answering the call through the candyfloss
I will not waste my life being my own helicopter parent. If I am fragile then I will let myself break and I will put myself back together again.
I’ve been learning how to let go of guilt in therapy recently. I hadn’t even realised how much it had controlled my life until she asked me who had told me I was doing everything wrong, and I couldn’t give her an answer. I paused for a second. Everything I do, I feel like I should be doing something differently, something better, something else. Eating the wrong food. Saying the wrong thing. Writing the wrong words. Working the wrong job. Dating the wrong people.
You’re not hurting anyone. If it works for you and you’re safe, then it works for you, and that’s okay.
So I’ve been playing around with the idea that maybe it’s just not that deep. Any of it. Maybe I’m not the best at the way I go about a lot of things, but I’m still doing them, and they turn out okay. I’m turning out okay.
I haven’t been writing much recently. I’ve disappeared from my keyboard in favour of staring at television screen and avoiding any real thoughts. Things are nice at the moment. The wind is thick, gentle, and warm. When I scratch my sunburn, I’m reminded of my day at the beach with beautiful people. Even the bad things aren’t so bad. Apparently, the storm cloud has finally passed. Or maybe there wasn’t really a storm cloud in the first place, it’s not that deep, and all of this is just a part of being a human.
I’d like to think none of it is that deep because there’s this guy, and now I’m scared of another cloud rolling through. Readers, do you think I’ll ever stop writing about relationships? Do you think I need to? Just kidding, don’t answer that. This part, I think, really isn’t that deep - this is my own space, and if I write about loving and hating and healing and breaking, then I’ll do it with a lot of distaste and a lot of drafts and I’ll enjoy reading it back when it all blows over. How else can I wade my way through all the thick thoughts about everything ever? Letting go of the guilt about what I’m writing isn’t nearly as hard as the rest of it.
I’m feeling this out as I’m typing, and I see it on the keyboard and in the moon and in my ripped nail beds. More than anything, the guilt of damaging a future me is what has been eating me alive. I can’t know what will and won’t turn out okay, so I feel guilty about all of it. One too many cigarettes and I’ll get lung cancer. One too many texts back and I’ll tell a guy I like him. He’ll like me too. We’ll end up talking about it, teetering towards the start of a life I don’t know if I’ll be able to cope in. But I’ve never known if I will be able to cope anywhere, so what does it matter? I’m still alive. I want to die less than I did two years ago. Less than I did two months ago. Then, maybe that’s what it is; I’ve finally made progress. Good progress. Real progress. I’ve never felt so hopeful about my life. If I change it now, what if it goes backwards? I’ve finally tasted what it’s like to be better. I can’t risk going backwards. I don’t think I can survive another mudslide.
I have wrapped myself in candyfloss because I have been broken so many times before, and now the sticky sweet straightjacket won’t let me reach my arms out to grab onto the next step. How am I meant to know when it is time for the next thing? How do you know when you are ready?
Readers, do you think when I write about a guy that it’s ever really about them? I still can’t tell. In reality, I think I just love to feel. I never feel as much as I do about other people. Maybe this is how I prove to myself that I am living and breathing and human. After all, every bleeding heart fragment I snatch back from someone and pour into a draft was mine to begin with anyway.
Maybe none of this is that deep. Maybe I should rip myself out of the candyfloss. Stop worrying about what might happen to me and focus on what is happening. I have been so obsessed with acting my age recently, and there’s nothing more 21 than living in the moment. Worrying about boys. Letting it not be that deep.
Letting someone in is always going to be scary and it is always going to have risks. But I am my own person now, maybe in a way I haven’t ever been before. I’ve seen myself in places I haven’t realised I am a part of. I am in the trees and the flowers and the bees and the tired mothers and crying newborns. I am in my friends’ mannerisms and the girls’ bathroom mirrors. I am not looking for someone to complete me anymore, and nothing has felt so simple. I’m asking him to to the beach where sunburn and making a fool of myself are the biggest worries I leave with. I won’t die if this doesn’t work. I am 21 and I am elastic. My torn nails will grow back. It really isn’t that deep.
Upon writing very similar essays multiple times and getting comments so lovely I cried, I have realised this is a relatively common experience. I have my sicknesses, but I am also just a human. Humans want to be loved. They all want their person. And when there isn’t that much else going on in your life, why wouldn’t you spend your time thinking about an exciting new person? I always say I don’t want my mental health to consume me, but I am avoiding living my life just in case it does. So it’s consuming me anyway.
Maybe I am not as fragile as I think I am. Maybe I won’t know how fragile I am until I break again. Maybe I can break a thousand times more and still live. All I know is that I have faced experiences so gut wrenching and anxiety inducing and distressing and I am still alive. I feel stagnant because I have made myself sit still. I want to be honest. I want to dance and shout and be angry and be in love and not worry about what will happen when it’s over. I don’t want my life to be about what will happen when it is over anymore. It doesn’t have to be that deep. I have felt things and seen things that could have destroyed me and it is a privilege to be able to worry about a text back. I am lucky. I am safe. And I have made myself safe; so if I have done this before, I can do it again. I can keep doing it, a million times over. There is nothing more human than loving and experiencing and hurting and losing and breaking and I will never be satisfied if I ignore the call to feel it all. For once, I am a 21 year old girl. I do not ever want to be ungrateful for it. I do not ever want to waste it. I deserve to just be a 21 year old girl. I deserve for it to not be that deep. I deserve not to worry about the end.
I will eat my way out of this candyfloss, and if it rots my teeth, I’ll take myself to the dentist afterwards. After all, they are only teeth; it’s not that deep.
It really is all about breaking and putting yourself back together and being brave enough to become shattered again.
Soph, I know I'm sort of a stranger on the internet but believe me when I say this: You are doing absolutely everything right. And I mean it. There's nothing no attain, nothing to prove, nothing to be besides a 21 year old girl. And in our day and age, in our suffocating western world, being a 21 year old girl is messy, beautiful, haunting, ephemeral, twisted, and suspiciously well-balanced.
These are things you get to see once you grow past that (note: not grow up, that's BS). It happens very suddenly, usually after a long period of dread and fast food binges. You realize that you're the person you'll spend the rest of your life with. So you sink into the mattress, take a deep breath, and start thinking that you might as well start appreciating yourself. And you do. And it's lovely.