I wanted to stop writing.
What is the point?
I wring words from my wrists every month and I am still here. Half a dozen followers and enough writing to fill bottles of ink. So I tried. Hours later I find my knees pressed against my chest, notebook in my right hand, pen in left. I cannot stop. Incantations and rhymes dance across my mind at the stickiest times.
So often I am afraid to write what I feel. From fear follows a soft voice that says; start there. Start with your heart bleeding for the friend you lost. Start with resentment for a father who lives, but hovers like a corpse in your mind. Start with pockets filled with dust. Start with insomnia at 5am in the morning when the rubbish men whistle you into sunrise. Start there.
When it all feels too much, I am viciously good at making myself wrong. But when I fall back I realise that being self sufficient in a rapid, tantalising city like London takes profound resolve. To deny what I truly feel while I am here would be to tighten rope around my wings.
Life is devastating. It lures me towards gorgeous turquoise and glittery volcanic lakes to fall in love with my silhouette. Lurking beneath my veneer is a pain as vast as the water, and the only way out is in. I have learned though, that suffering is not an end but a passageway. There is so much love to be made here. Oysters sit in the deepest shadowy pockets of the lake bursting with invitation. When I flow with the strokes of pressure, catastrophe becomes a slow, enticing dance. Perhaps I just need to relax my spine, curl my fingers and wind my waist.
In 2018 I am to focus on what is in front of me. As I think of it, I am not sure any of my deepest desires can be seen or touched. There are no goals, but clear intentions. Life will outrun me a million times over, so I will do what I can do now and relax into her teasing rhythm. And perhaps If I move about this effortlessly I will fall into the arms of the people who write my favourite songs. Perhaps like magic I will find myself in the sky, making my way to new places for exciting new work, perhaps money will just slip into my fingers and dreams will just naturally express themselves, the way the Jasmine just happens to blossom. Mystery is the elixir of growth.
One of the most beautiful things about being in the canal of suffering is that you learn who has the heart to hold you. You learn to speak because if you don’t the world will grind you down to dust. This process does something beyond sharing words online. Something deeply healing and satisfying. So here I am. In the bath, scribbling diagonally across the page. I have completely forgotten time and it is the sweetest emancipation. I think I will start here.
Wishing you a Happy Valentines day and (because I’m late) a Happy New Year,
Nadège x
In Her Sweet Dreams 