(I swear in this one so this is rated M okay)
I had a summer breakfast this morning. Orange, banana (for once; sometimes I like it and sometimes I really don’t) and my first mango of the season. I chopped them all up, mixed them together and placed them in a bowl. I sprinkled desiccated coconut on the top, sat down in the sun, and looked at the world around me. There was a particular quiet, something rare in a house of seven. An absence of life. I sat, the birds pecking greedily at their seed, my sweet little feline companion sprawled in a large patch of warmth, catatonic.
And I just breathed.
I looked up to the clouds, and the cobalt blue of the Australian sky, and did what all of us do to survive. We take in oxygen, feel it enter our lungs and spread, the mechanical pump of our hearts beating rhythmically. We breathe out, exhaling the unused and the waste. Expelling. Then inhaling, and doing it again. And I wondered how a living creature could hold a soul, and a conscience. We feel it in our chests, but it couldn’t be there, because we’d breathe it out and lose it. Our bodies are machines, but also houses. Where does consciousness come from? Why does it leave? A miracle of muscle and blood, of cones and rods, of songs and silence, of weakness and strength. Mostly blood. Mostly cones. Mostly silence.
Mostly weakness.
So I looked at the sky, and the trees, and the grass, and reached out a hand to touch the clouds above me. Of course, I failed to touch the clouds. They, like dreams, fly far above and out of reach. They run from me in a never-ending wind, carrying with them shade and rain. Respite from the heat of summer. So instead, I sit with a bowl of the dying and dead, wishing I could follow the clouds. Wishing I could know how to reach my consciousness and push it away for a little longer, just to leave me to sleep. Just keep me away from reality a little longer.
I didn’t finish the PE exam. I panicked and messed up the one thing I could have done well on. And that voice, that consciousness living in me for a while, pushes me to the brink. Yells at me again, and again. I messed up. I am a mess-up. I can try all I like, but I’ll never live up to the person I wish I could be. I don’t want to wake up to hear it again. But I do. Every. Single. Fucking. Day.
One left. One left, then find another goal. One left, and you can decide whether you really want to go to uni. Whether you want to set yourself up for failure again. Try, and try, and try. Wake up and fight.
Three more days.
I wish I could open up my head and let the sunshine warm my mind, not just my skin.
Love you all.