"Anxiety and vinyl" I continue. When they say to write about what you know, I do my best to give the people what they want.
I haven't blogged in a long time, but my Blogger dashboard remains littered with the half finished literary carcasses of someone who once spent so long in 200 Degrees, she got high on caffeine and went into The Works afterwards and bought a CD of The Archers. I sometimes think my memory is going and I think it started on a steep downward slope around the same sort of time. Thanks, Radio 4.
I can't say this post has much rhyme or reason to it either, but since I've been feeling better recently, less anxiety, less depression and some more money (hell yeah) I guess it's time to say hi and reintroduce myself to my blog.
I call that rubbish time the "sepia days" because it was so bloody boring and monotonous that I picture it in sepia. I watched an entire season of The Bachelorette in the middle of the afternoon for crying out loud! A Miss-Havisham-wedding-dress beige slump. It was like spending all day in the sun, slathered in factor 50, getting all sticky, so you get in the shower at the end of the day to wash it off. But the water isn't comfortably cool or nice and warm, it's a groaning, grey lukewarm. But you can't change the dial, you just let the lukewarm feeling of crappiness wash over you, along with the sunscreen. Then you get out the shower and you realise you forgot to wash your hair and UGH you've already let it slide for two days and now people are starting to notice so you have to get back in the shower and do the whole thing all over again. That's the sepia days. I know this whole ramble of a post is leading nowhere but I guess if the Royals can talk about mental health then this qween can too. Long story long, mental health is something I've spent time thinking about recently. I've come to acknowledge how common mental health issues are and how I'm not exempt. I get nervous, my panic attacks go through hideous waves and storms. I cry, hot, wet tears of joy, sadness, fear, loneliness, giddiness and when I feel a tumultuous mixture of all of those things and I cry a lot. I still don't know who I am exactly, but I know I like Korean face masks and weak Ribena. How to overcome those struggles and start taking care of myself has been fairly new to me, but I'm learning. Not in a "oh I clean my teeth now" way, but in a way that makes me happier to say "Hope, you could do with eating some fruit now, maybe do a face mask too," without feeling selfish. And to stop Googling my symptoms. I may as well rename this blog "YOU'RE OBVIOUSLY DYING".
It's a cliché to say music is my life, but it probably is. Nothing makes me feel more than music. I enjoy films more if they're musicals, and I still now, years after selling my kit - feel a surge of electricity run from the stage, through the floor and into my heart when I hear the THUD THUD THUD of a bass drum. It wakes me up in the morning, and it does laps in my head throughout the day. I love it. I'm even in my own imaginary band where we do ironic covers of cheesy musical numbers and I wear red lipstick and have a tambourine tattooed on my arm. Music is what changed the temperature in the shower, my boyfriend introducing me to Jeff Buckley and Father John Misty and the flame I hold in my heart for Patti Smith being reignited are what made the sepia turn back into beautiful technicolour and helped me find my feet again (after several failed attempts at death drops, Laganja Estranja, I salute you).
So I guess the actual meatiness of this post is the following. My shower playlist. Twenty songs I listen to on shuffle in the shower, sing along to and sometimes perform with Darling Nikki, my imaginary band.
- Hold On, We're Going Home - Drake
- Because the Night - Patti Smith
- Buffalo Stance - Neneh Cherry
- Kiss - Prince
- Purse First - Bob the Drag Queen
- Step it Up - RuPaul
- Raspberry Beret - Prince
- Bored in the USA - Father John Misty
- Thinkin Bout You - Frank Ocean
- Lady, You Shot Me - Har Mar Superstar
- Put Yourself in My Place - Kylie Minogue
- Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen
- Thinking Bout You - Flo Morrissey and Matthew E White
- Hotline Bling - Drake
- Venus Fly - Grimes and Janelle Monae
- 212 - Azealia Banks
- Grease - Flow Morrissey and Matthew E White
- Supermodel - RuPaul
- Control Myself - LL Cool J and Jennifer Lopez
I'd be silly to say these are my favourite songs of all time - there's no Dolly Parton there for starters. But if I've learnt anything in my lifetime - which can sometimes resemble a badly written, slow paced Netflix coming of age dramedy, it's that music is a cure, it's a self care tool, it's like a look into someone's diary and it's something not even the pure shitiness (sorry mum) of the world can take away from me. It's like the fruit of the soul, the mindful equivalent to two litres of water a day. Music genuinely took me out of a slump I couldn't see the end of. It kicked my ass twice and then had the nerve to tell me to get up. Henry keeps saying there's power in a union, like the Billy Bragg song, and a lot of the time I think he's right.
Also listen to the Stormzy album, I can't dance to it in the shower but it's on my other playlist. I might share that when I'm feeling a little braver.
Sorry for rambling, the next one will be funnier and less about my terrible anxiety. xoxox
