It was a cesspit of a time
This is what I titled this forgotten piece from July 2020
I found the following piece in my google drive when I was downloading a menu to read for a restaurant I won’t be going to for another 6 weeks because I want to think about all of the possibilities from now. Maybe I will get the tenderstem in romesco - maybe I’ll drink 3 Negronis instead - this is the beauty of possibilities.
The below was written in the summer heatwave just after restrictions lifted of lockdown 1 (England version). The woman in this feels like a good friend that I used to know really well reading back - but not like me now.
I think it is important to stay in correspondence with yourself over your life and take stock over what you have learned, what progress – seemingly invisible – has been made and what another sunny day, one postcode over can change on your view of yourself but maybe not about climate change.
July 2020 (annotations in bold written in March 2022)
I have watched the sunrise everyday for the last month. There has been the almost imperceptible shortening of days as the sun creeps a few seconds later every morning but I know because I have been watching. (We are literally talking days after the summer equinox here so I am really watching)
I am a perpetual bad sleeper and it is a horrible blight with no rhyme or reason. Sometimes I go weeks and months with no trouble, crashing on to the pillow the moment my phone is put on charge. But it never lasts and then comes the deep valley of sleeplessness where I get to think and think and think some more. (I always sleep better when someone else is there with me, which makes no sense because they are hot or fidget or demand pillows but apparently my mind likes it. Years and years of serial monogamy have trained me well. I see man shoulders and think “good napping place”.)
There are some obvious signs, I am working 14-hour days, I am online too much, I eat at strange times. I have developed a habit for trying all of the different types of Ritter Sport, when you know like an apple would be more useful to overall wellbeing. (I never got to end of trying all of the Ritter Sport. I couldn’t bring myself to have any of the mint ones and it was getting out of hand anyway.)
I noticed that my jaw is perpetually clenched and I have to consciously unclench it when I notice. I have a tell of biting my lip when feeling apprehensive. I have used up 2 entire lip balms since lockdown started. I have started picking at my appearance again, grabbing at my legs, noticeably softer without my walking commute, poking my face to see what gravity has done today. (You know, I look my age and that’s a fine thing to be. I still use a lot of lip balm. Prepare yourself for a boast here: I actually finish lip balms.)
I obsessively think about getting a different job. It will be harder now more than ever, maybe. It is tricky being so niche in what I am qualified to do and the concerns of where this will transport to. The industry is too small – far far too small - and maybe we all feel the same I think. I nearly had the golden ticket out but was thwarted by it all. (They came back round and 18 months later I work for them, its…fine.)
This is all heading to a burnout of course. I have been here before, working at 100 miles an hour and then crashing horribly. Usually this involves some sort of emotional epiphany while lying face-down that I am tired and need a day off, ruefully admitting to someone that was trying to save me that they were right. (Yeah, sorry every ex-boyfriend who watched that happen, I was very annoying about that. I don’t even work 5 day weeks anymore and I am radicalised about anything happening at even 5.01pm.)
Couple this with the fact I am constantly playing a game of, “am I even good enough?” and “oh god I’m going to die alone” it has been a bit of a time. Even without the global pandemic and the worst recession the UK has ever seen – again. (Babe, it literally only gets worse. Also we really shouldn’t call it The Ukraine. Just Ukraine)
Tonight, I took myself the Downs just behind my house and lay on a blanket with a book I haven’t been able to finish for months (Weirdly you will put your script writer friend in touch with the author when she adapts this for TV, the world is weird and you sort of know them somehow but not now, not yet.) and I left my phone behind. It was glorious. It was unexpectedly wonderful. I felt tension leave my limbs. I felt the dusk air swaddle my skin. I was more focused than I had been in weeks. I batted a few flies away but otherwise I just lay there reading. It was meditative. I stayed there until the street lamps start to glow. Even the sound of the overground sounded muted and slower. (I do love it there. But you live near Hackney Marshes now – you will forever miss your street, but you will have like treble the space for your 8 million items of clothing.)
I felt my perspective widen and things felt more optimistic and hopeful for the first time in weeks, it will be ok, it is going to be ok, we have weathered more than this before. It hurts but it won’t hurt forever. (Good mantra, Flood.)
I walk off the downs feeling calm. I see a poster pasted on the reclaimed wooden seating built into the train bridge,
The Earth isn’t warming- it is dying. My lip returned to its place between my teeth. (Got nothing to add.)
Good Words (from the past)
This from the New Statesman shining a light on to how the coronavirus has renewed the importance of the welfare state.
“The coronavirus pandemic, like its predecessors, is a salutary reminder of our shared humanity. Against such foes, the welfare state is our collective defence. Yet for decades, politicians competed to cut this resource. In a new era of crisis, we may yet hope that they instead compete to fulfil human needs.”
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If you have listened to, watched or read from Modern Love you will be familiar with the enormous range of stories that can entertain and break your heart. In summary of how to love to well – be vulnerable, be generous and be wise.
“Written in the form of an online dating profile for her husband, Jason (to help him find love again after she was gone), her essay, You May Want to Marry My Husband, showed how true love is not about possession but generosity.
In Amy’s story, the last writing she would ever publish, she listed Jason’s various qualities — “He is a sharp dresser. Our young adult sons, Justin and Miles, often borrow his clothes.” And: “This is a man who emerges from the minimart or gas station and says, ‘Give me your palm.’ And, voilà, a colourful gumball appears.”
*
This popped up on my twitter in light of the recent stats about professions that are most “useful” and an artist rendition of the stats that artists aren’t needed. Nobody believes anything anymore and yet everyone believes their views more than ever. Wouldn’t it be lovely if people could just say, “I don’t know?”
What do we mean when we call art necessary?
“What has become truly necessary is stating the obvious: No work of art, no matter how incisive, beautiful, uncomfortable or representative, needs to exist. Yet the internet — the same force that has increased awareness of social-justice movements — has hyperbolized all entreaties to our fragmented attention spans. It’s now as easy to see all the incredible and twisted ways the world causes suffering as it is to waste a couple hours scrolling through Twitter. The concerned citizen’s natural response is to prioritize. It’s why so many outlets seem to invoke moral outrage as a growth strategy — and why being told what you need to read or watch starts to be appealing.”
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Jake Johnson Doesn’t get the Sex Symbol Hype – I mean he really should but we love a humble king.
“I think when a man is really vain in 2022, there’s something about it that’s off-putting. But there was something about that era. I didn’t live through it, but everybody who I’ve talked to talks about how truly open sex was, and there’s something about being vain then that was directly relating to how much sex you had. It makes sense, everybody should be dressing up and trying to look really good because they’re all sleeping with each other. Nowadays, you dress up and look really good for Instagram likes.”
Wanton Consumerism
I have about 8 pairs of these kinds of trousers and I recommend that anyone who will stand still long enough. I wear them for work, I wear them to wander around in, I wear them when I pretend I can afford anything from The Row, I wear them to sit in the bottle shop next to my house and type these unhinged missives in to the void. Versatile!
From: The Frankie Shop
Hive mind problem solving
Dear Eva,
I’m in a difficult situation. I’m 39, and pregnant. The path to get here was complicated and traumatic, which is why I was surprised when a number of my friends (including a close friend I’ve known since childhood) appear to have dumped me since I told them. I live in quite a rural area, and so the loss of a local friendship group is particularly challenging. All are trying for babies themselves and having difficulty conceiving, which I can empathise with. But I am shocked that they have decided, independently of each other, to cut me off for succeeding with a much-wanted pregnancy. I’m worried that I will have my baby and these friends will never know her. Is it my responsibility to fight for their friendship?
You can read Eva Wiseman’s response here.
The hive mind of mum pals have spoken just in time for Mother’s Day…
Brand new mum friend: “Oh don’t fight for these friendships, who dumps someone in these times?! Grow up. Which is applicable advice to most people in most situations”
Mum of two friend: If you have to fight for a friendship is it even worth having?! True friends are friends regardless.”
Me: For whatever reason women are brought up to compete with each other (for what? The crown of best woman? Thinnest woman who has the tallest husband and nicest hair? Best at finding things that actually fit in Zara and then getting to say all casually, “This? Oh just Zara…” Who knows) – and your win feels instead like their loss.
You can confront it, which I’d optimistically say about 40% of people can handle and really own their entirely typical ugly emotions – or accept the friendships as over. But you’ll have to put the effort in and accept that some things will simply be too hard to handle at the moment. It always hurts losing a friend, I still grieve every loss for every lost pal when they flit across my mind – but you can’t make someone be your friend. Maybe in time they will be able to come back, friendships have these weird divergences and subsequent convergences over time as the sands shift. Ultimately, this is painful for them for whatever reason and while feeling very personal – isn’t really that personal at all and just somewhat unbearable to be around someone who has what they so desperately want.
It would be very nice to use some quippy little fridge magnet saying like, ignore the people who don’t celebrate your wins - but it entirely ignores the patina of human emotion and sometimes people do stupid and contradictory things and they don’t even know why. Give them a bit of time, share the good, bad and the ugly like a real human and you may have a shift back – but you have to be big enough to forgive it and you have a lot going on at the moment.
However, you will get new mum friends and sharing this bit of your life with people going through the exact same thing will be essential and maybe bloom into lifelong friendships.
Single mum of one friend (I swear we didn’t confer but we do have similar outlooks): Friendships in this period of life are messy because peoples lives are messy. There are natural ups and downs, people get wrapped up in their own challenges. Friendships can suffer because of that.
They may well be going through their own difficult journeys with fertility and conception and sadly, pregnancy announcements can be really triggering for people going through that. So, although it feels personal, it’s really unlikely that it is.
I would advise to give them the space they need, and not to chase them. Check in occasionally, be kind, be dignified, and you’ll find they come back to you in their own time; if they don’t, then it’s not meant to be.
Parenthood is a big transition, and difficult that it’s happening at a time when important friendships feel uncertain. I would just suggest letting go of control in friendships, they’ll still be there in time - and embracing change and new patterns that fit your new family and priorities.
Bon Mot(s)
Final word from John Steinbeck for writing such an excellent letter to Marilyn Monroe. Is there a better promise than “…furthermore, I will like you very much”?
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