A Long Adjustment

 She sat up still, indefinitely slipping into the pressure to only exist positively in the minds of others- a place that she scarcely existed at all. I think it’s a pressure she found comfort in though. It’s comforting when the pressure is to work up to pleasing others and not herself, be that in attraction or in kindness. She was past sourcing approval from herself.

Eventually she would rise and scrub herself raw under steam and scalding water: a new skin for a new day. She would anoint the new skin with her oils and creams, letting it be christened in scent and protection.

She has to romanticise morning time like this. Quotes of saints and clever thinkers had always lined her walls and her mind. This is how you get ready when you’ve grown up in your head: you’re annoying.

Whether this was a day at work or a day of self, she’d wear a uniform. Either the colours of whatever theatre or drowning her figure in long skirts previously owned by some woman and a large t shirt previously owned by some man.

Her hair fell too close to the bottom of her spine, she realised, as she fiddled with it incessantly. Still, she wore it the only way she new how, drew wings around her eyes and orange smudged along her cheeks. Getting ready was this ritual- a ritual of performing the same tasks but hoping the outcome would prove her worth differently each day.

Sounds all a pretentious morning, but she doesn’t have all the potential for pretence. Hours are filled on her phone: the app with the videos and the app with the swiping, the website with the letters, the pages with the politics. She sits and lets her brain hum and whir in the buzz of the screen- it’s easier to sit here distracted. It’s fun for now and its ok that it’s fun.

The incense burning was suffocated out the air by the aromas of expectation and defeat. This is her childhood room with her broken childhood bed and her broken childhood wardrobe. The wardrobe that spilled out into the floor, the hall and the garage. She formed attachment to the clothes she bought to hide in. Enough fabric to sail a ship.

She spent weekends running away to see successful friends in different cities, trying to rebuild the confidence she’d let boys snort away. She would get too intoxicated on validation or substance and drift further from herself for another week. Skint of course.

She spent her mornings in this period of adjustment, adjustment from dream to reality and from panic to motion. It was a deciding point- would this be a good day or a bad day. We know it’s not that deep and it will be likely be neither. She thinks about what she knows and what she doesn’t have to decide.

She knew her younger sisters are extensions of herself, growing into better and more beautiful forms of how she was. It was one of the things she knew to be true and one of the things that made her happiest. She’s struggling to listen to music as lyrics remind her of situations she won’t experience. The Moon and Me plays for the hundredth time that week and she basks in the nonsense of the album.

She might not have much going for herself right now, but she’s nurturing and affirming the fact that this is a much-needed time. In other words, she’s repeating pointless words in her head and staring at washing on the line.

Whether she eats or doesn’t eat are just as relevant as each other. She drinks water and it’s stale. She sits at her desk and the water sits on her tongue, as she adjusts to the beginning of the day.