This One's For Me

I realise now that this blog will, in the end, be a tug o’ war of sentiment. A swaying and creaking branch - to and fro between self-assured, feminist histrionics and lonely, catastrophic dribble.

Right now I can’t say for sure, and I don’t want any current gushes of sadness or anger or regret to discredit previous ones of happiness or freedom

but a sigh of resignation can’t be written down.

I have bipolar disorder and I do my very best.

I am here.

I am fun and energetic and powerful. Powerful and furious but happy. 

At 16, I would have burned down your kingdoms, myself with it, if it meant your ruin.

Or, I am slow and quiet and clumsy. Clumsy and defensive. 

At 18 I was sad, picking off my skin like I didn’t feel deserving of its soft shield.

At 19, I probably would’ve made a good seventeenth-century melancholic. Even waking up on a sunny summers day could fill me with dread. Becoming a writer, or acknowledging that I am a writer, was a good enough excuse/cover for bouts of nihilism and unmedicated depression, black apparel and outlook.

I have the capacity to carry myself like an ambulance, telling myself I am the winning lottery ticket that went through the wash.

That said, at 22 I’m better, though the tide will always flow in and out. And while I know how to manage myself, my illness, but 16-year-old Ema, 18-year-old Ema, the in-betweens and the since-thens, those girls are still me.

Yeah, I still want to fight them sometimes, but mostly I want to hold them.

Last week, in a haze of cannabis and Anchor Steam beer I wrote to them. Consequently, this letter has been transcribed from my journal - from messy, almost indecipherable, handwriting.

So,

Dear Em

You write like a girl. I write about my womanly life experiences, and that usually comes out of unfiltered emotion, unrequited love, and eventual discussion of my vagina as a metaphor. And that’s when I can write, which doesn’t happen to be true anymore. Maybe.

I am up late asking you a question, really questioning myself. I’ve sat here on my bed for nearly two hours, mentally immobile. I understand women like me are hurting and dealing with self-trivialisation, contempt for other more successful people, and misplaced compassion, addiction and depression whether they are writers or not.

But I want to tell you that everything is fine.

You’re going to work really, really hard and you’re going to make it through high school and university. You will tear yourself apart daily but, fucking hell, will you excel. By graduation, you will have gained and lost friends, confidence, weight, a baby, people you know will have died.

But I want to tell you everything is fine.

Why?

Because you are a woman with ancient anger in your veins and the cruelty of a goddess in your heart; you will cut open the thing you are afraid of and make a home inside it.

Everything is fine.

So, please, be excited. You deserve so much to be excited.

Em

Sometimes (not often) indebtedness can be found at the bottom of a bottle at the bottom of a stoop, at the bottom of everything.

My job is new, my friends are new, my house is new – I, by comparison at least, am old. And, right now, I am the oldest I have ever been.

As I amble toward a month and a half in this disgustingly expensive and nauseatingly beautiful city plagued by bed bugs and hangovers and insomnia and hope, the concealed sleuths of past selves are comforting.

I don’t mind them, others don’t seem to either.

At 22, it is hard for me to feel anything but lucky that I caught the wave of manic-pixie-dream-girl appreciation right before it crashed.

That I got a taste not only for life but living, not for gaming an already bankrupt system but seeking – if not achieving – self-acceptance.

At 22, I am here.

I am here.

I am here.

Accompanying the letter: "Sad alien girl, don't you know much you've grown?"