just spillin'
The realest things are my footsteps right now, one in front of the other. Everywhere else, it feels like only ghosts remain. Then suddenly, rose-gold clouds appear, making their great journey across the sunset sky. It is only polite to stop and let them pass. “After you, your majesties.”
A different kind of sadness bubbles away in me these days, one I am yet to grasp. I feel it in these footsteps, in my belly, behind my eyes, in the slowness. I think I’m terrified of listening to what it’s trying to say to me. I think I already kind of know. I also know that it’s ok to feel this. That it will not destroy me or make me weak or take away my will to live. I’m still alive, still breathing, still feeling, still a lot of things, and the people I love are still here. That’s something. I take another step, and then the next.
Last Wednesday, there was an earthquake in Melbourne. That same day, I was sitting in the waiting room of my GP’s clinic. I could hardly hear my GP when I saw her, her buried under layers and layers of PPE, a stark difference from the previous week. On Monday night, an unknown number burst through the silence of my phone as I rewatched The Walking Dead over J’s laksa. Nope, not answering that. An hour later, I remember that a voicemail was left. “There has been a possible case of COVID19 at our clinic. You need to get tested.” Tuesday morning, I took my second PCR test for the month, the first after a quick supermarket run also on a Wednesday, that stick up the nose like a shot of wasabi to the brain, no biggie. Client appointments were cancelled. An angry dad fumed at me for not telling him earlier as he had taken the day off work. I felt like it was the day for tests. I took another one later that night, feeling like I had nothing better to do and I needed to pee anyway. This was a different kind of test, one that I wished to be positive for the first time in my life. One lonely line appeared, no more than one. “What if there will always be just one lonely line and no more?” whispered my brain. I was surprised by my grief. It’s not like life is not tiring and hard enough that I now need to take on the responsibility of a whole other life at the age of 36. And yet, the tears fell. Grief can be clarifying. So maybe I want this. If this is so, then if you decide to come into my life, know that I want YOU. I’m waiting for YOU. Whoever you are, wherever you are, however you choose to enter my life. Perhaps on a Wednesday? I was born on a Wednesday.
I was awakened by an earthquake this morning. Jeremy was blowdrying his mane (all the hairdressers are closed - we are still in lockdown) when a loud rumbling began. The bed shook, the walls shook, I shook. Jeremy switched off the hairdryer and reality started to hit. This is no hairdryer. I didn’t want to believe it. “It’s probably the wind, right?” I asked assuredly, even though nothing was blowing around outside. “No, it’s an earthquake,” Jeremy confirmed. It felt like it went on for a while. A minute feels like a while when everything is shaking and you have no idea why. It stopped eventually. Jeremy went to check that his action figurines were fine. I went to look at my plants, God knows why.
I’m sitting at the waiting area of my GP clinic an hour later. The news channel on the wall-mounted TV flashes “Breaking News” repeatedly, alternating between scenes of fallen bricks, videos of rooms and plants and water shaking, the construction workers’ protests on the streets of Melbourne and police in hardcore riot gear. The waiting room fills up with masked people who have caught wind that the clinic is offering the Pfizer vaccine for the COVID19 virus. The phones are ringing non-stop. My phone buzzes with messages. The GP calls my name. All is good. Take your vitamin D! Put it next to your coffee!
I return home to make my breakfast and coffee. I place my tablets next to my coffee. I take all my tablets. I think about my to-do list for the day. I muse at how easy it is for life to just go back to normal business so quickly, like we did not just feel everything shake for a whole minute at 6 on the Richter scale this morning. Yet, my body isn’t so sure. It holds some remnants of the sleep I did not get to completely complete. My head feels somewhat floaty. I’m now returning to the pages of the book I’m reading about existential philosophy and philosophers, laughing inwardly as they did, about how the very moments that inspire philosophy are also the very moments where there is no time to philosophise. What am I doing here reading this book with my coffee? What am I doing suddenly blogging again after years of silence here? I think I need a nap.