Saturday 30 April 2016

What is it to be happy?




What is it to be happy?

I haven't worked this out yet. It seems almost random. I know what makes me happy; syrupy, dandelion sunshine; singing with my sister; walking with my dad; being with my mum. I feel relieved to see my friends, to laugh with them. I like to feel my love for them rise to my chest whenever we're together.

But these things don't always mean total happiness. They just promise it.

The happiness where everything is slotted into place is random. Not everything will be slotted into place, but something feels perfected. This morning I laughed out loud for no reason. I was happy to be alive. I was hopeful for the rest of my life. That was random.

Where does that happiness come from? Can we take a drug for it?

It has lasted all day and I have felt complete. No holes in this feeling. No heavy, leaded heart.

I am excited about this feeling. About its randomness. I like this rollercoaster life. The soaring in the sky and the slow drag at the bottom.

I don't really care where this happiness comes from.

Saturday 16 April 2016

To my mother, who loves me.

I am incredibly close to my mum because she is an excellent mother. She swears and screams at me when I misbehave, and I swear and scream and cry at her when she is annoying as hell. I remember the first time I eloquently shouted "fuck off" at her in a fit of passion when we were driving in the car and she was probably discussing school work and I decided to untie years of etiquette that I shouldn't swear in her presence because it was the best way to let out how I felt. I think rather than being a moment of extreme disrespect for my parent it became another level of communication between us. Somehow it was a move into our more adult relationship. If being adult means speaking crudely in extreme situations. Or any situation. But it was certainly a move to being closer to my mother, which I feel happens each day, no matter how much we loath what the other may have done. Mum says that she feels safe in the knowledge that whatever awful thing we spit out at each other means absolutely nothing and that love still flows between us no matter what. I think she's correct. 

Why does my mum always know what to say? And yet, sometimes, when she asks for my help I am lost for words. Does she know me through some divine connection for having created me? Can she read my mind? 

My mum is the one person in this world who knows just as much about myself as I do. I tell her everything. I am not one to keep my secrets to myself, so to have another person who can absorb them for me is the best thing I've ever been given. I am never judged, never shouted at, never ignored when I go to my mother with my horrible, hurtful thoughts. I think she could be the only reason I haven't gone completely mad yet. 

I have the absolute comfort in knowing that wherever I am in the world even her voice over the phone can soothe my worried heart, my whirring mind, my fidgeting hands. She can cure my sickness if I lie next to her in her bed. She can take my biggest heartfelt concerns and store them away from my overthinking head when I tell them to her on sleepless, crying nights. 

There was probably a time when I distanced myself from my mother experimentally. Failing to recognise her importance, her vitality to my being. I don't think that everybody has the choice to come back to their mother in some intense and lovely attachment after those lonely teenage years spent rejecting her existence. I did have that choice, and now I sit with the pleasant acknowledgement that in my heart is some powerful, invisible line across two bodies that attaches me to her every hour of every day. It may be a little strange to suggest that perhaps my mother and I are soulmates, but I'm beginning to believe that the notion of such intrinsic connection to another person has little to do with romance and much more to do with the random and perfect compatibility of two people. 

Thursday 7 April 2016

Boring boring boring.

Right now my life consists of absolute monotony. I get up, I have breakfast, I get dressed and at 10 O'clock I begin revision.

It is as boring as boring can be.

I begin to think of the 15 million things I would rather be doing than making a spider diagram of Elizabeth I's foreign policy in the years 1571 to 1588. I ignore all of those things, and force myself to focus on the blurring, green, ugly writing on the page. It's so boring it hurts. I fantasise about everything I can do in the evening when I'm finally free from that day's work. But, when I actually get to the evening I seem to do nothing. Too brain dead to conjure up any enthusiasm for something fun. I let my mind turn to mush, probably letting it turn over the things that I put in it earlier that day. My Easter break started over 10 days ago but I can't remember much of what's happened, it's all been the same. I went to Paris, so that memory is stark against the sea of unexciting notes and past papers, but everything else has been one long revision session. I feel like it's Groundhog Day.

I have over a month to go until exams, and a further month after that whilst exams go on. It's going to be like this. All the time. I don't have much brain space for that time. I'll write whatever dull thing comes into my mind to keep me sane. I'm so not excited.

Wish me luck.