I lie in the bath. I am very hot, sweating. I have washed my hair, my body and I am clean. I look at my reflection in the rounded metal shower head, and it is beautiful; it looks like a painting. All my features are twisted and contorted, but I do not look ugly.
I can let myself go as I lie in the water, I can imagine that I am an artist, painting this beautiful picture, or a photographer, or in a film, with this visual image. I cannot do these things, but I can write, I can write how this makes me feel and I can describe the strange coldness that comes over me now. No picture can show this, or none that I can create.
But even now, as I realise these limits, I have let go of the calm and the stress is coming back, contorting my features in a way that the mirror can’t, and I am ugly and undesirable and confused. Now I am feeling like every other teenager again, and I can feel my brain picking up the pace and I just want to stop, to think, and gather all the strands together. I speak, to myself, I make lists of all my small problems, trying to restore some order. I try to organise them, like the spreadsheets on excel; number, problem, solution, completed. This won’t work though, it will never work and now the confusion is overwhelming and I have lost the serenity and I make another list; the definitive list, but, again, I am left with nothing.
And there is no more to say; for I am out of the bath now, and I am typing, hoping that this may… what? I do not even know what I am about to say, what I want to happen, I know, but it seems so, so.. childish. Facile. I think of all the years stretching ahead…. If you knew that you would be reincarnated, what would you do? Be good, charitable, sinless?… that is what they all said. No, I would relax, because I would know that if all this was screwed up, I’d have another go, and the next time, I would know what mistakes I should avoid, which decisions to make, when I have been so foolish and not to do that again. Every day is wasted, how depressive does that sound? But I am not depressed, yet this does not come across in writing. The word I most often come to is ‘stressed’, but stress doesn’t seem to define it. Frantic, no. That assumes a busyness, a satisfied busyness with lots to do, but too little time. The world’s moving so fast, can it just stop for a most so I can get off, and then go back on, refreshed? No, I like that busyness. But then the end is always approaching; I know this productiveness can’t last forever and then when it’s gone, the emptiness is worse than before.
A lost pashmina; two lost pashminas. A growing feeling of irritation – at myself. Some sort of lack of meaning in other people’s lives. Nowhere to go this Friday. These are today’s ‘woes’ and there’ll be more tomorrow, some replaced, some remaining etcetera, etcetera. So trivial, such tiny and small woes, when there are lives I know are brimming with so much unwanted stuff. All this stuff, which complicates so much, but makes it all beautiful.
I knew that I would return to this, the listing of the problems, the insignificance in the grand scheme of things. This is not what I wanted to achieve. I wanted to find a truth, an emotion, something I could define, in only one word, which will grow into something beautiful which I have created and that could be my contribution, and then, I am telling myself, I can be so happy. I want it to be something eternal, that can last and grow into new things, more beautiful things. This word, I have used it so much and I do not know why; but it makes sense all written out like this. Beauty is what I am looking for, and it will sound horribly, horribly vain, and (I add this as an afterthought, now that I have finished the sentence, realising there is nothing more to say, at all, but wanting to so much: I so want to explain this sentence away, but I can’t find a way; I did not start writing this knowing where it would go, I never do, and I am not happy with how it has ended, but abstract reasoning has brought me here and there is no way to trace back to a different conclusion) it is the truth.
I think I might post a few more of my pieces, at least until they start getting good and then I'll keep them all for myself and you can only read them if you give me lots of ££££!
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