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[text in italics = quotes taken directly from my diary]
SEPTEMBER
Poems written: 5
Gym visits: 15
Kilometres run: 106
The month begins with Date #5 in Nottingham. How is this only the 5th date. Feels like the 25th. I am a ball of nerves before meeting The Poet’s mother, but thankfully she seems to like me. We visit Newstead Abbey: Lord Byron’s party house, site of epic debauchery. I only wish this weekend lasted forever. It was perfect. I see my lash technician and she tells me she really looks up to me and that I inspire her, which very nearly makes me cry the perming solution off. We talk about manifestation, men, money. She tells me it’s her 27th birthday so I give her a massive tip. Really happy with where [the poem] went — I dug deep and it paid off. Reminder to ALWAYS dig deep when writing, even if the excavation is difficult and the poem is forcing me to go somewhere I don’t want to go. Surface level poetry is always wank, if there’s no emotional depth or lived experience, it’s pointless, it’s just empty pretty words. The kids start another school year. My little nephew looks so smart in his uniform on his first day of Big School, like a little Arsène Wenger in his red tie. I feel anxious that he won’t have the same level of SEN support that he had at nursery, but we’re all hopeful that once he officially receives his autism diagnosis he will get the support he deserves and he will thrive.
I really want to do 75 Hard but I don’t have time and am too injury-prone to work out twice a day (and, being a woman, it’s really not safe to work out outdoors), but 75 Soft sounds too easy. So I create my own fitness/self-improvement challenge called 75 Semi (lol). I am doing good work, good writing. I am always so impatient to achieve the big picture, I forget how the small steps that don’t seem like much do add up. Arsenal are back in the Champions League after 7 (long) years out. It is wild that the last time I watched Arsenal play CL football was with my dad; hearing the iconic CL music makes me feel all the feels — goosebumps, shivers down the spine, tears in my eyes. We win 4-0 and I am HYPED. Low energy, low mood, everything hurts. The Poet writes a book about me. It is my favourite of all the gifts any lover has ever given me and I know I will cherish it forever. As part of 75 Semi I have to read at least 10 pages of a non-fiction book every day. I race through Bright Star, Green Light: The Beautiful and Damned Lives of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald by Jonathan Bate and find it is a welcome change to read something other than novels and poetry. Gym was so hard today, my body is in so much pain, really struggled with my usual weights. Feel so weak.
BPD Brain firing on all cylinders today. Begging my brain to shut up, even just for a minute. It’s relentless badness. Exhausting. There is another heatwave and it drains me. It is too hot to run, too hot to eat anything but salad. Ludo is melting in his fur tuxedo. EX-CETERA’s official release date is set: the story of Dolly and Man will be unleashed on the world on 29th September. Before the book is sent to the printers, I add new lines to ‘This Is Love Like’ at the last minute, lines containing images I collected in my phone Notes app over the summer, things that happened on dates with The Poet. I hope I don’t regret it further down the line, immortalising new romance in a story of old love on impulse like I have… but I wanted to add some non-toxic love to this toxic love poem. And it’s a better poem for it, with these new lines there’s now a fresh/immediate realness to it rather than it being built solely on retrospective warped remembrances and vague nostalgia. The poem is more alive now. To celebrate EX-CETERA’s cover reveal on Date #6, we have a picnic up Ally Pally and hire a flamingo pedalo on the lake because why the hell not. Perfect afternoon, despite it being 34c and me sweating like a sinner in church. London lurches in a liminal state — though it still feels like the height of summer and I need to be crowbarred from my desk fan, autumn leaves fall from the trees and thunderstorms erupt with no warning.
A stranger at the gym bothers me in the free weights basement. Got home and broke down in tears. Really not what I needed today. Can random men please just fuck off. CAROUSEL publishes my poem On visiting Stationers Park playground for the first time since 1999. I feel very detached from the poem, having written it in January 2022 then ignored it for a year before sending it to CAROUSEL, so I read it again and it makes me feel sad. I debate sending the poem to Brother because it includes a nice childhood memory but decide against it as I don’t want to trouble him by forcing him to remember. A situation causes me deep stress and worry. Everything feels wrong, nothing is sitting right in me. Why for so long??? Need to keep busy/distract myself and stop thinking the worst but my brain goes where it goes and I can’t stop it. My Writing Wives keep me sane. I skive off work to have a lovely long lunch in town with AJ who talks sense into me and gives me the most precious gift (a genuine treasure, as she is), and K gives sensible and reassuring advice while absolutely understanding my worries. So so grateful for K and AJ, honestly don’t know what I’d do without them. Anxiety, stress, fear, bad thoughts are intertwined with so much love, gratitude, support, kindness. ‘Cheating [on] Death’ is shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. Apparently I was not delulu for entering. But where/when will this perpetual bridesmaid of a poem actually land. Always the listing, never the win. No idea what to do with it. On Date #7 we continue our literary adventures by visiting D.H. Lawrence’s house. We go on a nature walk and kiss in a network of underground caves. Worried about money but trying not to be. I can always make more money. I’m just tired of the grind. And reluctant to go back to dodgy ways of making quick cash. I write a poem that becomes my new Favourite Poem I’ve Ever Written Ever. Thinking a lot about beauty and what it actually means. A flare-up of hormonal acne makes me feel incredibly ugly.
Something unspeakable happens. I am too shocked to write it down. I am too ashamed to verbalise it. I decide the only way to “cope” with it is to try to pretend it never happened. But I hit rock bottom. Reliving the worst trauma, the trauma I have worked so hard to heal from and fought so hard to protect myself from experiencing ever again. Gutted. I want to self-harm and I want to pick up but (miraculously) don’t do either of these things, purely because I don’t have the mental or physical strength to move from my bed. fucked up mess broken awful pain shame fear I am a broken person. I drag myself to N4 for the North London Derby where *of course* I bump into one of my exes while I’m looking a right fucking state. He hugs me in the offy and I feel dead inside. Brother takes care of me though I can’t tell him what’s wrong. I didn’t deserve it then and I don’t deserve it now.
I unbox my author copies of EX-CETERA and feel none of the feelings I want to feel when I finally hold the book in my hands. Couldn’t feel any joy or pride or excitement, mostly numb. But felt a sense of completion, of closure, like it is finally done and that is a good thing. I have worked so hard on this book over so many years and now the project is over, very soon it’ll be out of my hands and will belong to readers and there’s nothing more I can do. It’ll be gone.
x
I am trying so hard to make this okay but it’s not. Still feel like I could cry at any moment but I’m trying to be strong, putting my bravest face on, pretending everything’s fine. I ran well this morning, pushed through excruciating pain for 10k. But honestly right now I just want to die. I feel completely broken.
EX-CETERA is finally published, 9 years after I wrote the first poem in it. I feel a quiet sense of achievement, and I’m so grateful to Colin at Nine Pens for believing in my work and I feel so lucky that readers are excited about it, that people care. But so much anxiety swarms me and I am in a deep depression so I find it hard to be as enthusiastic as I want to be, which makes me feel guilty and ungrateful. So sick of the fear. So sick. Want to get wasted and then sleep for a month. Or just disappear entirely. On publication day I meet my oldest friend at The Barrel Vault to celebrate. As soon as I see him I completely break down in his arms. I can’t tell him what’s wrong. J tells me how proud he is of my poetry successes and “the fact you survived allllll of that shit” and says he also feels all the pride that my dad would feel if he was still alive. “His pride transferred straight to me.” I can leave at any time. I can leave at any time. I can leave at any time. I weep into my champagne and then get the train to Nottingham. The Poet and I go to the famous Goose Fair. We enjoy crashing into people on the dodgems and winning nothing on rigged fairground games and I go on a ferris wheel for the first time — from rock bottom to on top of the world in less than a week. Will I ever fully recover from this? Will I be okay? I don’t know. I really don’t know.
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‘October 2023’ will be posted on Sunday 17th December
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Treacle Heart 