Blood Potato Ale

I must remember that I am loved, when I feel like this.

By my friends, by my family, by my lovers, by me.

Even when I feel like a speck of dust, I exist and cannot be forgotten even if, perhaps, I want to be.

When I woke up this morning I felt at first as though I felt incapable, inept - I was a speck of dust, how could I write zine content or letters or a fifteen-minute comedy set? How could I do those things if I was just a mote, suspended in a ray of sunlight, if I'm lucky - or perhaps in some fibre of the carpet, lost to the world?

But then I remembered I am a human, with a big human body and all the muscles and tendons and brain electricity and oxygen I need to get up and do any one (or two, or three) of a million things and, even worse than not being able to do those things, I...

I didn't want to.

But I did.

But I didn't.
 
 But I did - I was just slammed up against this wall inside myself, this big, concrete wall that can't be kicked through with steel toes or gusto. And worse, it drains you. The longer you push, the more energy it takes, and then you have to lean to stay upright - and it saps, it saps, it saps. Then you're slumped against this wall so high you can't see the top. The pull of the beauty on the other side is so magnetic that you're pressed as hard to the wall as you can possibly be without breaking a rib, but the more you touch the wall, feel how cold and smooth it is, the more tired you become. It's a trap. It's a horrible, murdering trap.

So I got home from brunch, tired. Put on my pyjama pants, tired. Put on a big, striped shirt left by a lover that still smells like him, tired. Put on the kettle, tired. Chose a tea, tired. Removed a wasp from the windowsill, tired. Curled up in blankets, tired.

And now I sit here, tired. I'm being sapped but I'm lethargically chipping away at this colossus that wants me dead. My head is so heavy but I'm resting it against the wall, and my hands, light and quick as daddy long-legs, type away. The clicking sounds a lot like a chisel.

I may not do everything I want to do, today. I may not win this. I don't even know what winning looks like. But I will write. I will sleep. I will be.

I will remember that I am loved. That my heart is open like a fragrant flower, feeling pleasure at the sun's attention. That even though I am slumped against this stone, I am, for all intents and purposes, a divine being. I have much power, but also many lessons to learn. They are, in their right, all one in the same. I will move through, I will gather and forage, I will transcend. Such is the way, and sometimes we forget.