tirelessly and selflessly loved her- to be tossed aside.

How she completely cut him off and surely, everyone involved knew he had been done wrong.

How he had gone through all the effort of so many little things only for her to behave so cruelly.

She haunted me. Being the one he told about all this past misery and desperately wanting to make things better. He kept photos of her up and referred to them as a symbol of how he was on the moral high ground (anyone lesser would have deleted those memories and surely, she would see he was a good guy, right?). I didn’t think much of the truth behind the mythical woman before me… Until I wanted to be like her: free from him.

He likes to tell stories (after a year or two the stories start to repeat and by year four you start to tune out… He hates not being listened to but when you’ve heard the story on the same stretch of road four times now, you start looking at your phone). It’s how he humanises himself and the obscurity that surrounds him. It used to be charming when I was young and for a while he seemed quite spectacular compared to the weak conversationalists I encountered. 

Then again when you are sixteen, anyone who can talk to you about books and politics seems sophisticated. He is always the victim, the one who the world had turned their back on. How I needed to make it better and be a reminder that not everything was so dark. He did not know love or friendship and so I was responsible to be those things. He was my project to fix, to make palatable for everyone and excuse the occasional rudeness and abruptness. I could make it all better. 

The snag with silver linings is that you have to believe in them. After a while I didn’t and couldn’t.

I was in my first year of university and desperately anxious and unsure about why. He explained it away, like he explained away the friend who told me he was bad news. I once whispered my fear that the dark cloud I had was tied to him and he never let me forget that it was the last possible thing to be true. And yet the second he was gone my insides untangled themselves and my shattered nerves became whole.

He would not let me detach and the first pull away was met with a grand gesture of flowers and a mug printed with buttons. Then I was in my second year and most of it was spent home on the couch because I was convinced by him that I would hate to go out dancing (though I brought it up now and again). Then I was in my third year and at a party in April. He was prone to moods and that evening he seemed annoyed to find me at home in a strange environment, laughing with my friends. His moods were things that I needed to attend to every time. As they sang happy birthday, I looked at him sitting and refusing to try- I knew it was not how I could spend my life. And then it was January and I cried at an airport to see him off.

I was not brave when I needed to be. I waited until February, after I had sent him across an ocean and discovered what it was like to breathe again. I had to send him a message explaining why I was leaving.  Because it could never have been a phone call or something face to face because those had failed. I waited for him to settle into that flat he was excited about and I waited for a quiet evening.

I felt responsible. He made me responsible for him the way he made the woman before me responsible when she didn’t want to be.  I had written a letter once when I first wanted to run far away and I remember saying that I knew he would turn me into her, to whoever came after. We would both be women who ruined his life. I did not send it but it was saved somewhere. I never saw myself as a life-ruiner but here we are, I am unrepentant for any actions I took.

He told me that there were ways to die. To jump off buildings or in front of the red busses that whizzed around his city and that if he did, it would be my fault.  I was responsible for him. To talk someone down from that, at the expense of your soul is unbearable. So I waited for two days and removed myself from his life, digitally erasing every memory. He so loved being preserved in ways that could be referred to later on.

After he could let me go, we stayed friends for a month or so… In the same way you run a burnt hand under cold water before the reality of the pain and damaged flesh sets in, eventually it started to sink in. It was the weekend that would be five years for us and what I got was a drunken text aimed at hurting me- it just annoyed me. Because men like him don’t understand that we want to move on. They are certain of how well they gaslit and convinced us of the need we had to keep them.

Then it was July and yet again I found an unwelcome email- to meet, to exchange the remnants we had. A ruse. He needed me to admit wrongdoing, mea culpa. He received instead those things left behind. He could only offer me useless student cards from two years ago and a remark that the scarf I spent weeks knitting him for Christmas was thrust into the hands of a homeless man. It got under his skin to see me unaffected. He loved leaving some kind of lesson or impact and this last time, he could not hurt me anymore. There was no message to be left because I could see him for what he was and it was dismal. It was pathetic.

I spoke to her today. The one before me.  Because her place in my life was one of myth and legend, eventually hope. All I needed to know was that every woman before me, the pantheon of mystical and cruel women- we all did the same thing in the end. You cut off the head of the viper and run.

No doubt we are stories now. If he is the one holding your hand and telling you a story about me, at least you know my side of it too.  

Su’s A{muse}d Bouche

I have a deep appreciation of food. The kind of passion that meant I let out a groan of delight during the opening sequence of the film Chef and savoured the conversation in The Last Holiday where two of the characters discuss the joy of butter.  I have an adventurous palate and on most evenings, have settled in to watch something themed around food. Of all the niche markets that exist for blogging- one would reasonably expect that I would have tried my hand at food blogging or fashion blogging because I am a person who wears clothes and makeup. I can’t.

Heaven knows I recycle the same outfits and have a basic makeup routine so fashion blogging is out of the question (especially since my outfit today was an old concert tee and cut off shorts that are inappropriate for leaving the house). Obviously calling the succulents on my nightstand “my babies” isn’t enough of a qualification for me to venture into Mummy Blogging.

I guess the reason this blog isn’t Su’s A{muse}d Bouche is because the kind of review I would write wouldn’t go down too well with those in the know and even worse with those out of the loop who had hoped for some information. But I do eat out often and here are some notable experiences (with lashings of thinly veiled truths and a peppering of embellishments).

 Here is a selection of reviews from an imagined food blog I couldn't create:

“Amazing Scent Gelato and Coffee”

The quaint exterior that is visible from the road does not do justice to the delights that lie within. The selection of flavours can be likened to the feeling you had as a child when your fantasies of food veered on the fantastical side. The offerings are consistently light, well balanced and have you coming back for more. Gelato that mimics Nutella or your favourite bar of chocolate and sorbets that might as well be a fresh bite of a juicy blood orange… The Tuesday special is excellent.

Especially if the Tuesday in question is one where you are scheduled to meet your ex-boyfriend so he may return your movie loyalty card.

 He alleges to have other things of yours to return and you find yourself waiting with board games he left at your house and a selection of ugly shirts that should have been incinerated. Nevertheless, it was wise to arrive early with a friend and select some delicious gelato. She chose the pistachio and you found yourself with a scoop of hazelnut chocolate. Both are excellent and you will probably find that you both marvel at the texture. He will arrive in a dark cloud, order a scoop of grapefruit sorbet and leave you with just a movie card and a dour comment about forgetting everything else he was meant to give back. The peppermint tarts are excellent accompaniments to a cold shoulder being given to the man who has tried his hardest to ruin your day. Your day will not be ruined if you have a scoop of this gelato! 8/10

“ Arbitrary Number Café 1”

My first thought when I walked in was that this was the kind of establishment I would take my mistress (if I had one) to for a lovely brunch. It is quiet, an escape from the busy suburb that lies outside the walls and very tranquil. I would NOT recommend the quiche- it is watery and badly seasoned.

 However, the lack of this is made up for by a salty encounter with Em from your study group who couldn’t make a meeting because she had contracted a terrible stomach bug. As you grimace through the grainy quiche, you see her across the courtyard- in high spirits and enjoying what looks like a salmon bagel. 2/10 but Em (when asking for the minutes of the meeting) said her bagel was a 5/10

“Viva Italiana!”

An excellent choice for an intimate, romantic dinner. The Valentine’s Day Menu is a 7-course extravaganza that reads like a dream. I unfortunately had been partially stuffed from a romantic picnic earlier that day so the charm of the plate of buck carpaccio was lost on me (it was too much for a starter). But I powered through. I made my way through cocktails, a buttery steak that sung on my tongue and I conquered the dessert pizza that arrived laden with cream and chocolate. I opted out of the oysters because my taste doesn’t extend that far into the ocean- which is an attribute my friend described as being peasant-like.

I think the meal at Viva Italiana serves as a testament to how much I am willing to go through to show my appreciation for the unnecessarily grand gestures of a loved one. Even if, a year on, the same loved one turns out to be sabotaging your attempts to lose weight, and effectively keeping you by his side (while feeling chubby and lethargic) by taking you to places that serve delicious pastas slathered in cream and olive oil. I powered through and the sherbet flavoured palate cleanser is such a wonderful relief from the carb heavy courses that find their way to your table. Make a point of going back when you’ve been single for a few months and your waistline is greatly reduced. 8.5/10

“City Bistro”

Apparently, it will be inappropriate to write a food review when my meal consisted of a glass of tap water (served with ice and lemon) and two chips off my friend’s plate because I wasn’t hungry that day. 3/10

“Arbitrary Number Café 2”

I’ve enjoyed the food here immensely. Generally choosing the option of creating my own sandwich which invariably is a combination of meat and cheese. They serve this warm, toasted sandwich with a mound of fluffy potato salad and chunks of earthy beetroot. I’ve been told by someone in the know that there is an excellent coffee table book about The Beatles that you can flip through while enjoying a latte. I wouldn’t know because when said person showed me the book, I was too distracted by… Well I was distracted because he is nice to look at and I did not get past the foreword (much like the pull of the potato salad next to a sandwich, I could not resist). 

The sandwich was enjoyed on a separate occasion. Instead I ordered just the freshly squeezed orange juice and the ratio of liquid to pulp was perfect. I would not recommend having discreet meetings there because it is very easy for your best friend to arrive, suddenly, to give back an arbitrary item of clothing or a book and use the opportunity to give your date the once over. You should use the opportunity of them making small talk to quickly look at that book about the Beatles. 8/10

“Bonecrunchers”

Would highly recommend even though I only had a cup of coffee. The waiters leave you be as you read sad poetry and waste some time before your shift at work. The coffee served has a wonderful symphony of notes and the biscotti served with it is excellent. 9/10

“Clugg and Lean”

The chicken thing with chorizo I used to like is no longer on the menu. Would avoid the vegan carrot soup because it is foul and the selection of drinks seems bizarre. Not as bizarre as the encounter with someone who I used to text sporadically and then had a date/coffee thing with in March, after which I never heard from them again. They also took my friend to Clugg and Lean for a similar experience in April. Which is where I encountered him again while chewing on some warmed ciabatta dipped in the foul carrot soup. 5/10

“Asian Lotus Sushi Bar”

Haven’t actually eaten here but my best friend once went to the buffet with a Tupperware in her bag for sneaky secret takeaways- so it must be good! 10/10

“The Great Fusion Bar”

This is the sort of establishment I could go on and on about. The pillowy texture of the pork buns, the soft heat of the kimchi and the delectable chicken with coconut rice. The gin based cocktails pair wonderfully with the ceviche that is laced with pickled lemon and spring onion. But it is also the sort of place I can never return to since it falls under the list of Places I Went To With My Ex (along with the supermarket near my house, the burger place with tantalising milkshakes and that garage along the N2 with lovely pies.)

If you go, go with platonic friends and amiable relatives. Your mouth should not be robbed of the sensation of the spicy wings and gingery noodles just because it is also what you had when you went there for his birthday. 9/10 (the 10/10 was reduced due to external circumstances)

“Chaucer’s”

I don’t actually know why I go to this particular establishment as often as I do. I am not a fan of the slow service or the wilted side salad that accompanies the meals. I think we like the proximity it has to our daily lives and also the fact that my best friend’s favourite sandwich (a bacon and egg tramezzini) is only served there.

 Another point in it’s favour is the sparkling conversation you can overhear when you sit on the outside deck, sipping a cider after 12. It is also a wonderful place to people-watch lecturers who lunch in their surprising cliques and on one occasion- see two of your friends who never seem to be free having a secret tea together without you. 5/10

"Old Sicily"

The beef ragu served over tagliatelle is well balanced and the kind of inviting dish that takes you to the childhood in Italy you never had. I had a few bites of the mushrooms tossed in cream and penne and it was the kind of experience that would make me consider vegetarianism, briefly. 

The leftovers you take home will be delicious the next morning when you microwave it and try to ignore your grandmother telling you to stop going to nice restuarants and ordering noodles. Savour the garlicy delights and think of your nona in Italy. 9.2/10

“Aunty Farrah’s”

I found myself sitting in a cloud of someone else’s strawberry hookah smoke on many occasions in my first year. Of course, the food is sensational! Authentic flavours of smoky spices wrapped in chewy pita bread and served with the kind of slap chips that would be the ideal hangover cure. It was also at this fine establishment, I was asked by my quirky new friends (who I had met outside my criminology lecture two days before) if I could tell which one in their group was a virgin. Being one myself, I assume that everyone else had… They meant a virgin to the food at Aunty Farrah’s.

Again: I was still the only virgin. 6/10. 

Triptych

🌕
{Circles}

It was by accident that you found yourself meeting the marker that symbolised a circle. Anniversaries, birthdays, the recurrence of your losses. You don’t like numbering your days but when you do, the wasted ones that fall away are lessons you needed.

Time has wound itself back and closed the loop you had been lost in. It was an anomaly. Tangled up in something new and beautiful, pause and take cognisance of how far you have come. A thousand soft mutterings of gratitude rise up, joy gripped by fingers that clutched at the hairs of joy.  Happiness was here, in those unexpected places. The cul de sacs you did not dream of wandering and avenues you didn't look at befoe. Here was far away from him, finally. Goodbye is a sweet relief.

He had called out to you. Of course, he had on this day that meant more to him than it ever meant to your reluctant heart. He strained for the last hint of softness from her summer soul and was given a cool pebble. He needed to swallow those rocks he had piled on your body, in his rivers of tears. Wash the chambers of your heart and rub bleach into the walls, where it had grown dark and smoke stained.

There are more pressing concerns that wait in draughty corridors and in coffee shops that smelled of cinnamon. There were untold joys waiting for you that seemed unfathomable. Take delight in the unknown form they will take. Leave everything else behind.

🌓

{Those parts between}

I know that my mind is a wild tangle of far too many things at once, and you shouldn’t feel burdened with the task of untangling them to lay in straight lines. Leave them be, in the knots and twists that I enjoy running my fingertips over. I don’t mind the tangles, the way you don’t mind the curls that frame my eyes softly. I know how I can seem all the time. I run the risk of being a little too much, which is also ok.

Of course, I know how it comes across, it can seem that I have spread my heart out far and wide.  That the embers of my soul have dappled many faces with soft light. That the space you occupy between my ribs is a waiting room that you might soon be asked to vacate. Don’t misinterpret this seat you have, it is not a proposal of continuity. It is merely where you are. You don’t owe me a seat between your sternum and next to your lungs.

Because people like me give out that sort of affection, it seems. The kind that seems to wash over you. And the question arises about whether this is how I am with everyone. I know how I can seem sometimes. That my heart overflows with buckets of empathy and nostalgia and that the cool relief of practicality does not often grace me with its presence. It does, sometimes.

But do not misunderstand my affections, dear.

It is that cusp on the edge of not knowing and knowing everything that intrigues me, despite my tendency to ramble down long paths of naval gazing.  I want to know, although I seem to forget to ask the questions that need asking. I know I can be a thunderstorm of words, baring my soul in that casual way that I hope you know doesn’t need reciprocation. None of it requires reciprocal action. I am surprised at how content I am with this, as it is. The faded lines that could be here or there. But it leaves so much open to misunderstanding.

Because I know how I can seem, and truly it is far simpler than that.

  🌑

{Futility is a Loop}

You are ribbons of satin braided into my hair and tough sinew caught between my teeth. Taking up space in my lungs, tracing the outlines of my dilated pupils and the thought that comes when the world goes quiet. Don’t mistake my softness for emotions that should not be there. I can see the form you take and it is terrifying beauty.

Just because kindness is an unfamiliar daisy, growing through the pavement cracks- it shouldn’t be seen as more than it is. Misunderstanding my affections would not bear the fruit you think it would and I seem to misunderstand you all the time.

Retracing my steps, descending from the mountains- I misunderstood you at every turn.

I must run the frayed ends against a flame, cauterise the wound and try not to salt it with tears. Sew the edges up again. Close the loop because it is one of futility. Go on, forget, move on. Why didn’t you run sooner?

You are right to flee. I am a force of nature. But by god, you were a magnificent tragedy too.

The hills we die on

Hello again, 

Often I enjoy writing in the style of Kathleen Kelly (You've Got Mail) where she starts as if the reader is in the middle of a conversation with her. The Internet has been such a wonderful place to have these kinds of distant yet intimate interactions. For instance, you are here, reading my blog and going about your business outside of this... But also we are sitting across a table from each other and talking. This is a conversation and sometimes you respond. I appreciate it immensely. But not to sound self-centred, this is also a conversation about me. 

And I remain adamant that this is the kind of conversation I want to keep having. That I need to carry on speaking to you this way because it would be a betrayal not to. There is

art and beauty in these imaginary cups of coffee and the ugly emotions that need to be discussed too. There is a place for pretty prose, the kind laced with poetry and embellished with nostalgia. There is a place for the anger and the joy. But there needs to be a place for both, or none at all. 

This is the hill I am choosing to die on. For the precious friendships I have fostered through this keyboard. Because a thread on twitter won't be enough or appropriate to express what I need to. Because there is a need that gnaws at me at night if I don't have some of these conversations.  The point is that this is what I ordain it to be. For my sanity, I must have these conversations with you.

  

For something more distant and cold, there are probably instruction manuals that would make thrilling reading. For something more structured, there are textbooks with numbered chapters and learning outcomes.  There will always be something to suit your particular need (this is the internet after all), but right now this is what I need. 

If you want to have a chat or go on a ramble through someone else's mind- there is this.  For the last seven years, it has been this mix of musing about death, marvelling at life and reflection on the journeys I am on, even when I don't know I am on a journey yet.  

Tar and feather me if I turn against this need to stay true. Because all I have is this voice. That's all we ever have. Something to say and something to stand for. When something is unpleasant to the ear, we turn the radio off or listen to something else. This is all that will play here- a loud conversation about a spectrum of emotions and occasionally a whisper of my innermost fears. You choose to listen in the same way I have chosen to let you into this messy world of mine. 

So...Would you like milk or sugar with that cup of coffee before I carry on? 

Growth- An update

(Last week I wrote about a letter I was waiting for (give it a read before you read this.) It arrived about ten minutes ago and moved me to tears because of how far I can see I've come in a year. I will leave it below, exactly as I got it. The thing I'm taking from this is that the glimmer of light on the horizon is brighter than you can believe. I have found myself with the most wonderful friendships and the most affirming people in my life since the letter was written. I love you all. So much.)

Dear You,

You're having a day. Not a bad day or a good day but the sort of day that opens up your chest and your heart feels raw.I want you to remember this, in a year from now and every year for the rest of your life:

You're a good friend. You give and love and cheer for people and that is the best thing. You need to keep screaming hoarse and take a moment to listen for those who scream and cheer for you. You do not have time to waste on those who will not even whisper for you. Those who will not smile for your joy.

You must remember that your nature is one that forgives and understands and no matter how angry you feel - know that you need to be this person more than other people need it. Nurture your soul and forgive yourself. Remember that the things you resent about others that have hurt you, have built you to be better. To be kinder and to have a greater capacity for love.

You probably are having a weird week. Exam season depresses and you must must must remember that you carry light within you. You carry grace at your heels and you hold a flame that you cannot give others permission to extinguish.

If we're going to use June 9th to remember that good friends are jewels and that we must prune away those who are toxic- so be it. Nothing can hurt you in a way that lasts, so don't let it. You are fierce and majestic and so carefully made.

As always, I want the best for you and I want you to remember that you want that too. Choose kindness. Cruelty is a choice and you never have to make it.

All my love

The oceans between my ribs

I used to go swimming often, around the same time mulberries would start to ripen and colour the ground beneath it. Dreaming up dragons and fanciful stories that I can’t remember. All I recall is that deep feeling of serenity that came with floating on the surface, warmed by the afternoon sun. It feels like a lifetime ago and the things that are clearer to me, feel a lot less calm.

I am waiting for hindsight to be less unforgiving, for a gracious light to be cast over things I can’t change until the details blur and the edges soften. But the way memory works is strange and cruel. It stains the way those mulberries stained your soft cotton handkerchief when you were young. You have to wring your life out, between your fists and soak it in cold water. You have to agitate it until the suds turn colour and then you try to breathe again.  A day or so in the sunshine, that’s all it takes sometimes.

I’m expecting a letter soon.

 An email, to be more precise. I wrote it on some dreary June night at some point in the last two years (I can’t remember when) but I’m expecting it to pop up in my inbox soon. It’s a thing I do, you see, I send future versions of myself emails** and pour my honest soul out when I feel conflicted and lost. When I just need to tell myself something or tell someone and not feel like I am burdening them with heavy pieces of my soul, unnecessarily.  

And in the next week, I will get the first one. From a younger version of me who was probably just reaching out and wanting to hold something that only becomes tangible much later. I can’t remember what I said. Usually, these get tangled in the memories of late night exam revision or buried beneath deeply stressful things that I bury and move on from.  I can’t even expect the softened edges or the rosy haze because it would be a voice, clear and raw. And she would have had a lot on her plate at the time. Messy circumstances and a heart that did not know itself. I have these emailed lined up for years to come. At my deepest valleys and on the peaks of my tallest mountains, they have been quickly typed and sent to a random date and forgotten about.

They are markers along a path I forgot I had taken. There are letters from the broken girl, the euphoric girl, the girl in love and the girl dipped in hate, the girl who prayed and the girl who could not remember to because she was terrified of the looming exam.

 Letters about the oceans that exist between my ribs and people who have drowned there. The oceans where I had sunk down into, trying to reason with myself and the tides that wore the jagged rocks down, eventually. The oceans where flotsam and jetsam of shipwrecked regret float. Those things tossed overboard in times of distress. 

 Letters about dying and then blooming again. Pleas to a future self to make things right again. And: I did. I made some of it right. And that was the point, wasn’t it? In writing those “I hope you love yourself deeply by the time you read this”, it was the possibility that the version of myself who read it would have those things I deeply wanted for myself at that dark moment. All the questions and hypotheticals and fears I couldn’t quite address – they are all monsters I have named now.

Whatever the letter says, I know I made some of it right, eons before I fathomed it would be possible. Conquered dragons I did not know the names of, but I know them now. I have wrung my life out until the colour ran clear.

** The service I use to send emails to myself can be found at www.futureme.org