You Can Call Me El

It’s so important to tell people when you think their stuff is cool. That's what this post is about. Because of who I am as a person, apparently, when I was thinking about this concept I framed it in the context of death. It seems to be a constant of funerals, or at least the ones you see in media, or the imagined funerals that I go to in my head (it's super fun in here!), that people have things they wish they’d said to the person who's died. It's to be expected, maybe. And in these cases, it never seems to be things like, I wish I told them how annoying I found their style of washing up, or I wish they'd known how much I hated it when they left their shit all over the house and didn't tidy it away. It's usually more along the lines of I loved you in this and this and this way. I know this sounds bleak, but bear with me. Think instead of the pure peace to be found for someone who lived on purpose and knew exactly how loved they were. When they die, there’s ...

Something insidious about anxiety that I'm only beginning to realise is the way that it creeps up on you. Your thought patterns change, you're filled with fear and dread - yes fine, we know. But the particularly weird and not always noticeable part of this is that it makes you think that this is the normal way to be. You think these are normal responses to events, and there's no option to think any differently.  I must have seen mention of this in various self-help-y things online, but I sort of ignored them in the way you do with things that don't resonate. 'Name your anxiety', and 'remember this is just something that's happening to you and not who you are' and so on. I understood the concept, but I didn't really see why this helped. And then I had a holiday! For the first time since March, I left London for longer than a day and spent three and a half weeks in Norfolk with my family and various family friends. The term cottagecore is new to me...

I wrote the below post on 6 August, which is now over a month ago! September already, eh. I didn't post it at the time for superstitious reasons and because I was in the thick of it and everything was all way too much. But I'm posting now, for non-superstitious and full-disclosure reasons - it's not by any means a fun post, and writing it didn't feel as though it helped me at the time. But I like the intention behind it, and maybe it did help after all, because I do feel differently now. And for anyone worried: Marc was fine, and he didn't get ill. People are often fine! Not always, but often. That's the lesson I'm slowly trying to learn. ----------- It's about 2 o'clock in the afternoon and it’s been approximately one hour since Marc said he thought maybe he wasn't well. In that time, I’ve cried for about ten minutes, panicked, and done a bit more work. Marc is now watching a YouTube video. Nothing much has changed. It’s not normal, when your pa...

I've conducted some scientific research recently. My methodology was as follows: I thought about the time I spent volunteering on the mental health helpline, and I thought about how many times people had said they didn't want to open up about their mental health to their friends or family, and I thought about what proportion of these people had given the reason, "because I don't want to be a burden."  The results are in: it was A Lot. A lot of people said this. This leads to the conclusion: many of us are worried about being a burden! This is probably true of many areas, but talking about your  mental health shit is a dead cert. It's heavy and difficult and people just don't want to lay it on their friends, their family, their loved ones, their colleagues, their acquaintances - anyone! They don't want to burden anyone. And sure, b eing a burden suuuucks! No one wants to do it! So a cool solution is to hold it in and don't talk about it.  The diffic...

Last weekend we went to Norfolk and stayed by the sea. My whole family was there and some family friends too and Marc, of course, and it was like being in another life. The entire week beforehand I was in a state of fear and stress. It just seemed ridiculous that we would be allowed to go. I was certain we would contract Covid that week and not be able to, or that something would happen to stop us. I just didn’t think it would happen. Note, please, that there was nothing concrete in our way; it’s not that I was worried about the train being cancelled, which could have happened, or missing it, or not being ready in time. It was nothing very specific. I just thought the universe would conspire to stop us from getting there. I think this is because I think I’m not allowed nice things . And I’m wondering if part of this might be because it’s been so many months without nice things that I can’t remember what it’s like to have them? Or that I just don’t think I’m allowed? Let me ex...

I wrote this in January 2018 and found it the other day. Unfortunately nearly all of it is still true so here it is, pretty much unedited. For all of you who think yoga's not for you... I'm now one of those people and I think it's great and I have nothing but the deepest respect for those who practise it and are good at it and urgh I KNOW. Anyway, here's the post. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I struggle with yoga. There’s something about it that just infuriates me. I don’t know if it’s my impatience with a form of exercise that’s just holding different positions for ages and paying uncomfortably close attention to your breathing, or my resentment that this is actually really hard and I can’t do it at all. It could be the smug righteousness of people who talk about their own yoga-induced spirituality and outstanding mindfulness, or the superiority and smoothly glowing thighs of the many indistinguishable...