I almost drowned, I dyed my hair
The waves were big and they kept coming.
Stand, I thought. Swim just until you can stand and then, feet planted on the seabed, you'll be fine. Yet the sea seemed to sweep me back and lurch me forward.
Yes, this shall be a new fear, a new nightmare in the coming years- the body scrambling forward, helplessly, as the tide pulls me back.
I stood, began to walk to the shore- crash. The weight of a thousand droplets. Ok. Ok I'll crawl. Crash again. And again and again. Sand in my mouth, in my hair. Help, I gulped. Help help I thought I screamed but afterwards I was told it was barely a whisper-
My body lost to the convulsions of waves, my voice lost to the wind and the endless blue.
I lost consciousness around the time I felt the hands try to save me from the tumble dryer, claw at me, try to gain control.
In the end, she managed to drag me out, like one of those mothers who sees a baby under a hundred to me truck and lifts it.
I remember that odd moment of panic laced with clarity when I realised I had lost control. The sea was bigger, stronger than me. And perhaps I would get out, but not alone. Not on my legs, on my hands and knees.
I just had to breathe between waves. Knocked down, tumbled around, I would have to find the floor and remember which way was up and gasp air, stay alive in the midst of the convulsions until the shore became something I could reach.
*
In Granada my hair is a darker shade of red and my skin is a darker shade of white.
In Granada, after those first few weeks but before the drowning, I drink my coffee black.
I love it.
I am having my very first taste of freedom in ten years. Freedom from sickness I mean!!
In Granada I wake at 7 or 7.30 and read and then do yoga to Patti Smith and the Rolling Stones and I study Spanish on flashcards before class.
It’s October and I wear eyeliner and a shift dress my lover bought for a funeral and nobody knows a goddamn thing about me and I day drink all day on a roof terrace with strangers and I'm a poet and I'm in love and
I buy seven postcards and seven stamps and
one of my favorite people in the world is dying and
One night I am doing yoga under the skylight because I promised myself I'd do an hour every day no matter what
So I'm there on the floor and it's midnight and I'm looking up at the Alhambra (which I can see from my flat what!!!!!) And I see the full moon-
And I wonder what it's like to see the full moon when you're about to die. I wonder what it's like to think: "I'll miss the moon"
And I start to sob for the first time and whisper "no no no" because I didn't ever actually think he would die and you know what else! You know what else! I don't think I thought I was going to die either! I didn't think I had finite time with the moon.
And in Granada everyone is SO HOT and I am SO HOT. We got tinto de verano even though verano was long gone in the climate I was born in,
And she edited my poem in the plaza,
And you know what?
You know what?
This is life. We finally get out of the country that is killing us and our hero starts to die and we're so far away and we never got a chance to prove how good we could be.
And fuck it I'm going to have to have a good year and a sad year AT THE SAME TIME because I'm not willing to forfeit my bloom or my grief, never again, I am no longer in a position to say no to what the universe crashes up against my back-
The waves keep coming, my god they are coming so fast after one another and if we wait until we're on dry land to breathe we won't survive. We have to come up for air. And between the waves and the pain and the trauma my head reaches the surface and the sky is blue and clear.
And the oxygen here tastes like wine and I am so in love and I don't want to be sick anymore
.
Love #1: I haven't felt much like making videos lately
Love #2: that's okay. These things have ebbs and flows.
Love #1: I think… I think this moment in life feels so…new and…fragile. It has no roots yet. I can't bear to talk about it in case I… break the spell or something?
Love #2: That makes sense! Like the last few years life didn't feel like life so we had to punctuate it- like you had to film it to prove it was life…
Love #1: yes.
Love #2: …and now life is life-ing a bit too hard.
Love #1: and what's happening to my body… I can't look directly at it…
Love #2: no, I know, were not allowed even talk about it ..
Love #1: … I'm afraid to jinx it. I'm afraid to scare it away.
Love #2: and then there's everything else -
Love #1: yes.
Love #2: yes.
.
PS-
IM WRITING TO YOU AND THERE ARE CANDLES LIGHTNING and after I moved here and laughed and heard the news from home and stretched and dyed my hair and drowned, i took a plane back to Ireland to see my dying hero and to be held while I dreamt of waves- and I caught COVID nineteen! and now I'm back in Granada and my brain hurts
but oh the way the candlelight is glowing in this room and there's the loveliest grey and blue rain outside and Megan met a lovely woman who sent her a PDF of the artist’s way and I'm reading Gerald Brennan and the oranges bloom all over the streets this time of year and I'll stay inside for a while and sleep and rest and be patient and-
I've been given a second chance.
Right after I drowned sitting outside the hospital I took this photograph of a flower because I was still shaking and my heart was thumping and I was thing I'm alive I'm alive.
And in bed in Dublin, with cover symptoms eerily reminiscent of my past I thought- I used to live in this bed and hear these pipes and these noises and dream someday I might walk and think and move and escape and now I don't live in this bed anymore! I am here now but I no longer belong here. I belong with the orange trees and the music and Federico Garcia Lorca.
I looked the sick girl in the face across time and space and saw how I have been saved and given a chance at life that I doubted I'd be given.
So yes here I am stuck in bed in Spain, sick and frustrated and angry to be knocked down again-
but I lived long enough to write this to you and watch my first Andalusian storm
and a win is a win is a win is a win is a win