If you love enough?

don't wait for the right time

Essayist, aphorist and mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote, “I want to live happily in a world I don't understand.” Psychologist Rollo May told us that “the poet, like the lover, is a menace on the assembly line.” Novelist Deborah Levy voiced to her friend that “if we all said goodbye when we meant it, writers would have nothing to write about.” 

Alan Watts questioned his listeners, “how does your head look to your eyes? It looks like what you see out in front of you, because all that you see out in front of you is what you feel inside your head. It is easy enough to stand still, all you have to do is walk without touching the ground. So why do you feel so heavy?” What I think this means is that when we see something in our external world we create it based on our judgement of it, simultaneously, we are attached to our judgement.

On to my own more confused beginner pages, I considered some time ago; “what thin skins mountains have, veins depressing into bloodish earth. They have knobby bones, the dormant embryo mounds biding to elapse time and desperate to walk their own highlands.” A lonely novice's observation, but it makes sense now. It is what we hear most, we think more of, we believe greater than, we become, and it can be our greatest mistake. 

Most beings make a habit out of (or choose to do) what they know best, regardless of our geotag alterations. It makes sense to do what comes naturally, no matter what your surroundings look like. With this, we tend to stagnate our inner lives by doing what we think is going to make our time, or the time of those we love, easier to live - no matter where we move ourselves to or find ourselves ‘at’, we will usually take the less resistant path. Sometimes, the best option is to make that all more difficult for ourselves, despite the potential repercussions making it all that more difficult for those we love. 

The fear of losing our ambitions to the struggle, can seem greater than the ambitions themselves, so we self force into letting them go altogether. Regardless of career, think of what surrounds you when you can finally turn off from your screens. Courage is your life’s brickwork. 

Honestly speaking, I have commonly not been outwardly courageous (although there is always context to reason) but, in short - I’m still a girl that sits near the exit in a room, who makes sure there’s space to hide under her bed if need be, who seeks truth over fantasy and carries a plastic bag to be sick in or breathe into wherever she goes. 

Although I knew I could, I'd missed the few possible Zimbabwean scholarships that sent some highschool seniors to faraway education systems because I didn’t want to race long distance track against 18 year old boys as the only girl at 12. My toes hurt, I didn’t like the spikes on the bottom of my shoes, they clipped my shins and scared me. I couldn’t stand people shouting “go girl” from the sidelines as if I was the only girl in not only the race, but the world. I was called idle instead. With threatening dyslexia tests from a headmistress of the time, there wasn’t much hope. I stuttered on, foraged through the costume department, focused on acting like it was my birthright through believing that I could be a body to something other than my own brain. Thankfully, I worked out how uncomfortable a room or crowd of any kind watching me was. I have shied away from racing or competitive behaviour in general ever since, preferring to do things silently, slowly and most crucially, by myself. Over all the experimenting with spaces I could unsuccessfully disappear into, I had moved schools, courses and continents, landing finally (for now) in London.

I lied my way into student accommodation, with no intention of actually attending further education. The only university I knew the name of in London was Central Saint Martins, so those were the words I told the lady on night duty behind the desk, “I go to Central Saint Martins,” and handed over my thin stacked paperwork. No one knew, especially not me, especially not her, that I’d blag my way through those giant degree doors a few years later, too. I wrote a poem about clouds and slipped it into a fumbled portfolio. The course leader, who is a writer out of tutor hours, took a punt on me. I’ve since lost the poem. 

But prior to that, after first arriving on my clean new visa, I went out to work for an industry that pushed me into its ground far more than any education system. Cutting a very long story short - with 50 pounds in my bank account I lived on a 90p cherry tomato box and 50p pita bread pack per week. I treated myself to mars bars on Mondays and Sundays, the rare starbucks chai latte and the local gym (even if I knew after a month's subscription I’d not be able to afford real food). I manipulated money to suit my needs best, but not always. I shaved my hair off. I lost my job. Then I retreated to the house I’d been living mostly alone in with five street cats prior to turning 19, saving 6 euros a month for tampons. Then, I came back. My hair had grown to my shoulders, within weeks of being in London I cut it all off again, bowl shaped, and dyed it bright orange. Almost a decade later, I am just as prone to cutting off my hair, but that’s not the point. 

I came back to London to fight, fail, fight, fail and fight again for a life that I knew that I was worth, albeit not knowing what that was, or is still, exactly. Some freedom from an idea of who I was, based on what I judged my surroundings to be, at most. London was the only place I could run for shade, because no one is anyone here - at least to me. 

So few of us speak of our own resilience, yet daily we all in one way or another touch what we know from experience will burn us, because “it might not this time”, right? There is only one driving force: hope. Through repetitive burning, yes, we may retreat - it’s survival. But why don’t we just find another way, other than simply reaching out and grabbing it, then? I’ll answer this later, but before I do - as most of you know, I write long format work in the hopes of not being burnt to the point of no return by rejection (mostly from myself) one day, but I also spend a lot of time on my bike. The thing I didn’t know how to use a year ago, but since, has changed my life. 

Writing is endurance, it’s resistance, it’s climbing up a world renowned hill with your body weight strapped to failing knee ligaments. It’s bone marrow pain, hoping for a quick fast freeze to death when you didn’t judge the weather right. It’s sitting in front of the 2pm mark knowing how exhausted you’ll be tomorrow for something that pays your bills, to finish something that isn’t paying anyone yet. It’s telling a friend of a friend to fuck off when they ask you why you don’t just get a real job, like everyone else. It’s your dream, being passed on to someone else in front of you, but you’re still in the arena. As long as you are… I nearly did tap out for good, right about the time I got my bike. But, as romcom as it sounds, it’s given me another chance. 

I’m still very much on a Zimbabwean passport, I still very much haven’t seen my dad in years, my mum and step dad are on their favourable quota of the once a year visa-free visit home. In 2023, the glass will truly break in one way or another. While I’m waiting for my as-I-know-it to finally shatter, I’ve signed onto solo cycling across Australia, a surprising yes to an Ironman 70.3 in Peru, the Badlands ultra endurance gravel race, all while writing two juxtaposing books and two juxtaposing blogs. Contextually visa-less, in 16 days, I’m moving myself into a storage unit in the hopes of doing it all. I’m still very much crucially, by myself, choosing the things that make life more difficult, more vulnerable, more stripped naked, more seen without cheer and more meaningful to me. 

Gratefully, I’m not alone - thanks to the white-blonde African child that survived being caved in by whisky tides on a sandbank with angel Ever, the one that hunted for a shell shaped tooth in spite of the tooth trying to take her life, the one that defectively hallucinated instead of dreamt. The child that forgave scooby-doo being chucked out the starboard side porthole, the girl who thought “don’t expose me” on an operating bed that tried to take her life for an umpteenth time, the lady who practised ‘no’ in the mirror,  the ‘I am’ who can try it, and try it again but another way. 

So few of us praise our own resilience, but we burn inside instead. We say goodbye before we are ready. We love, and tell no one. We judge, because that’s easy. We go for what is turned on, and resist what we may never give the chance to. Resistance, in its essence, is hell: or as author Dan Sullivan said, meeting the person you could have been. 

See you next month, lovers x

(Image credit: Viktor Forgacs)