enfolded // fo(u)r: safekeeping
In which you ask me what I've been up to and I literally do not know except that it has been such marvellous chaos
TW: mentions of self harm
When I think of where I am going, it is into the knowledge that I am perhaps here to stay a while.
Emphasis on a while, written in slow motion, whittled down to the portion of myself which dares to lose all sense of time. I ask myself what I would like to do with all this while. I think I will wallow.
Now I can actually plan for some annual leave. Finish the book that I know will take me weeks, now that I have months. Now I can plan for a reunion with a friend I’ve been meaning to see since the moment things came to a close. We left off when we both left the place we had met. I long to get to know their new home. Has it become home, yet. Have you grown into the shape of its shell
yet
I do not know how to share a story in summary. It is not something I expect from others either. Part of me hopes you will either tell me it in full or not at all. I find that the intermediary space or however you want to call such inner questions as how did you do it, how did you get there, where are you now, where are you ever a perhaps unsurprisingly private ordeal. It is not a natural thing to let someone in on a swirling stomach. At least, not for me.
I will never assume something took you no time at all. Half-hearted loose forms will never do you justice. No need to tell me what it took. Admittedly, I don’t love a catch-up. The kinds that feel too much like a status update. Tell me in your own time, tell it to me true. Alternatively, send me chaotic voice-notes from bed (thank you to my wonderful friends who do, and who let me do the same, especially you, H, with your crackly, just-woke-up energy). It is the most loving to find you at your rawest, most ridiculous. Give me the absurd details rather than the landing itself. Let whatever it is inside you not emerge so quickly and refined. If you’re going to tell me, I would rather the rough drafts. The ones that gave you paper cuts.
I find that when a short retelling is unfathomable, as all retellings seem to feel to some degree, I close up the story altogether. And then of course I attempt to wait it out, test what time will do, so as to avoid shaping what feels to be languid and nothing but void half the time. Do you not lose yourself a bit in a retelling? The attempt of it so often feels false. On the surface, the closing up turns into hiatus, which turns into absence felt. Not perhaps one necessarily felt by others, because contrary to popular belief, we are not main characters— but certainly in myself. Hiatus imparts to me a kind of crossing. It urges me to consider it. It dares to demonstrate to me that I have crossed. To where— this is unclear. And so much of the in-between stuff (read as torment) that was so critical and momentous at the time of calling, does get relocated to a part of my brain which seeks to protect what is mine.
On the rare glimpse of stopping to see how far I have come, I realise I have run an entirely different course than imagined and for some reason the first thought that comes to mind is that of having left a limb behind. Where does all the detail go, the parts of myself I swore to protect? Perhaps I have dug some roots and planted them along the way. I inch a little closer to home ground in this way. Then there’s all the parts of myself which I dare not touch. I haven’t finished a book in the past four months. I haven’t worn a particular pair of earrings where the back’s gone wonky thanks to some point on the journey over (parts of you do get crushed) — for fear of losing them, you know. My lack of word on the page.
A lot of this absence has to do with a need for perspective, I think. I crave some distance with myself, who spends every living minute with herself. When I come home from anything, not just work, I decide to run no thoughts through the brain, and instead turn to music, which always has our back. Fill the void!
A crossing draws a bolder line around your silhouette. You feel as though every inch of you stands at odds with others. That others perceive you before you can realise what kind of living you want to create here. It doesn’t matter how much independence and self-sufficiency you have (which I sometimes have too much of). You feel like a random splodge to whatever organised chaos others are getting on with and it is that overwhelming sense of intrusion that forces you to get on with something of your own. It is a winning feeling to get on with it, to be so hands on with what is so— for a singular hot sec— out of reach. Think of resilience as your most vulnerable self, shared with yourself.
And what of an attempt at returning to the original story badly promised to tell one day— which on return, find that I no longer feel the same about the old thing. People urge me to tell it anyway. I hear my mother’s voice reminding me to remember where the water falls from. I tell myself that an irrevocably changed tale is telling. And yet look at me flailing at the thought of return, which took so much of me to plant. At what point does clarity enter in a crossing? I thank A for giving me the time and space to tell some of it, to share it with someone, at the height of its most uncertain, before it powers on beyond myself.
Abandonment works twofold. It cries out over an unknown loss that isn’t arguably any loss at all. Just the emptiness which likes to intrude on the busy body recently removed and relocated. And then it runs on without you.
I watch myself leave, before I continue.
I have met with home and he has such tired eyes. I carry some small part of his weight now, which is knowledge. I wonder if he feels that we are worlds apart, too. If he should read this, I hope you do not understand it. You’ve told me you don’t understand poetry much (not that I write poetry), but I think you do. Purpose and longing pull apart in a crowd beneath strokes that do look like bodies and I’m supposed to feel okay about the fact that there is so little I can do. I go to listen. I absorb their voices, though I cannot forget there are so many more from where they came from and they are not silent. I want to address you in my writing, to never exclude you even though I feel that I cannot truly reach you. Let us continue to speak in code. I do not think I can visit. Please do let me know if you ever find yourself in town. I will do my part to remember that we have not simply moved over, relocated some new heart and soul onto this island from another.
We cannot make replicas of homes.
I consider my own movement.
I am closer than ever to so much more of me. I’ve never loved myself as much as I do now. The bruises from last year trace themselves without my trying. They are so vivid. I wonder if they will ever leave me alone. These days, I apologise to door frames I brush shoulders with and forget I brush them at all until I turn onto my left side in bed at night. I fear that I’ve done it to myself again. It keeps me up. I hurl an old self into a much hoped for dream. I want to keep her safe. What does it really mean, to have come so far? It’s a question that doesn’t even know where she began. Whether in collective or individual movement, there is a misconception in the expectations of a new self upon arrival. It is a dangerous thing to put aside the self left at departure so completely. That’s why I dig them holes. You will become arrogant if you do. You will become unlike yourself. It will undo you. I’ve seen this so many times in friends, loved ones, and I will never not be upset by it. You don’t need to try so hard to be something. Roots take years to take possession and to be able to support. They grow in strange directions. Time jumps and suddenly you realise what you have etched into the palms of your hands. It is foolish to try and prove something of ourselves when we land. If I had to write a manual for arrival, not that I have any expertise but my stumbling and rummaging, I highly recommend some chilling. This is, of course, a note to self.
On a so-called date with an old idea, we ask each other whether we have changed. Well, obviously I’ve changed. I’m running to catch a train with my eyes at the arrivals board. I said I wanted a regular and now I’m paying for a large. I found the middle of our last conversation in someone else and I thought I’d seen a ghost. I’d forgotten what you look like, what you really looked like when we met. I thought I’d found what I wanted to do and now I’ve stumbled on a new form and it suits me much better. Thank you for telling me you are happy for me. I am so happy for me, too. Reunion has me considering many things which dare to collide. It is, of course, played out in slow motion like all matters which take time. Where should we ground ourselves this time around? What force is to be trusted and are we in equal parts hurled at each other? There is such joy in not knowing.