‘writing down these thoughts are the opposite of art’: I am responsible for everything bad that ever happened to anyone ever

also a poem, the quality of which explains why I don't write poetry

I think everything bad that’s ever happened has been my fault. Maybe a cosmic punishment for playing hooky in the fourth grade, or being mean to that girl in middle school, or lying to my parents about smoking when I was 15. If my friends and I drift apart I should have tried harder. If someone vomits on a night out, I should have been taking better care of them. If I’m standing on a bus and nobody offers an old man a seat, that’s just my bad vibes oozing out. Thank God 9/11 happened 10 months before I was born or else I might have blamed that on my very conception. I’m not catholic but I think I’d made a good one; the guilt, the jewellery, the feeling I’m being constantly watched and judged and found lacking. I look great in red too, but I don’t think women are allowed to be cardinals.

I am impatient, and afraid, and have been feeling violently nostalgic for my early adolescence. Gloomy fall afternoons with my friends at the beach, wrapped up in blankets and blasting Sweater Weather by the Neighbourhood out of Sally’s Bluetooth speaker (which my phone still refuses to connect to). It is 4am, too hot to sleep, and I am reading a Cassandra Clare novel, blissfully free of critical thinking, simply enjoying the story, the birds starting to sing outside my window. I am at my first dive bar show, hair dyed blue and lips painted black, singing along to Stupid for You for all I’m worth, feeling my converse stick to the beer scrubbed wooden floor. No weed, no booze, just pure adrenaline, the black X’s on the back of my hand (reminiscent of DONTTRUSTME) are no obstacle to having what I will continue to refer to as ‘the best night of my life’ until the next show. Even the worries, that heavy sadness that I carried around then, it feels almost comforting in retrospect. But perhaps I will feel that way about how I am now in 10 years as well. Isn’t that always the way?

I am in the depths of editing my dissertation. I miss undergrad like hell. Fourth year was chaotic and painful and hectic but I had so much fun. Salsa dancing to music I didn’t understand but adored everyone else’s adoration of; the halloween party we hosted, 30 people crammed into a one bedroom apartment, trying to find space to dance with Sally and Sabrina in the tiny kitchen; 7am swims with the old Jewish ladies and a man I think was training for the Olympics; marathon library sessions until my eyes blurred and my neck creaked but I felt like I was doing something important (writing 4,000 word essays on the Cold War); spending hours writing and socialising at Pamenar but still failing to establish a rapport with the baristas; getting drunk with Jasmine most weekends, distracting ourselves from essays and longing for the semester to end; I was happier than I ever thought I was. Isn’t that always the way (refrain).

Unusually for me, I went out during the day on a Saturday, into Leeds to work on my dissertation. I am trying to make peace with this city, a city that really, has done nothing but shown me good times. I am working on accepting, on gratitude, on not chasing after the next best thing the second I feel even the tiniest hint of complacency. That sounds disgustingly like the wellness content that has infiltrated my TikTok where perfectly unkempt girls dressed in stylishly baggy linen chirp at me to take a walk, to smell the flowers. This is a tangent but they always proudly proclaim they took a digital detox day to simply live in the moment while meticulously capturing every relevant moment and people seem to ignore the (oxy)moronic nature of that statement? Also, I don’t think taking the time to really savour my breakfast will stop me wanting to peel off my skin, but thanks for the tip! Anyway, this is the first day in Leeds in a while I have felt genuine affection for the city because of how far I am from home, not in spite of it. I am going to count that as growth. I am excited to go home to Matt, to make a dinner, to play with the cat. To do it all over again.

Sometimes I am worried I don’t know who I am. Not on an existential level, more like a ‘I fear everything I do is to please someone or get a reaction from them and as a result I am often unsure of what I really like or think.’ To me, that seems spineless, and this is hypocritical because I’m usually vocal about doing your own thing, not dressing or acting or speaking for the sake of universal likability but here I am, on the proverbial bended knee, saying ‘oh please, like me, I am so palatable, so easy going! Oh, unless you want me to be cynical and aloof, I can do that too! Oh? You want bubbly enthusiasm? How about self deprecating? Let’s try subdued and mature? Please, please just like me, think of me as reliable, friendly, whatever you need, whatever fits in your world!’ Sickening sycophancy, Uriah Heep worthy. Substack seems an inappropriate medium for this because it seems so performative, and if there’s one thing I’m certain I’m not—unless you want me to be that is—is performative. Or at least, I hope I’m not; I try not to be but everything sort of feels performative when you constantly feel like you’re being watched. Not in a tinfoil hat, ‘The CIA are onto me, tryna stop me spreading the truth about TAP WATER and the CHINESE’ kind of way, more in a ‘I spent far too much of my adolescence life watching others present their lives in social media and now I am paranoid I am somehow subject to the same scrutiny even though I’m not documenting my life like that’ kind of way. Jeremy once told me that a lot of his other women friends felt the same way, though it seems less common in men. I’m sure someone more qualified than I could do a study on that, the male gaze and performance blah blah blah.

Writing down these thoughts are the opposite of what it feels like to write my diss—sidenote, ‘what’ autocorrected to art somehow so it briefly read ‘writing down these thoughts are the opposite of art’ which seems weirdly apt even if a little demoralising—where I feel I overthink every syllable I put down, meaning that it takes me about an hour to write each paragraph. Words here, on the other hand, seem to be gagging to be put on the page. Quality vs. Quantity perhaps? The idea that I have nobody to impress with this unlike with my diss—except for you, dear reader, yes YOU specifically, I just want your validation really, it’s the only reason I write—is very liberating. I used a lot of em dashes in this paragraph, isn’t that meant to be a sign of AI or something? Ridiculous when you think about it, to me the em dash is a signal of fluidity and an inability to shut the fuck up; I’ve never been a fan of a full stop—my teachers and professors have always loved to accuse me of comma splicing—the full stop to me feels like too much commitment, too final, it sorta feels like it assigns too much finality and therefore too much certainty to what I am trying to say.

I’ll leave you with this, a draft of what I think was a poem I tried to write in my Notes app from a year or so ago:

And her gaze never wavers as I stand over her and ask her directly

‘Please tell me your name,’ for I must have forgotten it

In the crush and the rush of last call,

Though her drink of choice I’ve memorised,

The salt rim a fitting end to what promised to be a fulfilling night.

It tapered off as so many do

In bio degradable glitter and crushed filters.

The opposite of art etc…