Skyline

When I look out across the city, on these tipsy evenings where I am so filled with anger and tarnished by hurt, when I am clinging on to the last stroke of optimism and the final straw of hope, I see the London skyline and only one word springs to mind: despair.

I don’t believe that the buildings house despair but, rather, it is the sky above this city that hangs so fucking heavy with despair that it smothers us. I am being smothered by despair – not necessarily my own despair, the despair that I harbour about being alive and being so sick in the head and existing against my will. No. I am smothered by the despair of every person who has ever loved and lost, who has ever questioned humanity, who has ever dreaded waking up, who has ever wanted to quit life because ‘what’s the fucking point?’, who has been bullied and tortured, who has hated themselves. I inhale your pain and it burns my lungs. But I know that this suffocation is only a fraction of the despair that you feel. You are brave and I am proud of you. Someone else in this city, some other beautiful and damaged soul, is inhaling my despair tonight. And I am inhaling yours.

I have been thinking about the word ‘slot’ because I had to book a ‘slot’ at the sexual health clinic to get my contraceptive injection done tomorrow, and the word ‘slot’ makes me feel absolutely fucking sick. What a horrible word. ‘Slot.’ I never want to use that word again in my life. It disgusts me. I am repulsed by this word.