18 February

I am counting down the days. It's little over a week left--ten days. Then I will go to a neighbouring town and see a person with almost the exact same name as mine (it's ridiculous). That person will most likely ask me about how I feel. What I was like when I was a child. What I do during the days. What I find difficult in my life.

I will reply and struggle to reply and study what's behind the person talking and wonder if I can really say that out loud. I will look at them and say, I'm fine, and then avoid their eyes when they ask if I ever think of suicide.

I shouldn't want them to find something, something disabling about me. But I do. I want them to say to me, yes, you do show symptoms of this or that. Because it will be on paper. It's not supposed to be this difficult. It will be a relief, a promise.

But on that paper, it will also say: This is who you are now. This is part of your DNA. It won't help if the right person loves you or if you read the right book or if you move to the right city.
A promise.

It will be comforting, nevertheless. And they might be able to help me. This is how you love. This is how you feel less lonely. This is how you become loveable.

This is how you live.

So I am counting down the days until I get to go to a psychiatric surgery in a neighbouring town, to see a person with almost the exact same name as mine.
(Holding on to promises.)

This Is a List

5 things I say a lot

- svin(mycket/jobbigt/gott)

- Jag vet inte
- Jag är så trött
- Jag vet inte hur jag ska förklara
- Kanske

(I honestly don't know.)

5 things I think a lot

- I am so ungrateful/useless/worthless/a waste of space

- I love women so much

- I am depressed

- Don't think about that

- *What I would say at this moment to someone if I met them right now.*

5 things I dream about a lot at night

(I dream very little, but these are the few recurring ones)

- Being in love and being loved by someone I don't know.

- Having frustrating and stressful conversations

- Being trapped or stressed or in a hurry--often involving a murderer

- Getting stuck at something unable to finish it

- Being pregnant and about to give birth (this happens so often!!)

5 things very few people know about me

- I am depressed/have anxiety/social phobia

- I have seen therapists and am now doing cognitive behavioural therapy online

- I write on this blog!

- I am bisexual, undecided or very uninterested

- The very few people I have liked or had crushes on

5 things I love to do

- Read and find myself in other people's writing

- Walk in the forest

- Be completely alone in a foreign city

- Cook and do the dishes with an entertaining podcast

- Organise

5 things I want to happen before this year is over

- Visit Iceland

- Go back to Leeds

- Get to know someone I adore

- Finish something written

- Move

5 things I order abroad

- Veggie burrito or something at Chipotle

- Red velvet cake

- Anything vegan or vegetarian

- Eggs

- Breakfast!

5 things I miss in my wardrobe

- A perfect winter coat

- A silver grey chiffon midi skirt I saw on a girl in London

- A pashmina scarf

- Tops that look good with skirts

- A raincoat

5 things that smell wonderfully

- Ground coffee

- The forest

- Horses

- Bird cherry

- Summer mornings

5 things I want to get better at

- Writing

- Talking to friends

- Feeling things for people

- Making bread

- Languages

5 things I laugh at

- Podcasts

- Parks & Rec, Broad City, Friday Night Dinner, and so on

- Clever jokes

- Howl's Moving Castle

- Texts posts on tumblr

5 things that make me who I am

- My insane love for reading

- My somewhat insistent/annoying/clever joking

- My cleverness and good reading-head

- My independence and craving for solitude

- The space between everyone else and me



p.s. I adore the new design on the blog.

Writing Exercises

I have started an online writing course this semester. So far, I really like it. We haven't done much yet--only read some texts and sent in a shorter essay about ourselves and our relationship to writing, and done some shorter, simpler writing exercises. But I love that I have been forced--or able--to make more time in my day for writing. I still think I need to do more of it, though.

I thought I could post some of my own writing execises here. Not the ones I'm submitting because I don't know, but some of the extra ones I do, mainly in order to keep my writing up and get used to eat and become better. So here is a short taste of what I write.

∞
These are two exercises/challenges I found on a blog.

1. Take a book, close your eyes, randomly select a word. In 10 minutes, write exactly 101 words about that word.

(I selected the word blood från The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, which I am reading at the moment--it's very helpful in the writing process too.)

I think my blood is infected with poison. When I am sad or anxious, I imagine the poison running through my veins. Blood reaches into every corner of my body. From outside, it brings oxygen, poisoned air, to my heart. There it is condensed and given a purpose: ‘Take it to the head, to the limbs.’ The blood carts the poison, which is enriched along the way, to the fingertips and the brain and the uterus. That blood is everywhere and I would have to empty myself to get all the poison out. (If I’d guess, the poison is merely life.)

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2. Pick a book and open a page at random. Take the first ten lines on the right-hand side and write down the first word of those lines. Write a poem or a story where every sentence starts with each of these words in order.

(I'll use the same book.)

Have a glass of water
And bread, coarse bread with nuts and grains
They are not much, but they will give you
Life
Must not, need not, have not, be not. I
Am
So much more.
And you are too. Eat the bread
Which is life-giving and true
The clarity of water will help, too.

(My words were not great. Here is another try with the same words. I cannot be bothered to edit.)

Have you ever felt the intimacy with someone reading on the train next to you? And felt almost proud when you, too, bring up a book. They exist in that book’s universe and you in yours. Life is lonely anyway, but next to each other, you and they are in parallel universes, less alone perhaps. Must not escape no, perhaps not. Am just passing time. So they read to pass time. And you read to escape. Which is not to say that is is working; that you actually do escape, or that time passes—but you pretend, with them. The universe is not only in this train, it is in your head and their heads and it is unlimited.

∞