Life Comes At You Fast

March 11th was a fairly unremarkable day. According to my records it was a Wednesday, slightly overcast, and I had the day off.

It was a mere 13 days ago, which seems somewhat impossible to believe. It was a day in which I opened up this blog for the first time since summarising the last decade back in November. I started to write a post.

The working title was, melodramatically, 'On Growth', and was set to be a piece in which I spoke my greatest wishes for the future into existence. I was bristling with excitement, with a corker of a start of the year under my belt and plans for a whole new journey ahead. I found love, dear reader. I found hope. And I found a drive to take on the world akin to that gusto that had seen me start this blog 8 years ago.

I opened with the sentence; 'Right now, the year is 2020, and I am 27 years old.' And that was it. The year itself felt an unremarkable statement, the now-inane seeming content of the post, not inane at all.

But back in November last year, right when I was lost deep in the turmoil that saw me desperately recount the last ten years, little could I, or any of us have known that the seed of something dark and deeply sinister had begun to root in this world.

Something that would begin as just a snippet of an article on Twitter, a passing anecdotal remark shared over coffee, a joke between friends that allowed us to reminisce over our favourite apocalypse movies. I can't even pinpoint the exact moment that it became incredibly, terrifyingly real, but due to our inherent western-lensed privilege, it really doesn't feel like that long ago. Never in a million years could we have expected then what was coming, and just how quickly and dramatically it would upend the entire planet.

So I guess I'll start that original post again.

Right now, the year is 2020 and I am 27 years old.

And right now I, alongside millions of other people in nearly every country on earth, am locked in a nationwide quarantine inside my own home in an attempt to protect humanity from a deadly virus which has taken over the planet and infected hundreds of thousands of people.

It's staggering to think it was less than two weeks ago that this was so far from my thoughts that I could even begin to imagine my future. Just this morning, on my single government-sanctioned walk into town, I breathed 'oh my god' audibly spotting a man carrying a luxurious bounty of two 4-packs of toilet roll. Later, I was genuinely ecstatic to find a lone packet of bagels squirrelled away on the back shelf of newsagents I'd had to wait 10 minutes outside of, in a box marked on the pavement in hazard tape. So when I finished my last post with 'Here's to ten more years of trying to do the right thing and causing a whole hot mess of a life along the way!' I really had no fucking clue what was just around the corner.

So this is my life now.

I've been out of work for nearly two weeks and the official lockdown of this country started last night.  And while it's expected to last three weeks, we all know it'll last a lot longer and the situation is about to get a lot, lot worse. So as I wile away endless hours watching modern society descend into chaos, knowing if I leave my house I could get fined or potentially kill a whole bunch of people, and I don't know whether any of my friends or family will survive this - I guess I'm just gonna write. I'm well aware there's far more important stories to tell and read during this pandemic, but I can't really tell any other story than my own.

And I suppose there's never been a greater prompt than the end of the fucking world, right?

Rituals

I'm just gonna come out with it: This past year has been really, really hard.

The other day I tried to recall everything that's happened since January and it would seem every single conceivable part of my life is wildly different now than it was then, and even more so since the last time I was here. Some change has been for the better, some for the worse, but all of it - or so I keep having to tell myself - for the greater good.

I guess I'm being vague because a lot of it is still sensitive, but also because I stopped writing online all those years ago because oversharing caused me so much damage. So I don't know if this is a good idea, and to be honest I don't really know who I'm even talking to anymore, but fuck it. I'm here now because I've just had a really fucking weird year, and for some reason this is where I'm drawn back to after all this time.

One of the lighter changes this year has been developing a wholesome and mostly unironic interest in astrology and mysticism. Yep, Tarot cards, zodiac signs, crystals, the LOT.

What started as a mild curiosity has blossomed into a life-affirming passion that just does as much for me as the almost-certainly-overpriced private therapy I had over summer did. One of my favourite daily rituals is to stick on a video of some softly-spoken youtube mystic who just pulls random tarot cards based on starsigns and tells you you've been through a lot, but ultimately you're gonna be okay. Who knew it was just that easy huh.

It was through one of these videos that I came to learn that the 11th of November - the day I began writing this post - is a special day. As explained by a very legitimate looking website: 'According to numerology, the number 11 is a “master number” which signifies intuition, insight, and enlightenment. When paired together, 11 11 is a clear message from the universe to become conscious and aware.'

So with it being not only the 11th day of the 11th month, but also the day of a full moon, the end of a decade AND a period of mercury in retrogade (I told you I was into it), the girl in this video told me now was the time to do something important. And then she said one line that reached out and grabbed me by the throat;

 'If you've found yourself having a particularly hard time recently, it's the universe telling you there's things you simply cannot bring with you into the new decade.' 

I thought about it all day, and the more I thought about it, the more truth it seemed to hold. This year has seemed so fucking hard because its the culmination and apparent consequence of everything I've done in the last ten years. Every mistake I've made, person I've hurt, every time I fucked myself over or let myself down during my time as an adult, all of those things have come full circle this year from one explosive drama to the next.

So I just wrote it all down.

This 'former' over-sharer made a list of everything that has happened in the decade, starting from my impossibly naive 17 year-old self about to make her first important life decisions, and everything that has gone right or wrong since then. And fucking hell was it a revelation.

To be honest with you, part of me was thinking I'd post the lot here, but not only is it long as hell, I quite frankly can't possibly imagine why anyone else would care. *Edit: this is me returning to this post 11 days later (omg poignant) and after finding myself constantly going back to the list and adding things and remembering more over time, I think it does has value, maybe if only even to me. So, fuck it:

 This is my huge ass list of everything in my life over the past 10 years.

The biggest takeaway I had from doing this, was realising not only have I made the same mistakes over and over again, but it seems the mistakes were the first and sometimes only things I could remember. I guess it's true you don't remember every lovely yet ultimately inconsequential evening you had with close friends in a cosy bedroom with a bottle of wine, but you DO remember with startling detail the time a once boyfriend got so mad at you for wanting to go home that he launched a candle at you from across a crowded pub. 

Ultimately it just said a lot about how I prioritise these memories in my perception of my life story. That was what came to mind first. Not the joy and growth and exploration, but the regret and cringe and misery. 'It's the universe telling you there's things you simply cannot bring with you into this new decade', I heard echo inside my brain, and I knew the nice horoscope youtube lady was right. I was the one saying I can't escape my mistakes, when I'm also the one letting these mistakes define me. That's what I want to leave behind finally, once and for all. 

So later that night, as the time approached 11:11pm, I decided to complete the ritual.

After spending a few hours bulletpointing this list, I pulled three tarot cards and placed them before me; the four of cups for the past, the four of wands for the present, and the nine of cups for the future. I then took out a notebook, ripped out some pages and wrote out five things I want to either release myself from or to manifest for myself in the future. (I'm not going to write what these were because, apparently I think some things are still sacred.) I wafted the cards and the manifestations over fumes of burning sage, and whilst clutching rose quartz, labradorite and moonstone to my chest, I set them alight and burned them one by one.

And as I watched my words dissolve into cinders and float off into the universe, I thought deeply to myself that, yeah, this may all be just bullshit and one of the many things people to do cope. But if in doing this I truly believe that I can become a better person, that I can release myself from past traumas and start this fresh new slate on which I aim to thrive and prosper and make beautiful things happen does it really fuckin' matter? 

That night I slept with the stones and cards under my pillow. You know, just in case.

Here's to ten more years of trying to do the right thing and causing a whole hot mess of a life along the way.

Goodnight x

World, I'd Like You To Meet Sit Down

On trading Scarphelia for Sit Down, and the story behind our debut EP: 'Cheap Luxe'

It'd been a month since we'd returned from the fateful summer in New York City, I was sitting in the coffee shop in Brighton where Greg had just got a job, and everything felt like hell. Through my headphones, I listened to the demo he'd recorded the night before, a screeching guitar and thundering drum beat that told me more than he ever could put into words. He felt it too. I pulled out a notepad and pen and scrawled a few lines in time with the track: 

My hair's a fucking mess and doesn't even look good. I'm so fucking hungry I don't have any food. When nothing I do matters, all is wrong with the world, I'm an angry, motherfucking angry girl.

It was the first song we wrote as the band we called Sit Down, a name we chose because we wanted something angry and punchy and didactic; Sit down, shut up and listen to this. We were young, passionate and broke, and so desperately furious at so many things. During our time in New York we'd slipped from the matrix, turning on the idyllic world we'd always known, only to realised how deeply fucked it all was. The clawing dissatisfaction that flowed through us swirled in a vortex of anger and a compelling need to do something about it. It was this raw energy that sparked a counter-cultural explosion in the 70's and feminist anarchy in the 90's. It was punk. And the only thing that could do justice to the fury was pure, unadulterated noise. 

The Last Scorned Woman

"I won't be the villain in your stories any more." I said, as the midnight waves crashed against the shore and we shivered in the moonlight, his arm draped over my stiff shoulders. It was strange how brutally cold it was, yet we were both somehow pretending it was worth it.

"You were never the villain." He replied softly, gazing out across the dark swelling sea, as if he'd find the right words dancing along the horizon line. Then he turned, his arctic eyes fixed upon mine, and I looked up at him expectantly. With the utmost sincerity he could muster, he looked at my lips and murmured; 

"More like the saviour."

And with a cross between a snort and a choke, I burst out laughing in his stupid fucking face. 

And that's when I knew that I was free.

The Scars Inside Ourselves

It’s the dead of winter, and still a surprise to run a thumb across my wrists and find grooves where the strings were once tied.

My breath fogs against the icy glass, a storm between two panes, and as the familiar parts of me begin to ache and howl, I quiet them with a warmth and stillness of my own. Something in me has healed, a once damaged light which only now fixed reveals the other wounds I didn’t know I had. It’s funny, isn’t it? How skin toughens into scar tissue, but only once it’s been destroyed.

When I was younger, I was obsessed with the scar on my forehead. A thin white gash that extends into my hairline, from a childhood accident involving a glass door and an untied shoelace. At school, scabs and scars and broken bones were social currency, a way to prove how interesting you were, and how you had got here. And I displayed mine with pride, a jagged pearlescent trophy of my resilience and bravery, because here was healing you could prove. A neat story from start to finish, a memory immortalised with a permanent souvenir. But not all healing is as linear. I wonder how many of those other children were carrying the scars that could not be seen.

I am a woman now, and I have collected many scars along the way.

It pains me to credit man for any manner of my making, but there is a heaviness I carry that could’ve been forged by none other. I was raised by my mother, protected by my sister, and understood by my aunt, but only ever because men were either incapable, or worse, unwilling. While on the surface I grew older and wiser over the years, softer and kinder from the impact of brilliant women, what in fact forged my character was the scar tissue growing inside of me; bitter, blanched and tough from the claw marks men left on my soul. When I later began my path of self-discovery and the male indifference inevitably reversed, I became prey, vulnerable and completely exposed through my naive desire to excavate the reason why I was the way that I was. I began as we all do, ethereal and vague, with no defined edges or sharp corners, open to any and all things that could impact me. Today I stand misshapen and tough, like a long-chewed piece of gum spat out by the world, warped from years of changing myself to be enough for the men that I have loved. But in my toughness is strength. That resilience and bravery that was foretold on my skin. And I have arrived, fully-formed and blossoming into that shape I have ended up being. Because unlike the scar on my head or the proud injuries we displayed as children, sometimes we can learn how to undo the scars inside ourselves. And that is what I have come here to do.

This silent year I killed the puppet master. I tugged at my own strings and the faceless man fell, stumbling on his own surprise. I didn’t know I could do it until I did. And I turned and looked up into the beady eyes of the man of all men and watched as my own thieved purity seeped from his fatal wound. Then I dug the strings from their well-worn grooves and I stepped out into the cold alone. A woman who’d never again be controlled by man.

The last scorned woman.

I can’t promise I’ll do it right, but I promise I’ll do enough.