Angel from Montgomery

17Μαρ.10

It’s been a while since I last wrote something here. I can’t eve remember what my last post was about and I can’t really be bothered to look it up. Time seems to pass without my consent and I don’t even realise how long it’s been until suddenly it’s «the end» or «a beginning» and things are changing again.

I had two job interviews today. My back and feet are killing me, ’cause I also met a friend for lunch and went for a stroll around the canals. In 3.5 inch heels. Uncomfortable. Then I had to rush to the Argentine Tango Society’s election – yeah, this is the end of my reign.

Another end, hopefully another beginning.

I’m tired. But I have a skype meeting with a critique group for the novel I’m writing in about 3 hours. I’ll probably nap in the meantime, if I manage to calm myself enough to sleep. Sleep no longer eludes me, thankfully. Dreams don’t elude me either, yet, to be honest, I never had trouble dreaming, awake or asleep, my head is always filled with surrealist fantasies -whether I like it or not.

I’m too long-winded. My sentences rarely make sense when I forget to stop.

Do I want to make sense? I don’t know.

I’m wearing this oversized white shirt, without a bra, and it feels weird against my nipples, trying to be linen but being too synthetic to pull it through, then trying to be cotton and still coming short. I’m also wearing my new hippie earrings, two silver crosses with a blue stone on top that almost look sacrilegious in their disregard for christian symbols and propriety, or am I projecting again? Giving them a meaning they don’t have so that they ‘ll suit my mood?

I’m tired. It had been a good day today. It was cloudy but not raining and once again, Birmingham proved to be a city I’d love to live into. I’ll know soon enough about one of those jobs.

I’m scared.

And writing that line was harder than talking about the shirt and my nipples.

I’m scared. Of rejection, of failure, of going back home to live two doors down from my mother and always regret not trying harder, doing something, anything, to stay away. And it’s not even living close to my mother that I’m dreading. It’s all the things I hate about my birthplace and its mentalities. And all the things I love.

Yet, if failure comes, I know I’ll survive. I always do. I think it’s genetic. Women in my family, on all sides of the family, are survivors. We face wars and losing our loved ones, marrying moody murderers and burying our children. We face cancer and smoke in our deathbeds, divorce husbands we loved and stay with those we don’t.

If one can somehow live through all that, I can definitely face failure. It won’t be the first time. It’s just that the other, smaller failures were not as heartbreaking.

Heartbreaking. As if a muscle pumping blood can break without killing you.

I know I’ll be fine. I’ll wake up the next morning, brush me hair and fix my make up. Wear something with a bow or a pattern, or hippie earrings with dangling crosses. And big silk flowers in my coat’s buttonhole, it’s spring, after all. I’ll smile and say «good morning». I’ll be myself, or that self that emerges every time the real me goes into hiding. I’ll cook lunch and whip a quick desert. I’ll make T. laugh and I. curse me in serbian ’cause «deserts make her fat».

I’ll be wearing the white shirt I sleep in, the one with the vaguely familiar material, and make a cosmopolitan so that I can drink alone in private, just one. It’s exhausting getting dolled up and going out for a drink, always with the expectation of another boy that tries to be a man and sex, maybe some intimacy if you’re lucky, ’cause damn me, if it hasn’t been too long for a woman to still have some self-esteem left, another dissapointment.

Or is this another failure?

Those nights that I’m sure I’ll never be a wife, or a mother, even though, in all honesty and feminist beliefs aside, I’ve never wanted to be either. Why does it feel like a failure, this certainty that I won’t become something I’ve ever wanted to be.? Insanity? Or just conformity?

Do I even make sense tonight? There’s a fog around my brain, I’m not sure if I’m still capable of real thought processes. I’m sure I’m not capable of actually writing something beautiful, or even heartfelt.

These are just scribblings that my hand is too tired to write longhand. Typing is easier.

Typing and then sending away, a message to the void is redemptive.

And sad.

I think I should say goodnight.

Maybe this foul mood will leave by morning.

I’m not sure if I’m sliding down a rabbit hole or if I’m hauling my self up again.

(Listen to «Angel from Montgomery» by this girl. I have it on repeat.»)


9 Responses to “Angel from Montgomery”

  1. Cheer up girl. Things could be a lot worse. You could be in Kabul watching the fireshow courtesy of the US airforce. Things are never as bad as we think. 90% of all Cypriot eventually go back and those who don’t, mostly dream of returning. It is a phase we all go through thinking that if we go back it will be the end. The best times are the ones ahead of you because you haven’t lived them yet.

    And Birmingham? Come on where exactly does it score on the scale of most exciting / glamorous cities? Might as well be in Cyprus and enjoy the Mediterranean lifestyle.

  2. take it easy.
    ό,τι δεν είναι θάνατος διορθώνεται.
    και κάθε αποτυχία σου ανοίγει μια πόρτα προς ένα άλλο δρόμο.
    και δεν το λέω για παρηγοριά: το λεω γιατί έχω υπάρξει «αποτυχημένη» in that sense and it actually was fun after all. Found other ways, started to work out new possibilities in mind. Got creative in life!

    και τη δουλειά θα την πάρεις, τι διάολο!

  3. Καλώς όρισες, i missed your complex sentences.

    Γύρεψε δικό σου μονοπάτι και άσε πίσω όσα θα έπρεπε να σε κάνουν define. Άκου τη φωνή μέσα σου, μόνο αυτή ξέρει το σωστό.

  4. Ό,τι είχα να σου πω τα ΄γραψε η Κροτούλα. Μην χάνεις την ελπίδα!

    Φιλιάά

  5. 5 Mr e

    Ψηλά το κεφάλι αγαπητή μου. Δεν έχεις τίποτα να φοβάσαι. Είσαι μια συγγραφέας. Είσαι γεννημένη για επιτυχίες. Ηδη άρχισες να γράφεις… αυτό σημαίνει πως ήδη βρήκες τον δρόμο σου… Σου έχω γράψει και άλλες φορές. Ο κόσμος έχει ανάγκη από την πένα σου. Τον εσωτερικο σου κόσμο. Τη δυνάμη των συναισθημάτων σου. Τη γραφή σου…
    _______
    Πέτα ότι σε κουράζει, ακόμα και τα… τακούνια σου. Φόρεσε φλατ παπουτσάκια. Η δική σου αξία δεν είναι στην εμφάνισή σου αλλά στα μέσα σου. ΝΑ ΤΟ ΘΥΜΑΣΑΙ ΑΥΤΟ….
    _____
    Την αγάπη μου και μη σε ξαναχάσουμε.

  6. 6 Sophia K.

    You write beautifully, and express so many of my own thoughts, especially the thought of being a failure because you won’t be a wife/mother, even if you never wanted to be. It’s conformity above anything else, I think. As a Greek who struggles to find her own place in the Low Lands and is scared to go back to a country that’s been hit by such turmoil, I *totally* get you.

    Hope you’ll get that job!

  7. Stay away from your birthplace if you can. I wish I did… but didn’t and I honestly regret it every time I allow myself to think about it.

    Fingers crossed things will go swell for you and you get a job you love. As for relationships… you don’t need a priest to validate your feelings, or a big wedding dress or relatives and so called friends to wish you things they don’t really mean.

    What we all need in our lives is to have people around us who love us and care about us.

    I hope you find that sooner rather than later 🙂

    Have a great weekend!

  8. Αυτό το κείμενο χτύπησε φλέβα γιατί και εγώ σύντομα θα φύγω απτην Ελλάδα για μεταπτυχειακό και εύχομαι να βρω μια καλή δουλειά και να μη γυρίσω.. και μας οι γυναίκες είναι .. survivors στην οικογένεια μας.. Απλά μακάρυ να μη φτάσει σε αυτό!
    Να μας γράψεις τις εξελίξεις!

    Φιλί καλημέρας

  9. The search lights peer into the abyssal gloom. Occasionally, their beam materialises huge forms out of the darkness – the shells in which the multitudes of this lost civilisation lived their lives millenia ago, in all their geometrical complexity – only for them to vanish back into nothingness moments later.

    He brought up the plans of the city, as much as these could be called that; the holes where so many that it almost embarassed him for being part of the team that made them. How could anyone expect them to map a city the size of London with one ship? And not just any Earth city, but this….this behemoth that spread not just beneath them but above them and all the space between? He felt like an ant crawling on the inside of an egg shell and this made him uneasy, wary. Still, he ought to be grateful to his fate; whenever he managed to get back to Earth a slew of awards would await him. That thought, at least, was consoling.


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