day 40
A love letter to myself (for when I really don’t feel like it)
I know that you don’t like yourself very much today. You did something embarrassing. You showed a little bit too much of your heart, that somehow always ends up poking out the end of your sleeve. You’ve been thinking a lot. Too much actually. Reliving every awkward thing you’ve ever done, like a greatest hits edition. Today you haven’t been kind to yourself. Or felt like being funny, or nice. Today’s a day where it feels like your personality has been swallowed up by this big, shaggy black dog in the night, till you can’t see out to try and find the little bit of blue.
You’ve probably eaten a lot of naughty things, and are feeling bad about it now. You’ve tried to make yourself go on a run, or just thought about it for a second and felt bad when you didn’t. You’ve wished that you could be one of those effortless women. The kind who know how to behave to get exactly what they want. Who use their sexuality like a second skin which they can fling on and off, devil may care attitude, Samantha Jones, full name, handshake come at me fellas, wearing a thong and heels casually on a Tuesday night. Why does it always feel like I’m being a woman wrong?
You’ve wished that you could be one of those effortless women…Who use their sexuality like a second skin which they can fling on and off, devil may care attitude, Samantha Jones, full name, wearing a thong and heels casually on a Tuesday night.
You managed to make yourself have a shower, being clean always makes you feel better. Maybe it’s a Pisces thing, or that you remember nothing bad ever seems to happen at bath time. It’s like the world is wiped clean again. You remember your dad sitting on the toilet seat, singing and playing you and your brother the guitar when you were both in the bath. I think it was Father and Son you know by Cat Stevens… it still manages to make you cry if you hear it suddenly on the radio. It feels like an emotional assault, to be struck down by a melody like that. You used to think that heaven was somewhere in the clouds, but are older now, wiser now, and think it might just be somewhere like the home you grew up in. That special, indefinable homely smell, roast chicken in the oven, the creak of the floorboards, the sound of the radio floating through the walls and the afternoon sunlight hitting your bedroom wall, just so.
That house was sold a while ago now. And you’ve been reaching for that feeling ever since. But I wanted to tell you a secret… in the darkest of the dark, a secret wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in a tiny silk sheet of baby potatoes. Homes are always changing when you think about it. Someone else lives there now, isn’t that funny to think about? But you are your home now. And every day you have the chance to buy a potplant, or paint it a mad colour, host people there, paint the walls in glitter, put on music to dance to in the kitchen glowing in the refrigerator light, sing a song, make everyone sit on your bed while you get ready and put your makeup on, lie in the bath defrosting after walking around eating pastries all day, cook up a big breakfast, buy some flowers for the garden, stay inside wrapped in a duvet watching movies all day even though it’s sunny outside because the body you live in is the home you grew up in and the same one you’ll grow old in.
But you are your home now. And every day you have the chance to buy a potplant, or paint it a mad colour, host people there, paint the walls in glitter, put on music to dance to in the kitchen glowing in the refrigerator light,
Don’t be tempted to settle for a little bit less… a shade of wallpaper that doesn’t quite suit you…. That makes you think were fooling yourself when you felt shiny and brave enough to buy a bright pink shower curtain. Because even though home changes, it’s where you get to be all the time. And isn’t that such an imperfect, occasionally contradictory, infuriating, simple, complicated, messy, miraculous gift that that is true. It’s a home you get to keep, always. Isn’t that kind of lovely? So please do take care of it. Think about who you let in. This is just a letter to say that I love you (and to remind you, that even on the days where you don’t feel like it, you love me too).