the only thing

give me HOCKEY or give me —
give me WEST COAST or give me —
give me ZEN or, or, or 

Barely two months into honours and I cracked. No: there’s more to it than that. Tried to cope. Kept smiling. Stripped commitments to the bone but still felt kicked in the head. 

Rode the bus out of town just so I could watch the landscape peel away from the windows and not think. Listened to music without words. Wondered why I couldn’t write. Didn’t cry. Watched the scenery change from grey streets to grasslands dotted with livestock. Considered taking a picture then posting it on my blog, caption it ‘the past is a grotesque animal’ but figured I’d mess it up somehow and the sere grass, shredded clouds, tonal shift from sky to horizon—my camera wouldn’t do it justice. Plus the cows have a slackjawed beauty: calves tottering behind their mothers, et cetera. No words for undefined ache.

City centres never look the same. I wondered, not for the first time, how a place can look so modern and yet so much like a 70s throwback. Walked down wide empty streets and mentally catalogued details, thought about them in relation to hometowns and old homes. Wondered when I’ll stop using Vancouver as my reference point for everything good in my life. If I’ll ever view Sydney the same way.

I came here for the dry air and the solitude, but you gotta find balance between absence with presence. People. All these years and D’s still my big soul brother, gave advice and hope and a faint thread to the future. Reminded me why my closest friends tend to be dudes, smart guys who understand how dumb I get about things. How I get angry at the way life can be so fucking weird sometimes, the way it shapes you: I feel limited because I am female, and following social training I let myself internalise anger and anxiety until I self-implode. Guys can get confrontational, or remake themselves into tortured souls, but I’m just highly-strung? And I have to deal with it? Or so the story goes. And I’m mad at myself for believing it, and then I’m mad when people repeat these gendered scripts, and when I decide to go offbeat and people are surprised, I get mad at myself, again, for expecting better from them.

Permanent bitch face. I get told I’d look prettier if I smile more, even by family, which feeds into feeling even more fucked because they tap into long-buried issues I won’t bother airing. Except this: I have worth beyond what I look like and what kind of role I’d play in your life. I am allowed to be intense and discontent and uncomfortable and imperfect and scared, and turn that into art, and not be dismissed for my personal writing. The ‘wrong kind of writing’ (female? not terrible and grand? whatever).

Mental critiques: ‘your blog works but your writing’s shit’, ‘your technical skills don’t hide your lack of character’. Call me a hypocrite. Challenge my opinions. Ask me who I am to say these things, and I’ll tell you: someone who digs the shit out of writing, all the goddamn time. Someone who tried to stop writing passionately (‘emotionally’) because I thought it was time to rein it in, learn how to write copy, focus on financial and social pay-off. Grow the fuck up. And I felt jammed. I cracked. Couldn’t talk about it, a secret condition, until I was in an empty club in another city, swallowing tequila and spitting out the demons.

Never really thought of myself as a creative type until the thought of not making anything hurt. I can think of maybe three people who might understand where I’m coming from, who are doing everything it takes no matter how hard. They’re the ones who remind me to hold on and figure it out for myself, on my own terms. Why the self-absorption? ”But you’re a writer.” But of course. I write because it’s the only thing I know how to do.

Words on a lookout. Words at a memorial site. On the bus ride home I paged through scrawled notes, restructured articles. Fell asleep cheek pressed against the window, huffing air against cold glass. Woke and watched the bus chew up distance until we hit the city outskirts. Didn’t think about the return to damp air and descent into dark thoughts. Six more months of this holding pattern, my god. Left the station dreaming of other cities.