My cousin dies and I take up necklace making. She was actually my mums cousin so my second cousin or cousin once removed and I’m actually just at the stage of obsessively buying beads from Vinted, mostly sea creatures, the beads, some flowers and all made from semi precious stones but I am yet to actually make a necklace. Please look out for me on the next jewellery makers ones to watch list though (if it exists).

When my dad died I made a ring in a 1-1 workshop with a jeweller. It was crafted with a piece of turquoise sea-glass that I found in Greece and a silver casing made to measure round my index finger. I remember thinking afterwards that there was a gap in the market for jewellery made with rare colours of sea glass and I spent hours down a rabbit hole of research and general day dreaming about my new brand and how incredible it would be. Turns out there were quite a few people successfully exploring that exact niche and to this day that single ring is the only item from my short lived career as a jeweller but still I’m so proud.

After my brother died I got really into flower pressing. I took to finding interesting shaped flowers on the cliff faces of Santorini when I worked there, I made dried flower wall hangings using driftwood and bougainvillea heads, weaving in lines of poetry that I’d hand write and attach using invisible string so the words would sway in the wind with the flowers. It is when I got more seriously into writing, when I was living on a Greek island, running classes in the mornings before having the afternoons completely to myself to swim, to write, to create, to process my grief.

Pressing flowers taught me patience. I was one of those people before who wanted to sit down and make something perfect in the exact time I had allotted to do it. Usually an hour or 45 minutes. I had to leave the petals for weeks, sometimes months before I could see how they had come out and sometimes they didn’t press well at all or they ripped as I tried to gently pry them away from the pressing paper. Writing needs patience too. Occasionally I’ll get a rush of feeling and a poem will come out pretty much exactly as it’ll stay. But that is such a rare occurrence, most poems I’ve written have taken years, yes years, to edit, leave, come back to, put in a new line break, try in a new form before I decide to release it from my clutches and move on.

About a year after I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis I took up harp lessons. I was worried about my prognosis and thought I must attempt all my dreams that involve wrist and hand action (easy now) in case I wouldn’t be able to use them in the same way in the future. I was pretty sure I’d be an overnight harpist sensation. I had long golden locks (I wanted to emanate the Pre Raphaelites with their lyres) and I’d played the cello pretty well growing up. Plus my harp teacher played weekly at the Ritz and had also played on stage with Florence and the Machine and Dizzee Rascal and was featured in an upcoming release with Jay Z at the time. It was a sure bet, no? Well. My swollen fingers at the time really struggled with the thick harp strings and I gave my dream up after a couple of months, if that. Although I like to think that I could still make it if I really wanted to.

It was shortly after the harp moment that I went to do a yoga teacher training. This was also a by-product of my diagnosis as when my mobility changed suddenly, it was a wonderful yoga teacher called Maren who truly helped me find more ease in my body. Becoming a yoga teacher afterwards had never been the plan, I trained in order to make sure I was practicing safely in a body that suddenly didn’t feel so safe anymore. But this was 2015 and yoga hadn’t gotten quite so trendy here in London yet so when I got back I found I was inundated with offers to teach at various friends’ workspaces and then another opportunity arose and I found myself in Greece in the summers teaching in Santorini. So basically it suited me just fine for a while.

It is funny how now, a yoga class is the last thing I think about doing. Just this morning at my local leisure centre I went into the wrong studio and ended up in a hatha class rather than a strength training class and although I stuck it out as I didn’t want to be rude, I felt out of place and frustrated. In part because after sustaining bone erosions in my wrist, weight bearing isn’t fun for me and my focus is much more about building strength back rather than bone stacking. But also because I am in such a different place now. I was asked recently if I could teach a yoga class at an event and it felt so alien to me that I’d ever done that, despite spending most of my twenties doing exactly that, that I had to decline. It just doesn’t feel like me anymore. I’ve shed a few skins and they’ll keep on shedding.

Writing is the only thing that has stuck and keeps on sticking. It might surprise you that unlike some of my other creative pursuits I wasn’t sure if I’d ‘make it’ as a writer. Whatever that means. I still don’t. And perhaps that is part of why its stuck, because I haven’t put as much pressure on it. Sure I’ve imagined what I’d wear to my book launch, spent an evening on Vinted thinking yes that’s it, that’s the dress. But I’ve also spent time away from it and not thought WELL I GUESS I WON’T BE ON JAY Z’S NEXT ALBUM THEN. It is a constant, it ebbs and flows but it is always there, always part of me. Even when it’s not a daily practice, I can always trust it will return. It takes both minimal effort but also the most effort I’ve ever given anything (I’ll have to write another substack on that).

I taught writing classes to my cat Muffin when I was seven years old, wrote his stories down on his behalf and gave him full marks. He was pretty good to be fair. And my whole career (I’m 34 and still saying the word career feels strange) is now creating spaces for others to write and tell their stories. From schools, care homes, community spaces, on zoom, saunas, pub gardens, around strangers’ kitchen tables, festivals, at the Hilton with psychotherapists, online with other sufferers of chronic pain, sat in a circle on cushions with a sex-positive collective. It has taken me almost everywhere and I think Muffin would be proud. Just yesterday I sat in an old people’s home reading poems with a group of open hearted, inspiring, hilarious and frankly iconic elders who so willingly went to some of the hard places we sometimes need to go when we write as well as the joyful places and the funny and downright weird places.

It has been a while since I wrote here. It has been a summer of friends weddings and travelling around Europe and zero routine but this morning I woke up thinking of my cousin Carol. I thought about the big beaded necklaces she always wore and how she could chat about literally anything. How her laugh made me laugh, her smile made me smile and how she was almost always late. I thought about the last conversation we had on the phone in May, how we talked about poetry and she told me how much my writing meant to her, how many times she’d read and reread a particular poem that I’d written. So at 10am after my accidental hatha class I went online and bought some wire to put my growing collection of beads on and thought, how about that jewellery career then? And then I sat down to write, no frills, no drama, no here goes my next bestseller (just yet) but just to see where I ended up.

Just to see what would stick.

Yesterday I saw Lena Dunham discussing her new memoir ‘Famesick’ at Hackney Empire. I once wrote a play that was performed at Hackney Empire but in a back building with actors we had to source ourselves and not on the big stage where I naively assumed it would be, where Lena now lounged in front of me. She did the whole show sitting on a bed because she said she this is where she wrote the entirety of the book and wanted it to feel immersive and cosy. I am currently writing this from mine so I hope you too might be reading this under the comfort of your covers.

I was halfway through the final chapter of the audiobook before Lena walked on stage, having had her in my ears for 11 hours and 24 minutes over the last four days. I inhaled it. I took walks just to continue listening, ignored incoming phone calls about important subjects like the fact the house I live in is falling into the ground or from the pharmacist about the wrong meds they supplied me with last month. I took extra breaks from my other writing to listen to it, on the grounds that it would surely help me (I very much prescribe to the ‘writing isn’t just on the page, you have to live to write’ way of thinking and let’s be honest, this was living). Dropping and losing my headphones halfway through couldn’t stop me. I immediately ordered new ones and whilst waiting for them to arrive, took to listening aloud on the speaker of my phone - admittedly an act I would berate others for and call an ‘ick’.

It is hard to quantify what ‘Girls’ meant to me. Like many others, clearly - as yesterday there were over a thousand in the audience - I felt seen watching it, in a way that no other series had, or perhaps has since, managed. Naturally, I was interested in the behind-the-scenes stories that her memoir promised to tell, as well as the off screen, on screen relationships and was intrigued as to how much of the narratives were based on real true life. It turns out, a lot. Much has changed in my life (and Lena’s) since Girls but I have still felt a strong affinity to her and her writing. Particularly in latter years as I came to understand that she too has struggled with chronic illness for over a decade. Her words on this in the memoir brought me to tears on multiple occasions, joggers glancing at me as I did a third loop of Peckham Rye park with Lena on speaker. I felt that I was listening to my best pal leaving me a particularly long voice note in which I was realising that someone close to me had known this struggle too, this whole time, and I was less alone.

I was shocked to hear that whilst *that* ‘good soup’ scene unfolds, where Hannah and Adam sit across from each other at the diner and know it is really over for good this time, Lena’s arm was shattered under the table. An accident on set shortly before had caused her elbow to completely shatter but she was encouraged to just keep filming. Since listening to her account of this, I’ve watched the scene over and over again, searching her face for pain (of which there is much - Hannah and Adam are over after all these years but ALSO, also, Lena’s literal bones were crumbling just out of shot). It shocked me but it was also familiar. I haven’t written or acted in an extremely popular television show opposite Adam Driver but I have been teaching groups of children, doing my tax return, been sat at a friends birthday party making small talk whilst my bones have been quietly yet vehemently eroding. There are many other accounts in the book like this. Various moments where Lena was experiencing unimaginable pain in her body but is told by everyone else to essentially just get on with it. Keep filming, keep writing, keep living as if the inside of her body was not at war with itself.

Like Lena, much of my twenties and early thirties I’ve been experiencing my life whilst in great physical pain. And much of that time I too have just got on with it. To appease those around me, the system? Hours, days, months, years where, despite the fact I was on chemo drugs for RA, despite the fact my bones were eroding even though I was told they weren’t to later find out they were and now there was nothing to be done about it except very strong pharmaceuticals, despite the fact my eyes were so dry I could hardly see the person I was sitting right next too (dry eye is a lesser known rheumatoid arthritis symptom), despite the fact the concoction of medication had given me a heap of extra things to contend with such as the need to pee an inordinate amount of times per hour that I stopped drinking as much water to make it less agonising, DESPITE IT ALL, I was expected to carry on teaching, writing, creating, visiting, replying to texts, going to parties, celebrating engagements, weddings, imminent arrivals of babies. (I hope the length of that sentence was as exhausting as its sentiment). I was struck by Dunham’s accounts of those people closest to her and how her illnesses caused an aching gap (literally and metaphorically) between them. Even the ones who loved her the most, were flummoxed by the ways in which her body stopped her from working, from showing up, from being the type of friend she was expected to be.

This summer I will be a bridesmaid for the seventh time in my life. I feel genuinely honoured each time and love these beautiful women so dearly, but it has begun to strike me as both strange and quietly sad how a group of disparate friends can rally so seamlessly with their energy, money and time for weddings. We organise hen parties, sometimes two, attend fittings, create thoughtful gifts, and manage logistics on the day from checking the right place setting names are on the tables to making sure the weird uncle isn’t doing anything weird. Yet that same collective effort is so rarely mobilised for a friend whose body is failing them. Just this weekend I sat with a much loved friend who had been through a severe flare and, in her lowest moment, felt she had no one to call. Community has become a buzzword of late, but for many it remains abstract, something we perform rather than actually live.

When the occasion is recognised by society (weddings, baby showers etc); we show up with vim and vigour. To be clear this is no criticism of any friend or bride in my present, past or future, but of a wider social script that teaches us which moments are worthy of collective care and which are not. Those whose lives fall outside of these conventional markers, whether by choice or not, often find their milestones, creative work, struggles and quiet triumphs less held, less celebrated. I have had this conversation again and again with friends walking less traditional paths. We celebrate loudly for what is expected, but not always for what is real. If we extended that same energy to the everyday - to illness, to small wins, to grief, to simply checking in, then perhaps community wouldn’t feel like such an elusive idea after all.

I do have friends that cultivate community in small yet profound ways and who I have learnt so much from. Just this morning I was discussing these thoughts with another chronically ill pal who suggested reading ‘Crip Kinship’ which I promptly ordered and can’t wait to dive into. I’ve been added to Whatapp groups to co-ordinate care for these friends and have shown up to their houses ready to offer all I can give, even if it isn’t that much. Capacity is named, check-ins are invited, permission is asked for before launching into a story about a health scare or hospital visit that others may find triggering.

This is all to say that I am still learning. About my own unconscious biases, about the ways in which I can and should ask for help, about how much writing (and reading) helps me to feel my way through this complex journey of living in a body that isn’t going to get better despite how many people hope I am well. I am grateful to all the writers who have written about their experiences in ways I only wish I might be able to one day. I am so grateful to Lena and the hours I have spent with her this last week, weeping healing tears listening to ‘Famesick’. Now I have a hard copy, I plan to start again right from the beginning.

I am also grateful to myself for creating spaces that I felt a lack of, spaces I desperately needed back when I was younger and felt so terrifyingly alone. And I will end in the chicest way possible, with a plug of one example of these spaces, my Writing Pain course, starting next Monday for 4 weeks, in which I will offer you a tender, supportive space to write alongside a tender and supportive community. Let’s do this hard sh*t together, express ourselves, learn from each other and tell our (sick) stories.

I was given Dorothy Bear by one of my mums friends when I was in year six. It sounds like a regular anecdote, a cute tiny bear gifted by a family friend when I was a child. However this was not quite the case. Dorothy is my mums name and when I was nine I began to experience intense night terrors that she (my mum not the bear) was going to get killed in a car crash.

It started soon after the news that my uncle had died. He lived in Hollywood for many years and was quite a prolific pianist and composer. I don’t remember him much, other than how scared I was of the aunt he was married too, but I do remember him sitting at a piano in our house when I was a toddler and the way my dads face lit up as he played. When he died, my dads face lost a bit of the light. I remember that too. Fairly soon after my beloved cat Muffin killed my almost as beloved rabbit Fudge. I was inconsolable. Life was not the piano playing, pet cuddling playful world I had imagined it was.

Then it began. Night after night. The terrors. The crash. Always my mum at the wheel. What followed was a premonition that in the non-nightmare world this would happen too, only if I wasn’t there in the passenger seat to protect her. My mums life changed that year. I did go back to school after that summer of the night-terror but only if she came with me. She started reading up on books about home-schooling. The local church prayed for me every week. Mum came day in, day out to the local primary and sat in the staffroom while I was in class. I was let out at intervals to go and check she was still alive.

Don’t worry, I’ve gone over this in therapy many times. The worst part was when the school locked me in a room with two teachers, probably younger than I am now and inexperienced with this particular type of troubled child, and told my mum to leave. Rip-the-band-aid-off-type-method. What they didn’t realise was, in my eyes, they were literally killing my mum. When she was out of my sight, when she got into the car to drive away, I was sure she would be dead. At their hands, she would be dead.

The crash played over and over in my head. I kicked and shoved and hit those poor teachers, pulled my hair out, banged my skull against the wall until I bled and screamed the type of scream you imagine coming from that famous painting aptly named ‘The Scream’. But wouldn’t you? If your mum was about to die because two teachers locked you in a classroom on a Tuesday before lunch break and told her to leave. Just like that. Wouldn’t you? I realise in hindsight the logic is a little iffy but it was the only true thing to me then. She was going to die if I wasn’t there to save her.

Those months I didn’t play out, I didn’t draw, I didn’t write or all the other things my nine year old self had loved. I just thought about windshield wipers and burning metal and how I could never survive alone.

This is where Dorothy Bear came in. As the intensity of my anxiety eased, after family therapy visits, herbal concoctions, kids meditation and yoga classes, dietary changes and whatever else my parents thought might save us all, I was gifted Dorothy Bear. The idea was, I think, that mum would always be with me. An essence of her at least. That if for some reason my mum might actually need to have a life of her own and not spend her waking hours sat worrying about me in the staff room of the local primary, I could still have Dorothy Bear held tightly in my clammy palm and know she was okay. As long as I had Dorothy Bear it would all be okay.

It is funny to think how an object can hold so much, mean so much, literally life or death and then later be forgotten and left to bed-rot behind the holed socks and pants. Until now I haven’t thought of Dorothy Bear in at least a decade. The bears namesake, my mum Dorothy, is absolutely fine. I mean as fine as anyone can be with wars and genocides and disturbing men in power bubbling in the background. Do I still call her everyday on the phone even at almost 34 years old, yes, yes I do. Is that to check she is still alive and the car crash, or any other freak accident, hasn’t happened, come to think of it, perhaps there is a tiny shadow of that still in there.

But I’m not as scared of death anymore. I’ve faced it a few more times since then. My brother and dad both passed away in my twenties within a year of each other. I’ve also looked straight into the eyes of my own potential demise many times after being diagnosed at 21 with rheumatoid arthritis. In a medical professionals voice; a progressive, incurable but treatable, debilitating disease that I’ve read on late night internet holes shortens your life span and can cause a whole heap of other health complications. Including losing a number of toenails, but that’s for another time. What it has done is gift me with an overly cliche zest for life. I like my lemons. I like my life. Sweet and tart and juicy and ripe. I’ve created a life that come reckoning day I’d look back on and beam.

I can’t tell you when the nightmares stopped. Only that they did stop. And no one crashed. But I am still cautious when I cross the road. Look left, look right. Ideally a zebra crossing or at the lights. Stop, look, listen, live (anyone else from the 90’s?!) I can be an anxious passenger too, although I was once in the front seat of a car that stalled going up a steep mountain on a Greek island and started rolling back towards the sea and I stayed very calm and collected considering. So there’s that.

Most of my friends learnt seventeen years ago but I don’t yet have my drivers licence. But I have a feeling that this might just be the year. The year I get behind the wheel. The year I wind my windows down, music blaring, free. Ah ah ah ah stayin’ aliiiiiiiive. The year I retrieve Dorothy Bear from the dark, dusty depths of the wardrobe. Just so she can watch me.

I should be at my appointment but I’m walking past Mem’s café on the corner where two builders share a laugh over a steaming coffee. The house on Ivydale has new boxes full of junk; a moth eaten teddy, one ear, a half empty carton of milk - full fat, a pile of unopened letters, I am meant to be in the patients chair regurgitating my latest bodily functions but now I am listening to the neighbours whistle, first lilting as he trims his hedge, a sausage dog, the hedge I mean, then urgent, insistent, his whistle that is, and I try to decipher its tones, his breaths and I wonder if he is trying to communicate with me through morse-code-sound and then I see the cat, the orange one who bit me once, asleep on top of the bins despite the stench of rotting peels and at every other house I pass there is a person at the window not noticing the vulnerable trees shaking off their leaf coat to reveal their skeletal trunks under the slow blink of December sun, becoming wide-eyed in its crispness but instead they’re glued to screens, apologising to their Team for being on mute again yet thank fuck the birds can never mute / unmute, they sing despite themselves and as I think right about now I should be having my blood pressure checked, that squeeze around the bicep slow release I am wandering through the shortcut by the estate, I’m passing the one with the front garden full of gnomes and flags and water features and a gumball machine where earlier this year, in late summer, people spilled out onto the street and the smell of spiced meat threw rings in the air and I was inevitably, on my way to another appointment and now I am at the small stone hare, just a few steps further, outside the brick house, holding his paws together in prayer up to the heavens while his ears droop down towards hell and instead of having my weight updated, a healthy BMI, I am right there with the hare, please god, gaia, father, mother, earth, anyone if you can hear me and I should be with the nurse now just re-reading my notes but I’m praying all the way down the alley past the small playpark without any swings, there must have once been swings but only the structure remains, the metal and bolts and ropes that just hang loose, there is an intimidating confidence in their hanging, as if they knew they just needed to hold steady in the absence and I find myself standing there, right in that aching spot and think, around now is when I would be getting bloods, the sharp scratch, the crimson vials, the emptying out, the taking and I leave the park and wave to the man collecting the leaves in three neat piles and the leaves atop the third pile look diseased, the colours shine brighter than the rest but are blotchy; fungus or insects I speculate and I want to ask the man if he made the third pile solely for the diseased leaves or if they just found each other and I think about my friend asking how it would feel to open up my care and I wonder what the man plans to do with this pile of beautiful dead leaves that the tree severed, abscission its called, and if the tree feels better, healthier from this detachment and I should be with the specialist now ultrasounding my wrist or pressing down on my pillowy knees but instead I stop at the small patch of space where locals decided to make a communal garden and grow strawberries and lavender and those purple plants that look like butterflies about to take off, I had one once - oxalis is the name - that slid off my drawers and smashed, a lick of soil salivating all over the carpet and the carpet in my room makes me think of my bed and how it feels to share it, to let someone in, to let someone into my sick bed, by which I mean that if I had been at my appointment then now I’d be on the bus home, opening the letter on MyChart where the specialist reiterates what I already know to be true, speaks of my body, about my body, in third person, this patient was discussed in clinic today, outcome as documented below, and the distance grows more between this patient and me, a statement of progression toward a place I did not mean to, want to progress too and below that still, the dates would be stated for the next appointment and the next and the next next next one but for now, just for now, I’m not a body but a whistle, a naked oak, a never muted bird, a hare in prayer, a missing swing, a pile of leaves, a gumball machine, a memory of summer, a butterfly disguised as a plant or a plant disguised as a butterfly and either way by the looks of it, just on the edge of taking flight and it feels good to be here.

Setting: A Tottenham high rise.

If it were a movie, the shot would start wide and in slow motion begin to zoom in, soft focus, slightly blurred, music beginning to play.

Small white discs floating, dancing, circling through the air from an open window on the tenth floor. A passer-by might have stopped to take in the ethereal beauty like they were snowflakes or tiny UFO’s. Then an immense acrid sound, a yellow shattering. A cry from the window. A heave. A smash.

He’d been hiding under his desk when I arrived. Shuddering with a kind of anger that almost had its own smell, its own particular shade of red. His body was convulsing with it. I’d seen it many times. My main memory of those years being the sound of something breaking. A glass, a window, the wall, my sense of self. I can’t remember now what had happened this particular time, I think he’d had a call from someone in the family that had put him in this state. I approached with caution, knowing that any moment I could bear the brunt of it. That’s when I grabbed the Ikea plates from the cupboard. I checked below to make sure there was no one walking anywhere near the vicinity then handed them to H. He threw them one after the other after the other. I watched them spin like dancing moons until an almighty crash echoed onto the concrete below. He was much calmer after that. I remember a wild smile lifting his face. I remember the sense of relief at what I had swerved.

There is another memory. Two friends and I sat in our living room in Dalston. H and I had broken up by this point and it was after the hiding under the bed incident. He’d sent threatening texts, said he was on his way over, that he hoped I had protection for what was coming. Rebecca, Jordan and I had had a few glasses of wine and I think rather than panicking, had found it amusing. Its strange to think now how often I had masked the fear and intensity of what was happening with humour or the sentiment that it wasn’t that bad. I still find myself telling the story of an ex hiding under my bed for four hours with laughter despite it being chilling, the actual stuff of nightmares and the thrillers I can’t watch on TV. Anyway, Rebecca fetched the hoover and refilled our wine glasses and we each sat back on the sofa in wait, holding different hoover parts as if they were weapons to protect us from H’s wrath. I’m not sure if was that night, or a different one when H slept in the stairwell to our flat. We’d refused him entry to the building but after pressing the buzzers over and over again of all the flats in the building eventually another poor tenant had let him in. We had turned the music up so loud to drown out all the banging at the door. Put the locks on and blinds down on the windows in case he found a way to try and climb in (there wasn’t much that H wouldn’t attempt). In the morning I found him curled up in the stairwell and climbed over him, still asleep, to leave and get to work.

To continue where I dramatically left off in my last substack, the night of the hiding under the bed fiasco (see Part 1 for context) H did try and jump out of the window in front of all my shocked after-party guests. Unsure if they were tripping out or if there was in fact a young man suddenly appeared from my room, now lifting up the windows of the second floor flat and making to throw himself out. Luckily there were other men there who managed to pin him down, everyone manically blocking any other potential dramatic escape routes. H made for the door then and I followed him down into the road where he ran in front of the cars, the beeps and screeches ringing through my whole body. I wasn’t callous. I didn’t want him to die. It was hard to know what was real and what was crying wolf; the hospital visits that turned out to be untrue, the video call with a broken bottle in hand. He’d threatened me for years with his death. And now that I’d finally left, he’d ramped up the volume on this threat to try and get his control back. But I knew, I knew deep in my bones, if *I* didn’t escape myself, I wouldn’t survive it.

We found love in a hopeless place. Rihanna and Calvin Harris’ hit song. H had sent to me many times saying it reminded him of us. The video particularly. I still shudder if I ever hear that song. Rihanna and her lover, surrounded by fireworks, lying fully clothed the bath, smoking cigarettes, blowing into each others mouths, close ups of the fag slowly burning to its edge, the room they’re sleeping in messy and unkept, pushing each other around in trolleys, eyes wide with love, lust and pills. So much passionate kissing and so much fighting, Rihanna crying, packing her bags, by the end of the video leaving their sad, sad room, their hopeless situation for good.

Looking back at the diary I kept around this time, the entries are very sporadic with months to a year in between. It is shocking. The way I write about H is not incriminating in any way. In fact it is with a lot of grace and self deprecation. I wonder if I’ve misremembered. I wonder why my mind has decided to vilify him and if perhaps I’ve made it all up. On a recent visit back to my mums in Cambridge I ask if she remembers me going to meet H’s dad which I wrote about in part 1. She says she does. We chat about my memories and her memories of that time and how they correlate. Her memory is also hazy and there were long gaps when I simply didn’t tell her what was going on. I didn’t even know myself what was happening. There are a couple of lines among the ‘I love him so much, he was my best friend, I miss him’ that point more towards something darker.

Thursday 20th December 2012

‘I’ve seen and spoken to H a bit but he is taking so many drugs recently and is pretty scary. He also gets pretty obsessive. He knows about Mark.’ (Mark was the new guy I was dating).

Wednesday Feb 2013

‘Love is so hard though. Even at only 20 I feel I have faced and am facing so many difficult situations with boys. Only this evening I was reading my notes from Rome and thinking of H and reminiscing. Sometimes I seem to blank out most of the bad times.’

There are other more cryptic bits of writing that feel slightly nonsensical but also ominous reading back.

‘H a lake, and I, a boat, first ripples then whirlpools, I lose myself in them still. I read that traces of pollution from the Gulf of Mexico were found in the breast milk of Inuits. That is to say we pollute each other. That is to say, I think my boat might have already been drowned.’

I sat in a therapists room once and said well he never hit me. Which he didn’t. He did twist my arm, there were a few scratches, penetration with a bottle, a couple of burn marks, and of course the constant threats, sitting in the living room holding parts of a hoover as self defence. So there was violence. But he didn’t hit me. But rather than scars it was something deeper that was left after that relationship. A trauma that I didn’t understand as a trauma until many years later.

I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis about a year after we’d broken up. He’d still been in and out of my life in various ways. I was 21 years old. I’d been taking drinking, taking drugs, going out dancing until the early hours trying to forget. H had a new girlfriend. Then another. They always ended up contacting me. Saying he spoke about me. Asking me if we were in touch. We weren’t but my flatmates at the time often spotted him walking up and down Bethnal Green Road, just around the corner from our house. A year later I’d have an intoxicated heart to heart with one of his exes, they’d dated pretty soon after we’d broken up. She admitted how jealous she’d been of me. How he’d talked about me, compared her to me, how insecure it had made her. How it had created this rift. She told me they’d had a tumultuous relationship. Had drawn knives on each other once in a big row. I remember thinking myself lucky. That I had been so unresponsive, so mild and meek that I’d weathered it without such intense impulsiveness. But I hadn’t really. I hadn’t weathered it at all.

In Gabor Maté’s The Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress, he writes about rheumatoid arthritis arising in patients who have had their power taken away in some way, who may have experienced trauma but were reluctant to seek help, who were hyper-independent, compelled to meet others’ expectations, and had difficulty expressing anger. He writes, “when we have been prevented from learning to say no, our bodies may end up saying it for us.” Of course there were likely other factors in my developing RA, and I by no means blame myself; rather, I almost feel thankful that my body found a way to protect me, to begin processing trauma before I had the tools to know how.

I mostly left my wild life behind soon after the diagnosis, discovering yoga, meditation, and becoming teetotal for a few years in my early to mid-twenties. Still, I find it interesting that I got sick after the most stressful few years of my young life. On a Reddit thread with other RA sufferers, a place I find myself often these days, many deeply condemn Maté’s work, dismissing it as unscientific or reductionist. Maybe they’re right. But something in his writing stays with me, not as fact but as something gentler, more soothing, that I can hold. There’s a small kind of peace in thinking that my body wasn’t betraying me but saving me, speaking up, bringing forth with vigour the ‘no’ that had been buried deep within all along.

This hasn’t left my mind since. I’ve spent hours poring over accounts written by people who have received ‘the cure’ and even by those who say they are indeed the sixth daughter or seventh son and have the cure. The one I read didn’t even sound like she had a Jesus complex either. Her tone was that of a normie who just happened to know she could help you out if you ever found yourself with a blood clot.

I’m not sure I’d say I’m superstitious. Although saying that, I now remember that as a child I had a phase where I would never be found walking over any cracks or under any scaffolding (I still hate doing this) and I had a few years of what was most likely OCD; light switch flipping, certain numbers of taps or steps before I could leave or enter a room, go to bed, get up, et cetera.

When my dad was living his previous life, aka the life he had before I was born, he lived for a time with my half siblings and his ex-wife in Lord Lucan’s house. Yes, that Lord Lucan who murdered his children’s nanny and was never seen again. My dad’s sister Pam, who lived in Hollywood with her composer husband Jock, would visit when in London. I do not have the fondest memories of auntie Pam (she was very much from the children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard generation) but I have a distinct memory that she’d said the house had been haunted. Pam was the absolute opposite of someone you might find telling ghost stories with a torch under her chin which is why it stuck with me so much. But there she was, recounting her stays in the guest room, when the heavy door would swing open night upon night, no matter how many heavier things she lent against it.

The spare room was the nannies room. The nanny who had been killed by Lord Lucan, supposedly mistaken for his wife. I won’t tell you the ins and outs of the tragic story, there is Wikipedia for that (and a documentary that I’m yet to watch) but these are the stories that pervaded my childhood, that I grew up slightly haunted by myself. The blood on the walls. The vicar who came to bless the house before they moved in (and who coincidentally came to marry my parents many years later). My own family folklore.

I look up and find that there is a whole reddit thread about people in Ireland who have visited those purported to have the cure. They recount stories of a wet coin placed on a boil and kept under a pillow, slices of potato being put on the body which then have to be buried in the garden, even hilariously, a small calf being brought in to walk on a patients back. A few cite still living with the ailments they went to have healed but the vast majority say, although they were / still are skeptical, the cure really was their cure.

At the weekend I stood on a beach in Margate, on the night of Samhain, opposite Charlotte Church as she led us in a sonic meditation while a death doula summoned the elements and we all looked to a veil flapping in the wind that represented the door between our world and the next where our ancestors are. I thought of my dad. I thought of my grandma and my brother J too. I could hear some of the onlookers tittering behind their pagan masks as a voice travelled over the sounds of the waves calling in the wind and the rain.

I felt a hint of British awkwardness but as a friend made conversation I really was focused on bringing my father, brother and grandmother to mind, to speak to them while the veil was at its thinnest, to ask them for guidance, to say hey, I miss you, what is it like up / down / over there. I can’t tell you that I felt them speaking back, but that might have more to do with the couple of glasses of Prosecco I’d had on arrival to the seaside town and less to do with whether or not I believe they could in fact communicate with me, send signs or be listening over the din of waves and distant fireworks.

The ritual in Margate stirred something in me. As did Chloe sitting on my bed recounting the story of her cousin. As has for many years, the image of a vicar moving through the rooms of my dads newly purchased house whispering blessings (or incantations) to ward off any ghosts. I also now have a deep, deep desire to book a trip to Ireland and visit a seventh son of a seventh son or a sixth daughter of a sixth daughter and see if one of them might have a cure for rheumatological diseases. I will bury an inordinate amount of potato slices in my garden and sleep with enough coins under my pillow as to call it a small fortune, if in three weeks time I could no longer feel pain and inflammation in my right wrist, and know that no matter how cold and wet this winter gets, I won’t be on the verge of a debilitating flare.

Do you pray to your ancestors? Talk to them at least? I recently got to making a small altar to my dad. Just a few pictures, small trinkets I’ve kept. Whenever I’m out and a robin comes close I always think dad is near. He’s visiting. Letting me know I’m not alone. I’m not even saying that in a sentimental way. I truly believe it.

In the Reddit comments about the cure, some say they’re dubious despite it having worked for them. That they’re sure it was a placebo. That they were also taking traditional medicine so maybe it was just a timing thing. But I sense a hint of belief in there too. A sort of: I have to say this otherwise I sound crazy but my shingles really did go away after burying that peel.

There’s a kind of surrender in that. To try so hard for so long and for nothing to have worked that you find yourself driving hours into rural Ireland to visit a friend of a friends uncle who then spits on you ceremoniously. And actually that is the moment everything begins to turn and you’re finally better. Healed. Cured.

Are rituals then a kind of surrendering? Surrendering to the inevitability of death. To the elements and all they bring with them. To the passing of time. To the ancestors who have passed, knowing eventually we’ll be joining them. Is it actually spitting or is it just hope?

I have friends who would say I’m woo-woo. And other friends who would say I’m not woo-woo enough. Like I can tell you I’m a triple Aries (I know) but have no idea what that means (so I actually don’t know). And I’m pretty sure I’m right with that but my mum doesn’t remember the exact time I was born. It is more a ball park figure situation. A few years back I dated a guy who I later came to realise deeply believed in conspiracy theories. He genuinely once stopped me in the road on a Saturday morning when I was singing Beyonce at the top of my lungs and said, stop! she’s actually a lizard you know. The relationship didn’t last the weekend. But tying string onto a piece of rope and visualising my dead family? That I can get on board with.

Isn’t it so human to want to hand over our pain for a while, even if it involves a calf walking on your back or a licked coin pressed onto your cheek? To believe someone has the key (or in this case the cure) when we have run out of doors and solutions. Isn’t it the magic of life to stand on a beach with masked strangers, a raging bonfire licking a star-full sky. Singing together, remembering our loves, our griefs, then all running at the sea just to scream in unison?

Skepticism, longing, doubt, hope and belief I’ve realised, can all co-exist, as they do within me. As long as it doesn’t involve calling people lizards. I can make altars to ancestors but hesitate over my rising sign and have secretly not identified with any Aries qualities for 30 years until one day I thought, okay then - maybe I am a natural born leader. I have long left my pavement-crack skipping behind but I’m more sure than ever that I need to plan a visit to Ireland. Even if the cure is largely about belief.

In the best Christmas Movie of all time that I used to watch with my dad; ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ Kris Kringle says “If you can’t believe, if you can’t accept anything on faith, then you’re doomed for a life dominated by doubt.” And as we move into winter, a season whose folklore centres on miracles and magic, maybe it’s the perfect time to surrender.

I was 18 when I met him. It was my first time living back in London since I was born. I was embarking on a fashion foundation. My first boyfriend and I had just split up. We had met at a Christian summer camp when I was 15, but had just split due to being at different ends of the country. I’d broken my promise of going to Leeds where we would have finally been together after three years of commuting between Cambridge and Manchester. It wasn’t to be. Neither the relationship or the Christianity. Sorry mum. So there I was, in student halls in a Tottenham Hale high rise full of other art students from across University of the Arts. All fresh faced. All excited. All completely out of our depth. The pure chaos that ensued that year is a tale for another time. This story is about a boy I met there who I’ll call H for now.

I couldn’t tell you when I first saw him. It isn’t one of those, I saw him and felt tingles and knew we’d be together or anything like that. Quite the opposite. Don’t get me wrong, he was one of the cool guys in our halls. Covered in tattoos, piercings, ear stretchers. He smoked. Had been kicked out of three schools. He was creative, artistic, talented. And also, a trouble maker. The complete opposite of all I’d been in my teenage years. A religious, hard working, rarely touched alcohol, didn’t wear any make-up, straight down the line kinda gal. I was genuinely surprised by the attention I got when I came to halls. I’d never been a popular girl in school, I’d never really been aware of male attention much at all. So when I apparently made it into the ‘fittest girls’ lists in halls, I was confused. It was H who told me I was on the list. Red flag number 1.

H made a beeline for me from the beginning. He had a girlfriend at the time back in Coventry, but that didn’t seem to stop him. I remember a few times she came to stay with him at Halls after he’d spent all week lurking around the courtyard by my flat, leaning smoking on the wall by the door next to my particular entrance or exit. I was bemused initially. But eventually I succumbed to the attention. It gave me access to the fun parties at halls that I probably wouldn’t have known about otherwise. I was an introvert - reserved, shy and quiet. I remember one guy in halls, who was older than the rest calling me endearingly a ‘flower on the wall’. At a wedding of two friends from halls recently, everyone said I’m the most different from who I used to be. Yeah, I thought, I bloody well hope so. No flowering on the wall for me. That conversation prompted the telling of this story and the remembrance of all these memories I’ve buried. It was strange thinking back to it. It is like speaking about another person. An eighteen year old called Caroline who wasn’t me. My therapist a few years ago said this is a very common trauma response. To block things out, to not remember, for the memory to be hazy, for it to feel like it happened to a different person.

Due to the hazy memory trauma response there are some gaps but fast forward a short time and H and I were together. An item. Boyfriend and girlfriend. I was his. Which he very much upheld, to the point where fairly early on we were all out in Tottenham Court Road at a night called ‘Get F*cked at Your Mums House’ (it was genuinely called this), a man in the crowd walked past and put his hand on the small of my back and H totally flipped. Not at him. At me. For allowing him to put his creepy hand on me. For not hitting him off or shouting at him or another reaction which H thought would have shown him more respect. He yelled at me outside of the club for an hour eventually kicking in the window of Topshop on Regent Street which shattered and prompted ear piercing alarms at which we all scarpered.

These incidents became not incidents but regular occurrences in my life. Another time, out of jealously or anger with me over something, he trashed my halls room. He set alight the childhood pictures adorning my walls with his lighter. To apologise he went to Camden at 4AM and returned with a new tattoo on his wrist that read ADDICTED in capital cursive. He waved his clingfilm-wrapped arm in my face with a pleading look and said, ‘I’m addicted to you, this is why’. Writing this all out now I question myself what possessed me to be with such a person but I was eighteen, living alone for the first time in my life in the same high-rise building as him, and a whole group of strangers. I didn’t know myself or the world much yet, I thought maybe this is what relationships were.

H’s dad was in prison. For attempted murder. There was one time H had heard his dad was out on bail so we made our way to Coventry. He hadn’t seen his dad in a few years. We got a cab to the estate H last knew his dad to have lived on and found his flat completely boarded up and empty. We asked the local pub landlady if she knew who he was and where he might be and she went out back to make a call. Miraculously she returned to tell us he was on his way and would be here in a couple of hours. H and I sat in a pub garden nervously drinking ciders, waiting for his dad, who eventually turned up, skulking in with his new girlfriend and her tiny handbag dog. I don’t remember much about the exchange, probably a mix of the ciders and my nervousness at wanting to make a good impression to a convicted felon?

There is no excusing H for his behaviour but the saying traumatised people traumatise people is not lost on me here. During the same visit to Coventry H took me to his ex girlfriends cousins house. She was much older, in her 40’s at the time and with two young kids. It did strike me as odd that they were still friends despite the split. It later transpired that H had had a threesome with one of his friends, who I also knew, and his ex girlfriends 40 year old cousin one night previous before I’d arrived. He’d had me sitting on her sofa surrounded by her kids toys as she made me a cup of tea and they’d been laughing about H’s ex / her cousin in a less than kind way. Still, I stayed. The worst of it was yet to come.

When I eventually plucked up the courage to leave H after about two years, all hell broke loose. I think the anger at the fact I ended it, this sweet little wall flower that had put up with so much, made him livid. He was the one with the power, he’d thought. He’d told me we’d be married one day, even got me a promise ring one birthday. Initially I got threats. He said he would put incriminating pictures and videos of me online. The police said there was nothing they could do unless they were actually already up. Then there were the calls. I once stupidly answered a video call and there he was in the dark of his Whitechapel flat, with a broken bottle, slashing his wrists with it and telling me, everyone would know at his funeral that I was the reason he was dead. Then there were the calls from his mother and sister. Abusive messages. Once I got a call from his mum saying he was in hospital and I needed to go there directly to be with him, ‘he needs you’ she pleaded. It was a lie. Either one he’d told her or one she was in on. This happened on more than one occasion.

My dad was ill one summer and I went home for a month or so to help my mum care for him. At this stage I’d tried to move on with my life, I was at Middlesex University and had made a completely new group of friends. There were pictures of us on Facebook on nights out, we were studying fashion and trying to be cool so there were a lot of photos. H was obviously keeping a close eye on me through his screen and began frequenting the places these new friends were partying at. When I returned from Cambridge back to London he had befriended them and was now a much loved part of the group. After drug fuelled evenings, in the early hours of the morning he’d tell them how much he loved me and wanted me back and they began repeatedly asking me for months why I wasn’t with this incredible guy they’d all been seduced by.

There was one evening I was back at the infamous ‘Get F*cked at your mums house’ night in central. My flatmate at the time was back at our flat in Dalston hosting her friends birthday party while I was out. H had turned up at the door but she’d said I wasn’t in and he’d apparently left. I got back home around 2am, with a group of friends for an afters. It had been about four hours since he’d been at the door. I went into my bedroom to put my bag down but coming back into the hallway I realised I’d left my phone and went to retrieve it. To my complete horror, there was H crawling out from under my bed. To this day it is still incomprehensible how he managed to sneak in and lie in wait under my bed for all that time. He looked at me as if this wasn’t the craziest thing a person could do and demanded I went into the front room holding his hand and tell everyone he was my boyfriend and we were back together. He said if I didn’t he’d jump out of the window onto the oncoming traffic. I refused.

PART TWO TO COME.

I volunteered to remove it. Really I think, alongside looking noble, I wanted to be closer to the creature, to that word, to my father, to his luxuriating, his joy in sound, in language. If this was fiction I would say that I entered the bathroom, it landed on my pinkie finger, opened it’s incredible criss cross wings slowly like a blink. I’d say I took it out onto the terrace, the cats not even stirring from their sleep. I’d say I noticed the moon, just peeping over the mountain as if checking that all was settled before it started it’s ascent. I’d say I shook my hand gently and the libellula seemed to dance like the word itself does with the tongue, flying off in rhythm with the nights breeze. I’d say I could hear my dads voice repeating playfully libellule, libellule, libellule as it disappeared from view.

This is not what happened. The real version contains more squeals than I’d like to admit, a large bucket, the opening covered in a torn Greek newspaper, lots of distressed flapping and a libellula probably too stunned to fly off. Taken for a play-thing by one of the multiple stray cats that sleep on the veranda, where we found it lying in the morning. The other truth is, I struggle to hear my dads voice, no matter how hard I try to remember it. For the first few months I had his voicemail to ring, just to hear it and remember but that too, is gone. There is still poetry and romance in this story though, despite a lifeless dragonfly on the veranda come dawn. This is the closest I’ve been to recalling it in many years, just from hearing a single word said in a language not my own. A word that keeps dancing on the breeze of my thoughts. Perhaps not in the exact tone of his voice, but at least with a hint of his essence. His playfulness, his joie de vivre. Libellule. Libellule. Libellula.

I’ve been luxuriating in sound since I’ve been here. It’s been hard to find any words. But there’s been sound. The cicadas, the waves, the meows of the strays, the braying of a donkey, the cockerel, the thudding from the winds that picked up, the church bell, the beautiful lilting Greek Tina and her mother speak to each other or I hear in the morning when Tina is feeding the growing number of local cats. Liontarakí or little lion for the ginger kitten who was born here last year. The i and the o are combined in greek to make a yo sound, like the yo sound in yoghurt or saying Eeyore (from Winnie the Pooh) really fast. Leeeyore-taraki. Its a beautiful sound. He is also the friendliest, cuddliest cat I have ever met despite being wild. Any time we come back from the beach, just a mention of his name and he comes running from wherever he’s been adventuring or napping waiting to be scooped up and deposited wherever we plan to sit and have our third greek coffee of the day.

So, less words but sound. And the whisper of memories, asking to be let back inside, gently mewing at the door like the cats. Procedural memory too. After at least five years, maybe more like a decade my body remembered how to dive. It wasn’t a big AHA moment. Sam and I were swimming from the jumping point in Andros near the stone house we were staying. Sam stood on the edge, bending his knees and bringing his hands into prayer above his head like a yoga pose saying he wished he knew how to dive. My dad taught me I said, but I don’t know how anymore. Again, a shiver of remembrance; my dad and I on the edge of a pool in France. Watching him dive in, swim two lengths underwater before coming back up for air.

I joined Sam on the edge and before I even realised what I was doing, I’d sliced through the waters surface like a knife through butter, fingers first, followed by my head and the rest, that wonderful mermaid feeling as the body carves a parabola (U-shape) underwater. The top of the skull appearing as if just in time with the up beat of a conductors baton.

So less words, more sound and more embodiment. A feat that i’ve found hard to achieve after years of chronic illness. I’ve been called to be in my body and that itself is a kind of poetry.

No words needed. Just felt sense. The tingle of memory calling you back and the trust to follow it.

We’ve been eating one main meal here in the day. Usually between 3 and 5pm. It is too hot to eat before that, other than an early breakfast post sea swim and it feels too late and still to hot to eat a heavy meal just before sleeping. I fall asleep dreaming of breakfast. Sheeps yoghurt with silky peanut butter (the best I’ve had), a handful of nuts and seeds and fresh, flat peaches. Eaten while sipping a greek coffee made in the briki, one of my favourite processes. Watching and waiting for the water to bubble up and quickly take it off the flame to pour into the espresso cup. Or, to accidentally be too slow and watch it tumble over the edge of the briki and stain the kitchen top. Although apparently this means you will get lucky with money soon (so in theory Tina and I should become very rich in the not so far future, fingers crossed).

Yesterday for our late lunch / dinner we had prawns in tomato sauce with feta. Fava beans with capers and rusks and grilled aubergines with mushrooms. Slices of watermelon for desert and an alcohol free beer with lemon. More Greek coffee and a variety of biscuits, my favourite being one about the size of a 2 pence piece, melt in the mouth crumble, with ginger and tiny flecks of dark chocolate. This dipped into greek coffee is pure paradise.

There is more to write, I want to tell you about the cliff jumping, the fear I felt, followed by total elation and a deepening sense of connection with my body. I want to tell you about each of the cats, their names, the tiny black kitten who ventured into the house this morning after being terrified of us all week. The cat at the beach who sits on my beach towel waiting for me, when I go to swim. I want to tell you about the full moon, how I sat on the rooftop in Andros at 2am just watching it, how it lit up a path across the water, how all I could hear was the sea’s song, the twinkling lights going out one by one across the island. Those musings are for another day, another moment when I’m ready to stand on the edge of memories waters and remember how to dive straight in.

When the big hand reaches one minute to 8 I lead the small troupe of kids that have gathered at reception upstairs to the classroom overlooking the park. The other children trickle in late, their various rides to school out of their control - parents cars, shared taxis, group coaches, the local bus. Alina always the last to arrive from swimming club, a half eaten piece of toast in hand, crumbs like confetti falling around her, hair slicked back in a bun. They all yawn. Bleary eyed. Their elbows splayed on the desks as they lean their cheeks against them.

Good morning, I echo. Have you got your creative writing books I ask for the second, third, fourth time. Get them out please. Various faffing, rummaging in bags, running up to the classroom to check in the desks. I sympathise, this is the time my alarm would just be sounding on every other day of the week, I’d be tapping snooze for the tenth time, my cat stirring & coming to nudge me good morning and nestle in.

You’re going to have a go at writing a blurb for the story you’ve been writing this term, I say, with as much vigour as I can muster before 9am. Matty groans. I hate blurbs. Yeah Cass agrees, blurbs are the worst. I ignore them. What do we know about blurbs? Cass shrugs. Don’t know. Whats a blurb? I throw the question out to the class. They tell you but don’t tell you about the story, Anya pipes up. And they leave a cliffhanger, Jake chimes in. Blurbs suck, Matty says. I don’t even like reading. I give him a warning look. Matty, who is in year 4, has written an incredible story this term - full of humour, luxurious description and nail biting tension. I do not say this to the class in response as I know he’d be embarrassed. How do we make blurbs exciting? I continue, how do we entice our readers? By telling them the punchline Emmi says. SUSPENSE Hassan shouts. When does class finish? Yaz whines. It’s not even half past 8 yet.

By the end of class, despite the fact they are free to go and join their friends upstairs in their form rooms, they are queuing up, asking me to read their blurbs and the endings of the stories they’ve just finished. They’ve given themselves reviews. 5 stars from the observer. Best book ever written says the guardian. Super book, better than anyone, from the famous writer Matty. Best book of the ceantrey (century). Super Eyecatching says Monday Magazine. Dublin world record for best book (better than Cass’ book). The worlds bestselling book. Their accolades are impressive.

In the afternoon I’m at a different reception collecting another group of children, settling into the science room, the kids playing ‘describe it’ as I try to take the register. It’s round. Karim says. The globe, the planets, the sun on the poster they guess. Karim considers. Well its round but flat on top. After a myriad of other guesses it turns out to be the empty Sprite bottle sat on the science teachers desk next to a pile of marking. Perhaps we should do today’s session on description I think. Anton approaches me looking sheepish. I haven’t got my book he says. I wait for the inevitable creative excuse for what has happened to it, which I often remind them of when they complain they have ‘no ideas’ and ‘are bad at writing stories’.

Because my mum wanted to read it at work today

Because my dad threw it away

Because my brother stole it

Because our cleaner cleaned it away

Because my teacher took it from my tray

Because my bag was too heavy so (insert family member or friends name here) told me to leave it on the bus

And my personal favourite: Because our car got broken into and the robber stole my dads wallet and my creative writing book.

Me: Why would a robber do that?

He must have really liked my stories.

Eventually with spare books and paper handed out, pens borrowed, the illegal snack sharing / swapping from right under my nose put a stop to (a lot of schools ban this because of allergies) they commence their stories, plays and poems. There is silence, finally. Sian’s hand pops up. Yes Sian? You wore that outfit last week, she says, unblinking. My second most enjoyable part of teaching. The humbling questions they ask / statements they make about me.

You look pale

You look burnt

Why aren’t you married

Are you the same age as my cousin (who turned out to be 21)

I can’t read your writing

You have bad writing for a writer

Is your writing good

Why aren’t you famous

Why aren’t you a mum

Are you older than my mum

Do you have a boyfriend (and/ or girlfriend)

Are you twenty yet

Why are you wearing purple

My mums got that dress

Your hair looks different (I hadn’t washed it)

Are you wearing make-up, you never wear make-up, what lipstick shade is that (asked by a year 6)

You look weird without glasses

It is a good balance after the ego trip that is my year 3/4 club at one school who rush to try and hug me when I gather them from the playground, constantly ask for my autograph, bring me crystals / rocks / crumpled leaves they’ve collected, put me in their stories and once told me I ‘slayed’.

They manage to make headway with their projects. One group writes a murder mystery play. Another group, working a play about a panda travelling from China to London, argue about who has the most lines. Anton complains he always gets the bad guy parts. Asim writes about the time his family fled from war in Sudan. Lily is working on her memoir she tells me (she’s just about to start year 5). The first line reads ‘Tuesday 6th of May - I’m tired’. Jessica writes acrostic poems about a number of fruits. Mabel writes a poem for each season. Jack swiftly starts writing as I approach, his notebook filled with doodles, he draws a speech bubble coming from a hedgehogs mouth and writes ‘HEY!’ in capitals with an exclamation mark at the end.

As we near 4.30pm I ask if anyone wants to share. The room is a sea of outstretched hands, waving manically. What happens to us I wonder, to go from this to such modesty and trepidation to share our words in adult life. A few ideas start coming to me but before I dwell for too long the neighbour breathes their last but the detective arrives right on time, the panda has escaped the plane, Asim sees the rolling, endless desert through the coach window, smorange apparently rhymes with orange and Lily has just got to the part in her memoir where she sits down for breakfast.

*Names and some personal details changed.

The ‘out of sorts’ may well be a side effect from the new-ish (3 months) medication I inject into my stomach once a fortnight to stop my immune system attacking itself (although when I rang the hospital to say how I’d been feeling, the nurse said this is very rare she paused and then repeated very rare). I AM VERY RARE ACTUALLY I had the extreme urge to shout down the phone at her in response but instead said cool thanks for getting back to me and letting me know. The ‘out of sorts’ may not have any particular reason to attribute to it and just is and that’s it. No time of the month, no anniversary of family death, no break-up, let down, rough patch at work. Just is.

What has been helping me keep on keeping on though is the humble list.

Lists. My notes app is full of them. And not shopping lists or to do’s, I don’t have the capacity for that right now. It is literal lists of things I see, people I notice, vignettes, moments that keep me present. Moments that help me to realise I’m still here in the world, in my body, still witnessing, still moving, still breathing, despite it all. Here is one such list from last week, that got me from bed at 6am to teach at a school in Victoria, to the lido at 9.30am and back home by 1pm. I must keep going, I must water my leaves, I must be present in order to finish my list.

List 20/05/25

A hair ball on the 7.08am Nunhead train window flapping in the wind, a man carrying three huge packs of ice at 7.30am, a broken umbrella by a bin (it hasn’t rained for weeks), the shadow of a cat in the window, fake flowers, a blacked out bus, three bees buzzing round the window, a man walking his two dogs barefoot through Victoria, a straight-backed royal ballet dancer clutching a circular bag with a make-up brush sticking out, a swimming hat, cold water, mint smell in the sauna, nostrils stinging, slightly burnt pink mottled knees, red circus top beyond the pool, a clothes peg, the remnants of a sandwich on the bus, a plant stand, two cactus’, thankyou, hello, goodbye, isn’t the weather nice today, a hug, a phone call, the roses have blossomed overnight, no need to call the helpline.

Under my list, I wrote ‘well done, you left the house at 6am (!) made it to teach, you went to the sauna, you swam, you looked after yourself’.

The roses have blossomed overnight, no need to call the helpline.

After the list I shared here last week, a dear friend sent me this from the exhibition of Ed Atkins at Tate Britain that she’d been too:

Lists are my favourite kind of literature.

Flat, objective, pragmatic, abstract, personal, withholding.

In Joan Didion’s ‘The year of magical thinking’ I remember distinctly her record of a list of items in a see-through plastic bag that she was given the night her husband John died. Pants, shirt, belt. Followed by a list of the cards she found in his money clip; drivers license, Met museum membership card, credit cards, cash. Unremarkable yet so poignant in their simplicity. All the life they hold. I kept lists when my dad was dying, the songs I sang to him, what trinkets we’d taken in to show him, the memories we’d recounted, what hospital food we ate that day, what movements he’d made at what times. Lists provide some kind of order in the chaos.

On the train to my mums last Sunday I started listening to Lena Dunham’s collection of essays on audiobook. Since I began on quite a vigorous regime of physio to try and build strength back up in my damaged wrist, I have been re-watching Girls. It takes me exactly one whole episode and a half before the NowTV ad break to get through the exercises. First thing in the morning, last thing at night. 40 minutes of weights, bands, squeezing putty as hard as I can. Weights up, down, forward, backward, Marni, Jessa, Hannah, Shoshanna, Adam, Ray, Desi, Elijah. Tears have rolled down my cheeks as my wrist resists the band as hard as it can against the corner of my desk table and Hannah opens the acceptance letter to her MFA. Pure sobs have broken out as my left hand almost buckles lifting a weight above my head and Hannah smiles watching Jessa, Marni and Shoshanna dancing at Shoshanna’s engagement party knowing it’s time, she’s going to leave New York.

Many of the essays in Dunham’s memoir solely comprise of lists. Lists of boys she’d let sleep in her bed but hadn’t actually slept with, lists of foods she ate when on a particular diet, there are whole chapters with titles such as ‘18 unlikely things I’ve said flirtatiously’ and ‘15 things I’ve learned from my mother’. From the start of the train journey where I felt my head was spinning, to the end where I felt serene, the lists had soothed me, made me feel relaxed, seen, comforted. Not lists of advice, not lists of achievements, not lists of things you *should* be doing but real witty, gritty, flawed, random, hilarious, heart-breaking lists, glimpses into the mind of another human trying to make sense of things, lists. When answering the ‘why I write’ question in an interview, Lena answers with a list, with one being; ‘if I’m in a negative headspace, to hit the brakes on the perpetual arc toward bad’.

So here, a list for lists.

out of sorts,

very rare,

my favourite kind of literature.

flat, objective, pragmatic, abstract, personal, withholding

deeply satisfying

unremarkably poignant

first thing in the morning,
last thing at night

hit the brakes on the perpetual arc

order in the chaos

the roses have blossomed overnight, no need to call the helpline

Condensation on the window of his room, crows barking above the naked trees in Beckenham, the air thickening, the night fastening like a blindfold, a hospital chair, two urine samples, his hand, my hand, the geese in formation, a cancelled flight, an unread email, an injection, a kid in my class asking for an autograph (I did say I’m not famous yet), another kid bringing me a stone as a gift, the last dregs of wine in a bottle, a seat still warm from the last persons body, a letter that got lost in the post, two rocks in my pocket, another injection, the wax of a candle dripping and forming a small mound, swallows reuniting after the longest migration, a set of dentures sitting in a mug on a bedside cabinet, walking past a window as the inhabitant of the house is just drawing the curtains, petals on a bin lid, listening back to my own voicenote, twice, recognising the bird-song of a chiff chaff, loving the name chiff chaff, cat hair on my tongue, a weeping pain, a yellow pain, putty spilling from it’s bag and clinging to my diary with it’s fluorescent pink limbs, writing my body as coastal erosion, standing on a bridge above a motorway shouting I’M ALIVE, injection injection, the same robin each morning, a chink in the mug, a picture of you in the mirror containing a picture of you in the mirror containing a picture of you in the mirror, containing…

~

Got totally lost in the ‘I’m not writing at the moment’ narrative but then realised ok what have I been writing and the answer is lists. Lists. Lists for doctors to track my progress, lists for physio to see if I’m getting stronger, pro’s and con’s lists for big life decisions, lists of small things that bring me joy or that I want to remember, lists of ideas for writing that I want to come back too, lists of TO DO and to remember, weekly planner lists, shopping lists, lists to help out future me, lists to remember I’m alive, lists under a title that says ‘keep going’. Lists of lists. When I don’t have a big download to share, or a vulnerable, tender but probably quite funny story I’ll be sharing a list. To remember I am writing, I am alive, I am keeping going, I am getting stronger, there are always pro’s and con’s, there are always pockets of joy.

I met him at a poetry night in 2022. He’d just been motorbiking across Spain, still wearing his leathers, I was about to read a poem about a bat growing inside my lungs. He started the conversation at the bar, I was only vaguely interested, probably thinking more about my poem, my intonations and whether I needed to apply more lip liner. He added me on instagram, liked a few posts. I walked past him soon after near the overground where I lived, he was arm in arm with a woman, later he messaged me asking ‘was that you?’

Last summer I ran into him again at a festival I was volunteering at. The friend I was with was chatting to him in the winding morning queue for showers. It was early, I’d taken a sleeping tablet the night before to aid my achey body and felt groggy. For ease I was wearing my towel ready to shower, sunglasses to hide the grog and wellies - iconic outfit but probably not one I wanted to be recognised in. I didn’t realise it was him in my sleep stupor until I heard him say ‘Caroline?!’ I briefly lifted said sunglasses to squint up at him. ‘It’s you!’ He said. It’s you. He came by the stand I was volunteering at twice more during the festival just to say hi, then late one evening my friend and I ran into him as we were coming back tired from dancing in crowds and he was just on his way out. It was my friend who got me thinking when she asked me what the deal was with us. I shrugged and said nothing, but there was a certain energy when he came to the stand the next day, a certain twinkle in his eye.

Not long after the festival he asked if I wanted to hang out. Came to pick me up on his motorbike, brought an extra helmet just for me. He dropped me off at the house of one of the families I tutor for. The mother came out of the front door and said ‘oh, your boyfriend’. I did not correct her as I didn’t want her to think I let just anyone drop me off but I did wonder if this assumption was some kind of foreshadowing/ crystal ball into the future. Unbeknownst to him, a month or so later the same family invited me and him to Chinese New Year at their house, their 11 year old I write stories with walking in with a smug look on her face and saying loudly, ‘you can bring your boyyyyyfriend’ (you can hear her tone). He was away at the time so I gave his apologies but still did not correct them on the fact he was not my boyfriend. I never told him as I had a hunch it might freak him out.

After about six slow months (he was away travelling for a large chunk of that) he kissed me. In Beckenham Place Park just as night was falling and the birds were circling above our heads. It was electric. It was also suddenly clear - okay this is what it is. We’d been sort of dancing around it for a while, I’d been dating someone else, not sure if we were just hanging out as mates or what. The next day after the kiss I had a hospital appointment, one that felt significant after a long period of pain, chemo, and loss of trust both in the system (big one) and my own body (huge one).

In the evening after the kiss he cooked me dinner at his house. I met and chatted away to his flatmates, they were interested in me, asked lots of questions, told me he’d told them I was a poet, wondered what that’s like. He had booked to take me to a spa in Reading the next morning - sauna, heated pool, steam, jacuzzi. It felt like it was going from zero to 100 and I felt both a sense of excitement and foreboding. On the way back into London after the spa and luxurious breakfast he’d paid for, he kept stopping me as we sat doing the crossword on the train, taking my face in his hands and kissing it all over. Squeezing my thigh. Playing with my sore wrist and hand whilst looking deeply into my eyes. He asked if I wanted him to accompany me to the hospital, despite knowing I was already meeting my mum there. I politely declined but couldn’t stop a swell of feeling arising, someone who cares, someone who doesn’t find my illness too much to cope with, who doesn’t feel ‘it’s a lot to take on’.

Call me crazy. But I thought he might be into me.

To cut a long story short. He wasn’t. Well at least, he went skiing for three weeks after above mentioned spa trip (I should have known then he wasn’t for me). His messaging was initially frequent, talk of what we’d do together when he got back, questions about my health, my joints, endless pictures & videos of the powder aka snow (eye roll). But as the weeks passed, they became more sporadic. Then nada. Eventually he was back, said it’d be great to see me. The foreboding feeling was still lurking, hadn’t ever fully gone away. He arrived to the meeting with a book of short stories which he handed to me along with a lot of compliments about my hair, how beautiful I looked etc etc. I took the book and the compliments graciously, with a hint of caution. Within five minutes he said, ‘I’m just going to say it… I don’t see this going anywhere romantically’. A pause. ‘Do you want me to leave?’

The conversation that followed is more hazy, I finished my wine, asked some questions (I remember distinctly one of his replies: that there was just a certain je ne sais quoi missing - said without a hint of irony), and we changed the subject. I said goodbye, went straight to my best friends house, cried and drank some whiskey. I wasn’t sure why I was crying. This wasn’t a break-up, we hadn’t been in a relationship. This wasn’t even someone I had begun to feel deeply for, we had only just worked out we might be dating. There was a sense of rejection, sure. Confusion - definitely. All the moves had come from him. I genuinely hadn’t been certain how I felt or if I had wanted to pursue anything. The whole interaction had been led by him, I was swept up in it, the one in the back of the toboggan who suddenly gets flipped out at the end.

I think there was probably some anger and definitely a big spoon of grief in there for good measure. I had just begun to allow my body feel safe with him when it so rarely feels safe anymore, with myself let alone with anyone else. I’d expressed vulnerability about intimacy when being intimate in a body that is often in pain, that is eroding its own bones, attacking its own cells is extremely hard. He’d lured me in with a false sense of security, he’d asked me so many questions about my illness, held my poor little wrist in his two big hands. Then not even called once during the three weeks to let me know where he was at. Arriving to meet me with a gift then slapping me round the face with it (metaphorically).

What followed in the following few weeks / months after the je ne sais quoi meet up is now referred to humorously by me & my friends as croissant gate. He took the trouble to remember my injection day (which happens every two weeks) and arrived at my house a week and a half later after the je ne sais quoi meeting with pastel de nata he’d made from scratch. About 8 in a Tupperware for my flatmates and I. He left with a promise that on my next injection day in a fortnight, he’d bring home-baked croissants. What I initially thought was sweet with a twinge of the unhinge soon left a bitter taste in my mouth. I’m all for gifts of baked goods but my friends weren’t bringing me sweet treats on injection days (if you’re reading this my favourite cake is carrot, lemon or victoria sponge, I also like almond croissants from Good as Gold - nowhere else). But a man who pursued me over the course of two (very turbulent for me) years then suddenly decided it wasn’t romantic without any consideration or question of what I might feel or not feel, was.

Of course he missed the next date of my injection and the croissants never materialised. However I did receive his excuses followed by a blow by blow low down of the current dough / croissant cooking situation, how many he thought it would make and asking if I wanted him to bring some round that week. To this day those messages are left unread. The last that popped up on my screen asked ‘don’t you trust my croissants?’. I laughed, I’ll give him that.

Although I won’t reply directly, here’s a whole essay response if he / anyone ever cares to read it, I want to be clear. I wholeheartedly do not trust his croissants. Even if he mastered the perfect rise, the crisp, that glossy sheen. I’m certain once you take a nibble, or a big bite, there’s no soft, flaky, layered centre. No melt in the mouth, airy interior like honeycomb. Not even a gooey almond in sight. You’d be crunching on air, a bit disappointed you didn’t go for a pain au raisin instead. A pettier me would have liked to try his croissants though, complimented them on their golden coats, lathered them up with butter and jam, taken one bite, looked deep into his eyes and said oh dear, they’re just missing a certain je ne sais quoi.

There’s sand at the bottom, gathering around the drain, despite the fact the nearest beach is miles away. A single dark straight hair (obviously not mine) clings to my bicep and I tenderly peel it off and set it free to float away. Many peoples absolute nightmare and admittedly kind of gross but honestly my happy place: the local leisure centre pool. My weekly women’s only swim followed by body balance (a mish mash of tai chi / yoga / pilates and meditation) led by a truly iconic teacher who always forgets the moves, which side we’re meant to be on and literally every week reiterates that (in her words) she can’t balance for sh*t.

Friends of mine with eye watering subscriptions to luxury gyms cite they can only summon the motivation for their weekly visits with the lavishness they know awaits them. I however, have come to feel the complete opposite. I simply cannot think of anything worse than frequenting those spaces.

It wasn’t always this way. Many years ago now, I worked at a reputable yoga studio where drop ins were £17, products in the showers were a similar price (or more), floors were heated, large fluffy white towels on request. The teachers had huge followings, a lot of the clientele were either celebs or those high flying City worker types who would literally scream in our faces if they didn’t get into the rocket class that already had a ten person wait-list but they just NEEDED IT OKAY????

Don’t get me wrong, every so often I love a fancy treat, a spa day or an intro offer to a swanky studio for a week or two. But even then, even then, the few classes I’ve been to at these fancy establishments have lately left me cold. Worse than that, I’ve left feeling self-conscious, hyper aware of my limitations and a slight sense of shame that I couldn’t keep up.

One Saturday morning a few weeks back, I had some class pass credits to use up so I thought I’d try out a mandala class at one such fancy local studio. The class itself was fairly enjoyable and as I laid down for savasana at the end, I felt that smug accomplishment of having done something before it was even 10am on a weekend morning. The flicker of enjoyment was abruptly snuffed out when the teacher invited us back slowly into the room and as we were still acclimatising said, and I quote: “showing up on the mat allows us to flow through the world without suffering”. My eyes pinged open. Morewomenandchildrenkilledthananyotherrecentconflictinasingleyear.Climatechangebehinddevastatingfires.Trumpupendedmillionsoflivesinhisfirst50daysinoffice.Ceasefireisahollowwordasdisplacementsanddenialofaidcontinue. But sure. Every little helps. Especially doing a backbend followed by a child’s pose then popping next door for an oat flat white and an almond croissant. Sorry not sorry for the sarcasm.

A knot had begun to form in my stomach, reversing all the loosening and opening the yoga was supposed to have aided with. The teacher continued, with her hands in a prayer position, bowing towards her knees, “we bow and give thanks to our able bodies”. Nope. I was out. Any sense of accomplishment, enjoyment, smugness replaced by a feeling akin to rage. Admittedly I had decided for once not to disclose to the teacher at the beginning of class that my bones had eroded, were perhaps eroding that very second, that my body attacks itself and very much would not be considered ABLE but still. Somehow I hadn’t imagined at the end a room full of people would be invited to bow to their able bodies.

I realise I’m being pernickety about wording and I’m sure she had good intentions behind her words (there is something in showing up for yourself and that radiating out in your actions etc etc, there is something in practicing gratitude for many things including our bodies etc etc (although I would argue focusing on this particularly could be triggering for some, including me obviously)). I also realise in hindsight that my anger was directed not only at the teacher but also at myself, at my previous life and all the internalised ableism and spiritual bypassing that came with it.

Taking a quick U-turn to a happier place I am back in the slow lane at my local leisure centre. The inspiration behind the title for my whole substack for a range of reasons that I’ll come to soon. The people here reflect the real diversity of South East London and not just the gentrified pockets. We all come with our different abilities, bodies and stories. Someone is trying out back stroke, another woman doggy paddles, two chat in the corner about the water aerobics they are doing after this and whether the playlist will be as popping as last week. Some of us trickle into body balance after, our hair in wet buns piled on our heads. The teacher can’t get the music to work. Other than my friend who comes to join me there, we are the youngest by at least a couple of decades. Our bodies may not be ‘able’ but they sure are strong, they sure are resilient, they sure are trying and they sure are beautiful.

No one claims to be changing worlds or helping us move through the world without suffering (not possible). But I realise this place, a tiny corner of SE London with its £3 classes and free swims on weekends. It has changed a little part of my world. And I’d choose its sandy, tepid water and slightly chaotic but welcoming, inclusive classes over luxury any day.

He only eats whole foods, he doesn’t use condoms, he took me to an open mic, he’s in a band, thinks he’s the next Bob Dylan, he is working on a memoir, he likes my hair like that, still sucks his thumb, he went on an ayahuasca retreat, he has a difficult relationship with his mum, he doesn’t have a washing machine in his flat, just buys new clothes when they get dirty, his favourite thing is oral but he doesn’t like seafood, his ex is from LA and his other ex is also from LA, he doesn’t do the apps, he heals trauma through spirituality, doesn’t believe in therapy, his mum moved to Thailand, he rides a bike up a ramp and is called a ‘goat’ in his profession, he only held hands with her, they didn’t kiss so it doesn’t count, he didn’t say he had a girlfriend, no… why? He likes TopBoy, thinks the women are hussies though, it’s different for guys he says, they aren’t actually being ‘entered’, he takes weeks to get back to you, he buys you milk, full fat, he doesn’t like that dress, tells you to take it off, he asks what you’ve been eating this week, he doesn’t like mainstream stuff, you send him a song and he replies, Beyonce is actually a lizard you know, he won’t buy you flowers because it’s overdone, points out chem trails, doesn’t trust doctors, checks the labels on all your food items, he wrote a short film, starred in it as the heartthrob, his stage name is Thunder, he’s doing well thanks, doesn’t think a friendship will work now you’ve moved on but perhaps a hand job, misremembers that you came six times once, says he’s different now, he’s called his mum, identifies as a feminist, got a new tatt that reads be nice, he’s vacationing in LA, he’s learnt a new trick.

my pants were black, high rise, lacy, I wanted her to notice as I slipped them over the curves of my thighs, she was humming to herself, Li’l Bow Wow, now rapping in time with the mini speaker, slight crackle, I ain't never had nobody show me all the things that you done showed me and the special way I feel when you hold me, legs first, she said, not a question, I could smell jasmine, not actual jasmine from a shrub - gentle and honeyed, but sickly sweet, a poor recreation of the scent in the wax, with hint of cherry, she buttered me up, from knee to ankle, it slid like treacle, clinging to every crevice, that sticky film that forms above a milky drink, she wore five rings, spread over two hands, I wanted to know about her life, wanted to ask about the silver snake wrapping round her index, ruby eyes, about the smell of the wax, does she use it on herself, about her lovers, turn over, you don’t know my name, Alicia Keys now, baby baby baby with each hair, each root, my hairs and their roots now in her hands, she, carefully folding the wax strips like concertina, we were getting closer to something she and I, lives in Brixton, came from Brazil, aunt owns the salon, loud family inhabit the upstairs, kid always leaves wrappers in the stairwell, her tooth gem glinted, baby pink, Missy Elliot pass that dutch, pop that, jiggle that, legs almost bare like winter, she compliments my follicles, the next one’s hot, the next one stings, fixate on the fluorescent lights, on her white tank, her blue jeans, her smooth arms, Mario chiming, I just don’t get it, do you enjoy being hurt, her french-tipped nails, ok finally, her beautiful smile, now open up

Alright love, get your melons, sweet melons, only two for a pound. A burly man held up a slice as I passed and I felt a little sick as I saw myself mirrored in the fruit he was clutching; pale and unripe. I dutifully paid for the unwanted melon (metaphor for how I’d got into this pickle in the first place) and felt it’s weight as I continued home. Like a throwback episode from a series like Girls or Sex and the City, every man I’d ever been with flashed before my eyes.

It started with T at Primary School. Dreamy T. Tragically his family house burnt down in a freak fire at the start of year 5 but he still bought me a plush teddy holding a heart on Valentines Day only a month after. Then at Christian Camp I met D. I was 15 and ready for a boyfriend, a proper one, sex and all. Weirdly enough christian camp was the perfect place. A lot of kids there were obsessed with god, stood up in service saying they’d seen the holy spirit move through their pre-pubescent bodies. So my new-found obsession with boys slipped through the holy cracks.

Next came C who lived in my student halls. He was covered in tattoos and wore stretchers in his ears. Heaven. Except it wasn’t. Instead it provided some of the most tumultuous and traumatic first years of my twenties, resulting in a tattoo saying ADDICTED in cursive writing across his wrist as a sort of love letter / apology for the violence he’d inflicted (which he expected be forgiven for because I was addictive - my fault not his). Go figure.

Then came A, with a fiancee in Dubai who returned to London without a fiancee in Dubai. He was a friend of my brothers, lived in a YMCA, also tattooed - a pair of crows and a tree and with hair down to his hips tied up in mountain paths on his head. I met him in a scummy pub in Shoreditch one winter with my brother and thought ‘you’re going to be my boyfriend’ and after a year in Dubai and an almost marriage later, he was.

Approximately two years after our completely devastating, life shattering break-up I was pregnant (through a series of very unlikely events that you wouldn’t believe if I told you). And while it was a devastatingly, life shatteringly clear no from me and my instincts, he meanwhile wrote me a letter from our ‘unborn child’. Which another five years later became the premise for my first play.

So no child but I did birth a play.

I’m sitting on the overground train somewhere between Honor Oak Park and Wandsworth Common and a young family join me on the four seater I’m sitting in by the window. The couple have a young son, perhaps around 5 or 6 who clearly has a lot of energy. After a search through both their bags at least twice they realise they haven’t packed a particular game that keeps him entertained, so they settle on ‘I spy’. The dad goes first; I spy something beginning with T.

Train? the boy guesses.

No, the father replies.

A thoughtful look seeps across the boys face, his brow furrows, he looks out of the train window where the london skyline rolls by like the credits at the end of a movie. After his short pause, he takes a second guess.

Time? He asks.

The dad laughs.

No. Can you see time? He questions, rhetorically.

The little boy looks at his dad quizzically, thinks again for a moment, then repeats train?

I spend the rest of the journey thinking about this and reflecting on all the ways I believe time can in fact be seen. I get off the train and am greeted by a crisp, frost blanket tucked over the edges of Wandsworth Common. My head is full. I look up at the confident sky, dressed in its best blues. The sun fastening at its centre like a brooch. In only a few hours it will unclip, peeling off its azure coat to reveal a body of stars. We will still only be halfway through the afternoon but the signal towards the end of the day will be stark, lights will be turned on, candles will be lit, dinners will be prepped or thought about and calendar pages will soon be turned over to mark a new day.

Unconsciously I have been completely absorbed by the theme of time. Only coming to write this did I realise how much it has been at the forefront of my thoughts. I think it most likely started on New Years Eve when we are all confronted by the passing of time. Whether mingling at some dingy house-party, freezing fingers off in a crowd to watch fireworks, sitting on the sofa in front of the TV with a cuppa and a small glass of bubbly feeling both smug and a vague sense of fomo. All just to celebrate the clock moving from 23.59 to 00.00.

In the creative writing session I facilitated on the 9th of January at my local sauna, the theme I settled on was time and anchors through time. We read and discussed ‘New Years Day’ by Kim Addonizio, ‘Future’ by Maggie Smith and a small excerpt from ‘The Use Of Photography’ by Annie Ernaux & Marc Marie. Using all three as diving boards into our own explorations of time, our memories, how we relate to the past, present and future. Both the discussions of the pieces themselves and the sharing of each individuals responses through their own writing were so fruitful and generative and dove me deeper into times murky, deep, shimmering waters.

On the final page of ‘The Use of Photography’, a remarkable book in which Annie Ernaux & Marc Marie respond to photographs they took over the course of their relationship of their clothes strewn on the floor pre love making, Annie writes:

The book inspired me to go through the camera roll on my phone, scrolling through the almost 40,000 pictures (and I wonder why I don’t have any phone memory) and landing randomly on one photograph to write from. Starting from the surface, what can I see, what are the shapes, patterns and textures to the more subtle, what or who is absent from this picture, what was on the periphery, why did I choose to record that moment, what memories does it spark, can I remember how I felt that day.

Often the more mundane and less aesthetic photos that I landed on prompted more writing than I’d expected ~ a picture I took of my bedside table when I was really unwell, a photo of a tiny puddle shaped like a heart on a day when I was feeling total despair about the horrors in Gaza. I extended this exercise with my sauna writing group and they chose photos of a hotel curtain with a tiny bit of light coming through, a picture of a daughters old bedroom door with a handwritten ‘KEEP OUT… please’ sign tacked beside a dream catcher and a poster (all significant for particular phases of her young life so far). Another responded to her toddlers scribbles in her notebook that she’d given to keep said toddler occupied but that she’d never taken the time to properly look at. The material traces of presence.

A couple of years back a friend recommended I watch Brian Cox’s ‘Adventures in Space and Time’. I remember my mind being totally blown and whilst there were theories that I couldn’t quite comprehend during only one sitting, there was a phrase Cox spoke that stuck with me and continues to provide solace when I feel trapped by griefs grip.

There are memories of my late father and brother that I envisage still existing in space time. Rather than something that happened in the past that slowly fades the further I feel from it, I imagine that I can step into the memory in real time and experience it totally anew. A lot of the poems in my first collection have been borne out of this new relationship and understanding (or lack thereof) of time. ‘We said Goodbye at Nelson’s Column’ imagines my father and I meeting at a club when we are both just turned twenty and new to London. Despite not knowing each other there is also a deep knowing as well as a falling away of the structure of time as we think we know it. Reading back on it now, I can see that this is a theme I have been concerned with long before New Year 2025.

Cox obviously articulates it far better than I could ever hope to. When discussing Einstein’s theory of relativity he says ‘the past is not accessible, but it is still there in a very real sense. The bottom line is, no you can’t travel into the past… Probably. But the explanation for that is anything but trivial’.

Coincidentally this week the theme of the children’s creative writing classes I facilitate has been time travel. They each wrote lists of places they’d like to time travel too, people they would like to see and skills they might need to tackle the journey. Places included; meeting aliens, prehistoric times roaming with dinosaurs, to meet grandparents they’d only known through pictures or stories, to a time when their sibling wasn’t yet born so they could have all the attention again. People included Einstein himself, beloved teachers when they themselves were children so they could play together, Taylor Swift when she’s 100 years old and one even wrote themselves when they die so they can see how it happens. Skills inevitably included powers such as invisibility and the ability to fly but a few also brought up being a good listener, being willing to learn and being sensitive to and understanding of the people and places around you. What I’d thought would be just a fun, playful prompt moved me to the verge of tears more than once.

As I come to the end of the physical time I can devote to the writing of this, the clock ticking; classes and tutoring edging ever closer, I feel a slight frustration that I haven’t landed on a revelation to end with. I have so much more to write. And probably will for the rest of time. This is part one of forever. It is a musing, a reflecting, a swimming through the dense and illuminating time waters. What I have settled on though, is if I were the son’s father I would time travel back to just last week on the train. London’s changing scenery whizzing past us and to the question of whether the T I’d spied with my little eye was in fact for Time, I would reply, ‘That wasn’t what I was thinking of, but wow, what a great guess. Tell me how you see Time’.

Day 2 of my self imposed writing challenge. I’m sitting at my desk with the sun slicing through the slither of open window. The disco ball hung on a rusty nail to the right of the shed at the end of the garden is glorious. Its tiny mirrored squares make a mosaic of its view, the small stretch of patchy grass, the family of herbs huddling together in their pots against the cold, the tall cherry tree stripped and stark, its spindly limbs waxed bare, not a hair or fruit in sight.

I take in the view as I sit, pondering where to go, where this might take me and feeling the slight anxiousness / excitement that comes with creating and sharing anything that feels raw, unfiltered, unedited. The bricks of the house are vaguely visible on the disco balls glittery map. I’m sure I can make out the shape of my bedroom window that I’m looking out of and take strength in the thought that a minuscule Caroline is tap tapping away at her keyboard at the exact same time as me for no other reason than she said she would and she wants to keep herself accountable. To create spaciousness in her days again to write, to stick to something she loves. Yes! Glittery disco ball Caroline I think - you go.

So I encourage her and try to keep up.

Four round bellied geese with luscious wings fly over just as I’m squinting at the disco ball to see what else I might have to say. Followed by two parakeets, their tails making a brief comma of green between the trees. Before I sat down to write I stepped foot in the garden for the first time in potentially a fortnight. Poor plants. But the parsley and chard have truly soldiered on. The parsley in particular, embodying a word I wrote repeatedly in an intention setting workshop last week, is abundant. I pick a little of both, making sure to leave enough so that the plant doesn’t get too cold. (I’m sure there’s a more technical reason for doing this - I’ll ask my mum later - but I like the idea that they need their leafy coats and each other to nuzzle up to on these frosty mornings. I like poetry okay. Less good at gardening.)

The parsley and chard will go in the rice that is on the stovetop right this very moment soaking up all the cloudy broth I’m cooking it in. This is my slow lane activity for the day. Cooking wild rice. Washing it, soaking it, adding the broth, bringing it to the boil, letting it simmer. Later, stirring in the finely chopped herbs. I’ve been going on about this slow lane thing. Made two very mysterious videos for instagram; one of me pegging out washing and another of me reading in the sauna. I had grand plans for a big launch, first in early/ mid December, next in that gloopy marinade in-between time after Christmas but before new year, then finally on the first of January. Well now its the 9th and I’ve not launched it and the two endearing videos of me giving-marketing-a-go have slowly crept further down my posts page, a little like the tiny squares on the disco ball that are about to fade out of view as the sun makes a french exit behind the trees.

I smile to myself. The very essence at the heart of the offering I was planning to launch. Go slow. Stop pushing. What there is to notice when allowing spaciousness and fluidity. Well I taught myself my own lesson. I’ve got to be more slow lane about sharing ‘In the slow lane’. I’m trying to do a slow lane activity once a day, that can include (but is not limited to:) writing, listening to an album from start to finish, cooking a meal that needs patience and care, drawing, reading, walking round Nunhead Cemetery without my phone and noticing all the names and messages scrawled into the moss-hugged graves.

By slow lane I do not mean no progress, no discipline, no accountability. Quite the opposite. By slow lane I mean creativity, feeling grounded, building from the ground up so the foundations feel really strong. I mean self-reflection, noticing the world around me & in turn feeling more connected. Harking back to some of the best of a childhood - spending an afternoon just playing & creating, totally obsessed and absorbed by a single thing rather than the scatter-y energy I often find myself in; 100 tabs open, my phone screen lighting up, the to-do list screeching out and so overwhelmed by all the options the only thing I can bring myself to do is put a wash on.

So yes. Slow lane. Join me.

Day 2 of the writing challenge done - my cat is snoring at my feet, the wild rice is ready, the disco ball is enveloped by darkness and a single star winks just above the cherry trees longest finger. Pressing send without re-reading, rediting, reshaping, sitting on it just for another hour / day / week - WOW what a thrill.

And I know I will launch my offering soon, I feel myself taking more assured steps towards it and towards the slower, steadier, richer life I’m craving. All in good (slow) time.

And inhale, she says breathing comically, with vigour. And exhale, let go of everything you don’t need. I open one eye to see the reaction of the others in the group, they all dutifully have their eyes closed and seem to be breathing everything out all they no longer want. We’re in an evening yoga class (turns out to be kundalini) offered on the hotels extensive activity programme that we’re staying at on the island of La Gomera. I’m somewhat used to this, even spouted very similar phrases myself for many of my yoga-teaching years in classes, on zoom, at retreats and yet. She irritated me. I felt confronted. Her carefree, enthusiastic, breathe and everything will be fixed vibe. She catches my one open eye and shouts BREATHE directly at me then smiles. Relax. It’s not the word I’d use.

Later we’re on our backs (finally) but then guided into a bridge pose and told to thrust our hips up and down while exhaling loudly and the teacher talks about the serpent and vitality and energy and then suddenly screams FREE YOUR VOICE followed by producing a series of groans and moans. As I thrust extremely half-heartedly I think, I am 99% sure this is either a prank or we must be extras on the new White Lotus series. It is truly hilarious, my mother next to me, three other women surrounding us in a circle, all being guided to essentially hump the air whilst freeing our voices. My voice simply cannot be freed in this moment. When I try, a laugh emerges and I awkwardly style it into a cough. Once it’s over my body feels tight, my jaw aches from clenching, my wrist and shoulder are sore and I think, WHY CAN I NOT JUST LET GO.

Coming away, to this island over Christmas, the act of just being here is in itself a letting go. A letting go of the year just about to pass and all the challenges it held. But even so, I’m tense. Tense from the ‘must wake up to see sunrise, must catch every sunset, must swim in the sea everyday or I’ll regret it once I’m home’. We just arrived yet I’m more aware than ever about the passing of time, only 6 days, 5 and a half, 4 now, have I soaked up enough sun yet, have I moved my body, have I read enough pages of my book, have I BREATHED?

The wind is up and there’s a storm the other side of the island, threatening to come this way. Maybe that’s it, my period coming, a flare up last night right on the precipice. The clouds sit above the sea like a mood. I see myself mirrored in all they are holding, the build up, in their lack of just letting what needs to move through. In this case, the rain. There’s a cackling of thunder and then just like that the sun powers through like a piercing laugh and all the waves soften their shoulders. A gull swoops at another gull, they both squawk and tumble over the cliff. I lean over the edge and look below but they’re gone.

I’m back in London now and on reflection I think I did eventually begin to unwind and lean into it (just not when I was being told too with my crotch in the air). I didn’t catch it every time the sky went pink but I gave myself a break. Christmas Day spent at the beach, not a brussel sprout in sight. Mornings writing on the porch looking out to sea while mum painted watercolour postcards. My first run in forever, getting tumbled about by the waves in a post run swim. Realising all I am capable of, all my body is STILL capable of after a year of feeling fearful that I was losing my capacity to move freely without pain and to be safe in my independence.

Letting go is hard for many. Let alone when living in a body that feels so out of control, it is tempting to hold onto all other aspects of life with a tight grip. One of my intentions for this year is to loosen that grip, to find more fluidity, to not be so precious about sharing what I create, what I want to offer. As part of that loosening, I’m going to set myself a challenge to try and share one Substack a day for 12 days during January. I have a habit of writing things and letting them sit until I feel it’s exactly the right time, until I’ve read and re-read and feel it is time to share. I’m hoping to push through some of my perfectionism, to share more rawly and freely. And I’m putting it here for accountability and the hope you will support me and join me for the ride!

So really, I guess in my own way, I am freeing my voice.

I lay in a sound bath as my shoulder began to flare. It started gently like a nudge. But as the teacher moved from hang drum, to Sanskrit chanting to a rainstick with beads moving from one side to the other, it grew. The shape of my pain was transmuting in time with the music. I was completely stuck. Not only could I physically not move, my shoulder pinned to the ground by what felt like thick needles, I was also in a kind of trance. The pain moving through my body, dancing in time with the music, thrumming with the bangs on the drum, swimming through the long hollow tube with all the beads of the rainstick. There is a rhythm to the pain of a rheumatoid arthritis flare, a pulsating that becomes hypnotic, becomes nauseating. It was the last night of the trip to the island of La Gomera and to close the loop nicely I was flaring again as I had done on the first night of arrival.

I escaped to sunnier climbs for Christmas this year. This wasn’t so much a need as a necessity. The British winter is brutal for everyone but particularly for my body and it’s joints which tend to get hotter when it gets colder, swell when it’s humid and join the party if I feel stressed or low which is always more likely for me when it is darker and greyer. Christmas Day I spent sunbathing and swimming in the sea rather than wrapped up feeling very full for a late afternoon walk before the last of the light. I dined on local kiwis, papayas and bananas and fish rather than roast turkey with all the trimmings. Despite the flare ups that opened and closed the trip, my body felt lighter, more fluid, I was able to run, to swim, to do pilates, to hike, to sleep with ease. It was hot in my outer environment but my own body no longer felt hot and in flame as it has done for the majority of the last 12 months.

some things that are hot:

fires
cups of tea
roast potatoes fresh from the oven
chillies
sand in the peak of summer
a well bled radiator
electric blankets whacked up high
engines
an old phone used for too long
my index finger
my shoulder
my wrist
my wrist
my wrist
my wrist

To use a cliche, this year has brought me to my knees. It has brought me to my knees, as well as my ankles, the bones in my wrists, the ball and socket of my shoulders, my little swollen fingers. To know them so intricately, their whims and fancies, their days of total uncooperation, their capabilities and at times lack thereof. I have berated them, cared for them, resented them, tried to love them. But however I feel about them I am always close to them. Hyper aware of them. I have felt face to face with my own mortality and limitations and with that closer to life somehow than I’ve ever felt. It is at times an unsettling closeness, one I’d rather drown out, numb out, distract from. I have seen the inside of myself so regularly on ultrasounds, bloods being taken week on week, the shock of those tiny vials shoulder to shoulder, each wearing a large label with my surname on. Druitt Druitt Druitt Druitt. At my last appointment in mid December during the ultrasound, the doctor pressed gently into the cold gel covering my wrist and the screen glowed red with angry flames, framed by the small outline of my arm, as if there were a fire catching, spreading, burning all through the carpal bones.

The results come back and I study them obsessively, not knowing what any of it means. All year it has said the same. Normal/ healthy, normal/ healthy, normal / healthy, then ABNORMAL screeching out next to the CRP result, the C-reactive protein that indicates the level on inflammation in the body. Off the charts. Inflammation. The words I’ve read and reread this year. In flame.

some things that are in flame

that emoji you send your new lover 🔥
a bbq on the beach
the boiler in winter
tapered candles on the table at New Years Day lunch
a sunset over the horizon
old ideas and ways of being
Guy Fawkes on bonfire night
the Olympic Torch
forests, trees, a lot of the world
a wrist, a finger, an ankle, a body

When something goes up in flames the natural urge is to throw water on it. And this year I have found myself endlessly drawn to bodies of water. The seas in Greece, the swimming lake in Beckenham, a Margate plunge on my birthday, weekly trips to Dulwich Leisure Centre Pool, the black sand beaches of the Canary Islands shores at Christmas. Despite water sometimes being counter productive for actual flames and fires, it is a sure-fire (excuse the pun) antidote for my in-flame body.

The year that brought me to my knees, that brought me to my bed, that brought me to waters edges, that brought me to myself also brought me to my friend Lateisha. Lateisha also suffers with chronic illness albeit of a very different sort. We met on a bridge in Ladywell through another close friend who I was out walking with one evening and then again in the poetry library where we’d often be sat next to one another scribbling away. We started chatting in whispers in the poetry library before getting one too many frowns so took our conversations with our footsteps along the Southbank. We found a shared understanding of the realities we were both currently facing with our health and in our conversations I found solace, relief, support, accountability, care and love.

In September I joined Lateisha as a volunteer in a project they were involved in, gardening in a local allotment of refuge. Most weeks we showed up even if just for ten minutes, even if it was pouring with rain and all we managed was a tea and a biscuit and a long hug under the makeshift shelter. On sunnier days we planted with our hands, seeds we’ll hopefully see spring up in May. Watering, digging, crying, getting dirt under our nails, grounding. Another day they introduced me to a free art class where we drew and made prints, carving into foam squares, pulling paint across with a squeegee. More tea and biscuits. Often our best laid plans have been scuppered by life/ energy / health but even just talking about going to the sauna, talking about meeting for a swim, talking about both doing our writing practice from our respective homes in our pyjamas has been the thing that has got me up from my knees. A voice-note. A hug. A let’s just meet for a soup, don’t worry about the writing today.

I don’t feel like I have to present myself a certain way to Lateisha in the way I sometimes do in other aspects of my life, with work or with other able-bodied friends who cannot comprehend the way chronic pain can affect a life. It is refreshing to be exactly as I am with Lateisha, no putting a bow on it. No worries if I cancel, no stress if the plan doesn’t work out. Just be. Just is.

I am grateful to be ending the year that brought me to my knees not in a desperate position of prayer but back up on my own two feet again. Not totally steady but getting there. Not fully comfortable in my body but a lot closer to it thanks to the Atlantic Ocean and the Spanish sun. Not flame free but with a much greater knowledge of the things I can do, people I can surround myself with, places I can retreat too, words that I can write to ease their raging and help to cool the f down.