It starts here.

(An impulsive return to words)

[Sticker by The Printesss]

It starts with the skin around my nails, the tiny tears that tell me I’m washing my hands too much and I haven’t used body lotion in years. Then it’s food. I seem to put more in the recycling caddy than I do my mouth. It’s the cervical smear I haven’t had in five years because the last one hurt so much and I never remember to book it.

It’s all the words I want to write but can’t seem to get them out. It’s the two Cornettos I ate every day while making my most recent course and I wrote all those words but those never seem to count.

It’s the dopamine hunting on eBay, the binge watching Hannibal, the reading a novel in two days then not picking up another one for months. It’s the pharmacist trying to empathise with my brain fog when she looks like she’s filled with sunshine.

It’s promising things I can’t do because I say it before I’ve engaged my brain. It’s looking back over 50 years and charting all the impulsive shit I’ve done and even though I now understand why I still feel the shame and cringe and want to hide.

It’s feeling like I’m letting everyone down. It’s never remembering to call because I forget you exist for stretches of time because there’s nothing else but what’s in front of me.

It’s waiting for my cat to die but she’s still here and I’m glad I know but wish I didn’t. It’s feeling bad about not going to the gym for the millionth fucking time but I let the membership lapse in 2020 for obvious reasons but what’s my reason now?

It’s feeling the sad/happy of a loved one being pregnant and knowing at 50 that this is really it and it has been for a long time but it seems to sting more now.

It’s the book that arrived this morning that I could have written myself but I didn’t.

It’s all of this and things I won’t share and can’t share and shouldn’t share and this is why I haven’t been here and I really want to be so I will find my way back without promising my return. I’ll do it when it feels right and maybe that’s right now, maybe I’ll just impulsively share this right now.