Since I was a teenager, I have lived an inner life that was so beautiful. I was what I wanted to be, because the reality of my life was so rotten. It became a coping mechanism, I suppose.
I still live inside my mind, where my life is wonderful. I know now it’ll never happen. A beautiful life was never on the cards for me. It’s something I have a lot of bitterness about, but it is what it is. If anything else, I keep living so I can pretend to have that life. It’s a strange motivational tool.
Tell us about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they’ve taken you.
I have a pair of brown boots that I love. They’re incredibly comfortable and proof that cheap does not have to mean poor quality.
They’ve taken me to a variety of places. Sometimes just down the lane behind my house. Through the streets of York where I would take street photos. The twisting paths of Kilburn walk in summer, autumn and snowy winters.
They were beside my bed in hospital last December, although I was in a coma so I wasn’t aware of them until I became fully lucid, and felt strangely relieved when I saw them. I panicked when a member of staff moved them into the small wardrobe by my bed and so I couldn’t see them anymore, and glad when I found where they were.
They came home with me when I was discharged in January. And they are still with me when I walk into town as part of my attempts to get more exercise.
Tattoo all healed x I wish I’d had the guts to be the person I wanted to be, but other children had taught me, viciously and mercilessly, that they found me contemptable, so clearly the person inside, the true me, was “wrong” somehow. A poorly manufactured human being who evaded the attention of quality control somehow. I always felt afraid to draw attention to myself, so as an adult I was quiet and withdrawn, which was often mistaken for rudeness. I’m not writing all of this to smugly to declare that now I’ve got it all figured out. I most certainly haven’t. I’m still a socially anxious mess. There’s a reason my first tattoo was done in 2008 and this one nearly 20 years later, because I still fret over the opinions of others, and even my own. What if I end up hating it or something goes terribly wrong and I’m stuck with the fucked up result? I’m no guru on the mountain nor am I trying to be. I’m just “a fucked up girl looking for her own piece of mind,” as Kate Winslet put it in The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Bloody Roses 