Elle est où la petite anglaise ?

How do I explain it ? I want to be like you. You, plural. It seems at times there's nothing I can do to progress, nor really become a part of something larger than myself and my immediate surroundings. How is it possible ? I am past the point of yearning, I touch the veil of the absurd. I am furious, paranoid, and listless. I am grey and limp, I am a dying thing. Yet I am told, Leyla, you couldn’t possibly do everything at once. I know this so well, but where does one even begin ? I never expected to spend my summer in a psych ward, but it seems I am too drugged to really be given any perspective on what has happened to me. Perhaps a delay in processing must occur, however it all blends into one feeling eventually. Apathy. I am indifferent about life or death. In Simone Beauvoir’s Les Belles Images, she says “Pourquoi existe-t-on ? Ce n’est pas mon problème. On existe. Il s’agit de ne pas s’en apercevoir, de prendre son élan, de filer d’une traite jusqu’à la mort.” Perhaps she is right. I pay a little too much attention to the sensation of living, existence, yet also obsess about death rather than leaving it for the time it shall arrive itself. I think that’s only because I am very conscious of the fact I can tamper with the time of my death. Why do you think I was in the ward to begin with ? That being said,  I have never been irked enormously by the fact that we exist at all. A man I had met on the ward said all of his misery and trouble derived from the fact that he couldn’t understand the universe, nor the true meaning of infinity. I am content with being blind to infinity. Perhaps content isn't the right word. I am indifferent. In my eyes, it doesn't concern me, just as noumena aren’t any of my concern either. I am wholly at ease knowing that some knowledge is utterly unattainable. That doesn’t mean, however, that I won’t try my hardest to articulate myself. That's what I found strange in my time at the psych ward. Speaking in French to psychologists, knowing that certain things could only be explained meaningfully in English. The only time I felt misunderstood wasn’t with other patients, nor the nurses, nor the psychiatrists, but purely with psychologists (or perhaps I got the short straw and ended up with an incompetent one, since I thoroughly enjoyed the other, who wasn’t assigned to me, but enjoyed our conversations so much that he took the time to talk to me about anything at all instead of the other patients). I can’t bend the way my mind was wired to express my inner world. My mind’s eye became blinded, clouded, fogged over, and I grew angry at her half ass attempts to psychoanalyse me after only 3 consultations. Freud would be ashamed. Lacan would be appalled. And I was simply sick of it. I am not a page in a textbook you read during your psychology studies. I’m here, in front of you, and I think you are an idiot. 

A storm is raging tonight, one that whips the wind and rain all over the windows like some hypnotic dance, which only means one thing. A recurring phenomenon. Something will happen between us, something that will leave us both irreversibly changed. Blue barks and whimpers all night, frightened by the blows of thunder and lighting. I hesitate to coddle him, knowing it might make his whines more deafening. I sleep, but I hardly remember falling into my slumber.

I laugh to myself ; I was right.

The next day, I make sure to wash your lip marks off of my water bottle, since I am convinced this will be the last time I see you. I don’t want to touch you ever again, not even the vague imprint of your thirst. You cried under your sunglasses and all I could feel was the flattening of my mental interior ; I can thank my prazepam and paroxetine for this. You said that we both knew we loved each other, that that wasn’t the problem, but that you were no longer emotionally available, that you wanted to focus on yourself, so I asked why you tried twice to sleep with me the day after I had left the psych ward. You told me “Well, because I love you and your hair was wet. You were beautiful”. I told you you had been selfish, and you agreed, but that didn’t seem to do anything to me. At the time, I had said no, then in the evening, yes, but why on earth would you have done that if you had zero intention of remaining in my life ? You said such dirty things, you finally let go, and I loved it. I told you to come in me, knowing that an orgasm for me was now utterly out of the question. An unattainable thing. You said “Are you sure ?”, and I said “Yes”. My orgasmic replacement was the few tears I shed throughout the night. We woke the next morning and you told me you were confused. I had said that we should spend the week apart, me with G, who would come to visit for a week, and you within the pool of your own life. I knew what was coming because you start to text me like a friend, or a cousin. Yet still, just yesterday, you allowed us to hold each other, kiss, and cry. As you wept into my shoulder I felt numb. I can’t even imagine how much time passed laying in the grass beside one another. After an eternity of conversation, followed by a second eternity of silence, you told me, “This part is always the hardest”, alluding to the moment we must part ways. It is always the hardest, and this is how we always ended up getting back together. Something clicked inside me, so I got up immediately, I said “Let’s go”, and we walked 10-15 minutes out to my tram station saying only a handful of words to each other. The tears still fell, your sunglasses couldn’t hide a thing (I remember when you had bought them, wanting to look a little like Bob Dylan). I was stone cold. I already knew what would happen. The storm had told me so the night before. You hugged me, I felt you shaking, holding back tears, and into my ear you said “I love you”. I pulled away and said “Okay, goodbye”. I suppose you wanted me to say it back ? That perhaps knowing I loved you would help you somehow in accepting your decision, but I was done saying anything at all. Internally, I wasn’t there anymore, my body simply behaved as it needed to. Dissociation I suppose. I twisted my body 180 degrees, almost fast enough to have fallen into a pirouette, and marched Blue and I to the furthest end of the tramway. Two women complimented his eyes whilst I tried to keep the tears slipping out of mine. 

I can’t find anything about me that feels real at all. When asked what I like, I typically remain indifferent. Perhaps I function differently, or maybe there really is a vast chasm inside of me, and no matter how many futile attempts I make to stuff it, the crater is endless. I feel I have no respite. No way to enjoy anything that I come across. I am mechanical. I am not really that sad, more that I can’t seem to understand the way it all works.

Blue doesn’t like loud abrasive music, so he saunters away, over to the left side of the couch. Licking the water droplets inside of his cone, I watch as he navigates his now huge head into a relatively comfortable position. The poor thing has had this plastic around his neck for three or so months now. I can only imagine how irritating it would be. Only now my throat begins to hurt. I started to smoke 40-50 cigarettes a day in the psych ward to counteract the extreme fatigue of my heavy prazepam dosage and expected to be able to stop as soon as I was home. I continue to suck them down, probably making things worse for me. But when the prazepam kicks in, I don’t care anymore. It’s almost as though I feel like a screen has been put up around me. Everyone can look at me, watch me live my life, but I feel myself that I am only a projection of a person and that no one can touch me. I won’t talk about the clinic yet. I can’t talk about it yet. I need more time but I believe I will forget it all if I don’t say something soon. 

My video diaries intensify in their accumulation, and little by little, I become more comfortable doing them in the nude. Not purposely, but only if I am showering or getting changed. What started out as a way of preventing myself from losing my mind with no one to talk to as a teenager has become at times hour long conversations purely with myself. I think of it as a documentary I will never put together. I have perhaps 7 years of these videos and spend a little too much money on harddrives just to put them somewhere and give my phone a chance to function. Maybe I shouldn’t say anything about them at all ? Maybe I should do what Vivian Maier did. Though, i’ve already fucked it. I grew up on the internet. I am not as mysterious as I would prefer to be. My adolescence is permanently digitised. Something about that bothers me. When I die, I want to be gone, really gone.

She said I rolled my cigarettes so perfectly that she thought I was smoking a vogue. I told her that this was my only true talent. Reflecting on this a day later, I realise that I genuinely believe this is true. She told me too that someone had asked her “Elle est ou la petite anglaise ?”. I smile. I tried so hard to look after everybody there. Mostly 50-60 year olds. I spoke for hours with everybody I could, mostly because there was nothing at all else to do to pass the time. I was on too many drugs to read or write anything. The fact they even noticed my lack of presence made me feel something so intensely. I felt the world was precious. I had hoped that I had helped, even though everyone repeatedly told me I should be helping myself. It isn’t in my nature. I see her later once she is discharged. What was once a shell of a person was a beautiful beaming mother reunited with her family. All dressed up. I said over and over how beautiful she was. I cried into her shoulder. She asked me about everything, she remembered the names of my pets. You will never read this B, and you couldn’t anyway because you don’t speak English (despite my best efforts at teaching you against your will), but I will never forget you.

I accidentally look at my reflection in the back of a funeral car. When I realised what the black car was, I was disgusted to my core. A quick moment of vanity became a shameful walk to my destination.

I remember every Friday having our “Philo terrace” where patients would get together with the psychologists and discuss whatever we wanted to for an hour or so. The topic sauntered towards magic genies, and what each of us would choose if we were given one wish. Some chose money, health, their own dreams, the abolishment of capitalism, to be able to go back in time and change things. I was last in the queue of wishes and had a long time to meddle with this question for myself. I suppose I could be selfless and end world hunger, wars, discrimination, but when I was asked, I said I wouldn’t want a wish at all. I’d take anything for granted if I did wish for it. I would want to do things myself. I don’t want a wish, nor to imagine being given one. I don’t want to meddle with reality. I want to be here. The psychologist I like said he wanted to be able to anticipate what was going to happen, see the future essentially. I thought I should perhaps lend him some of my prazepam, reduce his anxiety. But if you could anticipate the future, what would be the point of living at all ? The only thing that keeps me grounded, yet simultaneously shaken, is the simple unpredictable nature of life itself. I think that knowing what would happen would reduce your life to pure bore, a chore even. But I understand what he means. There is a certain security, and this yearning for security is something we all have. The other psychologist just stole my answer. Again, an idiot.

Sometimes, I get the feeling I am panning for gold when I rumble through the litter tray to find Fifi’s petite poo’s. Something about this is satisfying. Perhaps it’s a scavenger instinct, which is what G told us was the reason we get such a good feeling from sorting through berries and removing the mouldy ones. Perhaps it’s just the simple act of caring for something too. I clean up after you, thus we both get to sleep in a room that doesn’t smell like pure ass, and perhaps, Fifi, you’ll learn one day that I do love you. Take your time, I will always be there, even if you never come to like me at all.

I had a dream that I kissed you, but I felt it, I really felt it. Your lips were just the same. And I saw you smile, all your teeth straight in a row as usual. You were almost like a ghost. I wish you would send me back my clothes already. My therapist tells me that you trying to sleep with me the day I left the clinic, heavily medicated, it was considered sexual assault. The wording is strong, and so I prefer to say that I was taken advantage of. I mull this over. Perhaps like my previous rape, the feeling of violation will hit me some time later. I love you so it doesn’t make sense. I pick my lips to shreds, the way I used to as a child, because I thought nail biting was so foul. I can’t stop myself, I eat away at the skin and I smoke any time I have an opportunity to do it. I am supposed to continue my studies next week. I don’t exactly know what my life has become. I am always good at making the first step, but I suppose I can’t really do anything consistently. My mother always moaned I had no sense of moderation. I firmly believe that that is the only correct statement she's ever made about me.

Dear P, I've left some of your hairs around the apartment just to remember that you were here, just like I left the pair of socks that G rolled up in the shape of a ball, distinct from my flat and precisely folded socks. The week we spent made me feel loved. It was nice to have the other side of my bed filled with someone again. It was nice to eat onion soup, to watch movies, to laugh at night until our bellies hurt, and to wake up with you there, warm and peaceful, by my side. Out of all my friends, I think you are the most beautiful in slumber. To watch you get dressed, put on your makeup, live your life, attend all these fashion shows. It was nice to see the version of you I was always worried would never become reality. We cry about how far we’ve come. I cry that I haven’t come far enough. You assure me that I will be fine. I think I believe you.

Dear P, I’m sorry, I hoovered. Blue is shedding. Your hair is gone. I might have to ask you to send me a lock of it. You know how obsessed I am with hair and Victorian hair jewellery. Perhaps I can make you a pendant. Perhaps.

I try to understand why I can't stop smoking again. Yes, the first time I had to quit against my will because of a chronic illness, but I think I have found the culprit. It seems I am simply addicted to motion. I am addicted to otherness. It explains the years of drugs too. The worst part is that I have to choose to be better. I have to want to want it. But I’m not so sure that I want it yet. I think I must hurt for a little longer. Not out of familiarity, but as an ode to my pain. Oh you poor little thing. The psychiatrists tell you that you worry them. They up your dose. The world feels flat. Sometimes too drab to interpret. It’s okay, it will be temporary. Blow your nose darling, the weather is getting colder.