The Gab of the Gift

6th January 2021

I spent this morning looking at my Google Docs. Among various drafts of job applications, CVs, and letters to the Government, I found two sides of jumble that I wrote last June (peak ‘stay at home’ times). I’ve re-drafted the jumble into something that makes a bit more sense but I tried not to overthink it – I want it to stay true to how I was feeling and I want to share it. It’s a bit personal and a bit longer than it was originally. My working title was ‘Woe is fucking me’ which I’ve decided to keep – after all, woe was fucking me at that point, and I’ll admit I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. Like most people, I was feeling low, pretty damn low, and basically just had a word fart one night when I couldn’t sleep and just typed how I felt (my on/off relationship with insomnia has been more on than off for a while). It was a bit weird to read back on this and be reminded of how I was feeling – I did have a brief chat with a GP in August when things got a bit more topsy-turvy and I’m feeling much better now (really, really, really, I am fine). 

I haven’t felt like/had enough motivation to write in ages (writing job application after application took the fun out of it for me) and this piece is not glam or trying to impress in its structure/flow. I just wanted to write. It’s just a bunch of disordered paragraphs RE how I was feeling last summer in some sort of order. I was angry when I wrote it so I use one of my favourite words, ‘fuck’, approximately 283 times. I’ll stop rambling now. 

23rd June 2020

In I May Destroy You, Arabella is sexually assaulted. When she starts to relive the experience, she dismisses what’s happened to her because of other, ‘worse’, suffering in the world. She distracts herself by saying ‘there are hungry children. There is a war in Syria. Not everybody has a smartphone’ – she tries to gain ‘perspective’. I can relate – not to the assault, thank goodness – but to trying to put things into perspective. We’re in the midst of a pandemic that has been rather turbulent. I have good days, I have bad days. No, I have some good days, I have a lot of bad days. But I’m not on the frontline, and I haven’t lost anyone to this virus. So, my bad days aren’t as bad as a lot of people’s bad days. But they’re still bad days.

The first time I remember properly realising I may have some kind of problem was on a ski trip in 2019. Some of my favourite people assembled on my favourite place, Méribel, and we had the best fucking week. One (heavily intoxicated) evening, I didn’t feel quite myself. Not feeling quite myself resonated into my hysterical crying with a friend at a bar about how I didn’t feel like I had a purpose anymore, that my life was basically just shite (I know, perspective, but see title). Alcohol affects us in many ways – gin makes me dance, lager puts me on cloud nine, wine makes me text people I probably shouldn’t… Any of the above also make me incredibly emotional, when the timing is right. That night, the timing was optimum, the beer pêche causing emotions and thoughts to spill out of me at the rate of my ‘off’ tummy in Tanzania. 

The night before, I walked back to our chalet on my own after a few drinks – I’m more of a lightweight than I care to admit, and I think I just craved some breathing space. If you know, you know – mountain air is something spectacular. I feel most ‘me’ when I’m in the mountains with freezing cold wind on my face and a nose so sunburnt you’re surprised you actually have a nose left when you get home. Méribel will always be one of my most treasured places – it literally holds some of the best moments of my life. My good friend Hollie described skiing as ‘fucking euphoric’ – that week of skiing, drinking, laughing, joking, dancing, snogging (sorry, Dad) felt fucking euphoric, let me tell you. But I also felt immense sadness. Like that kind of sadness where you feel it rising inside you; the tears sting and burn your eyes and you’re holding them back but whoosh, they’re out and they just keep coming, then you’re doing that god-awful thing of sobbing whilst trying to breathe, deep breaths, deep breaths, causing incomprehensible sounds whilst snot, snot is streaming from your nose and HOW DO YOU HAVE THAT MUCH SNOT and everything is pretty ugly and it goes on forever and when you finally stop crying, you feel like you’ve ran a marathon (at least, I imagine that’s how it feels). As I walked home that evening, I sat down at the side of the road and cried. Exactly as above. It’s incredibly cliché (but hey, that’s what they’re for, right?), but under the dark sky and surrounded by the shadows of the mountains, I looked up at the stars and said allowed ‘what the fuck am I doing?’. I was so confused – wasn’t I having the best week? I felt so happy, but also so, so incredibly sad. I don’t know if there’s a name for this feeling, but it’s not the one. It was the one that my friends, the night after, told me I should probably speak to someone about.

Even if you’ve not read To Kill A Mockingbird, you’ll know the quote ‘you never really know a person until you walk around in his shoes’. Honestly, I can’t say that as a Year 10 studying this book for my GCSE English Literature exam that I really resonated with this, but I’ve found myself thinking about it increasingly during the last few weeks. To date in 2020, I’ve worked (waitressing) less than 30 hours and been furloughed for over 30 days. I haven’t had a ‘real’ income for a looooong time. Sure, I knew that when I took 3 months unpaid to volunteer in Tanzania, but I didn’t know I’d be coming back to a pandemic. Again, I found myself questioning what I wanted to do with my life – I know a lot of people found the sudden work-halt a bit of a blessing, hours to binge something on Netflix, time to spend with the kids, and when work comes around again it’ll be all ‘what’s an alarm again’? I’m finding it tough. It’s repetitive, and demoralising. I am bored, I am unmotivated, I feel pretty sad.

I love the interview question ‘how would your friends describe you?’ – not on a personal note, but out of fascination as to how people react to it – would your friends be truthful (‘ah Dean, the D-meister, yes he has excellent chat with the ladies on a night out’) or impressive (‘I have only ever known Dean to be dedicated, motivated, passionate’). Generally, I reckon my friends would describe me – among other things – as happy, confident, relatively intelligent, a bit silly/daft, caring, generally fun to be around. I bet none of them would answer ‘well actually, the other day Gabs told me she stood at the top of the stairs and wondered what the worst thing that could happen would be if she fell down them’. I am aware of how I feel and I know it will get better. I’m just down. My emotions are uncontrollable this year. I feel a bit blue. I’m pissed off.

We know to check on our friends whether they seem ‘ok’ or not. And it’s true, often the ones you think are ‘ok’, the ones who hold the fort for others, are more often than not, not ‘ok’. I like to think I am a good friend – I’m there when my friends are happy, sad, celebrating, or when they’re going through a breakup (though that’s sometimes pretty celebratory). They’re there for me too. What this pandemic has highlighted is that we will never truly see, or experience, or understand, another’s life or situation. The pandemic has demonstrated to us that we are indeed in the same storm, different boats.

My paranoia/self-diagnosed mild OCD/whatever it is has reared its ugly head in what seems like an irreversible manner since this pandemic. Even if I haven’t lit a candle at night, I’m checking they’re all out. Then I get into bed, then back out. And check them again. Even if I’ve had a salad for dinner, I’ll just check that I turned the oven off. Just in case. Maybe the person before me left it on? Even if I’m talking to a friend about a friend, I’ll check my phone isn’t calling the friend. I’ll just pop it on aeroplane mode. No big deal… 

I reckon I have cried everyday for the last 15 weeks. Whether that’s a few tears or a desperate sob, I have been really fucking sad. Do I think I deserve to be? Yes, and no. No, because I have watched terrible things on the news and count my blessings that my family are ok. No, because I am not having to work in terrible conditions with hardly a light at the end of the tunnel. No, because I have a roof over my head, food on the table and a family that looks after me. Definitely no, because I’m not the only one whose life Covid-19 has interrupted and I have it far, far, far better than a lot of people.

But also yes, and I don’t want to feel guilty about it. I worked my arse off for 14 years at school and now I find myself relying on Universal Credit with limited job prospects. And I just want a job. Any job. Someone give me a job. Almost every single job (55+) I have applied for during this lockdown has flippantly disregarded my ‘PLEASE HIRE ME’ cover letter. I’ve applied for anything and everything (from stacking shelves to admin. for the Council) and I’m sure my keen tone (read desperate) is seeping through – probably because I genuinely sent cover letters that opened with that phrase, bold, capital letters and all…

I’m really, extremely glad for my friends, family and everybody else whose lives have resumed some kind of normality in recent weeks. I’m really sad for people whose lives have irreparably changed. Of course, we’ve all had our lives turned upside down, knocked about and kicked through a window into space over the last few months and I am most certainly no exception. I doubt some of my feelings are either. I hope, I really hope, that as the cogs of ‘normal’ life begin to turn again, my mood will lift and this will have all been a bit of a phase. I’ve heard and read about feeling bleak, low, like there’s a heavy cloud over your head. I didn’t get it before. I get it now.

Present Day, 6th January 2021

The last line I had written in June was: I didn’t think I had any more tears – but somehow they keep on coming. I don’t know how to describe how I feel reading that back, almost a bit numb. I was really low and it was the middle of the night, which always makes things worse. I don’t believe I was clinically depressed. I was just sad. I was also very, very aware of how I was feeling. And so were my family. I took it quite personally that I wasn’t getting anywhere with a job, and I still struggle that I’m not where I want to be. But relentless applications later, I got a job. I moved in with my lifelong best friend. I went on some dates. And I now know that I want to write. 

Sidenote

In April/May, I applied to join the army, so I needed to get fit and learn to run. I got on board the Joe Wicks train to absville – scratch that, to feel-good ville (I love cake). I did a workout everyday which gave me a focus and a sense of achievement, as well as an ab. Just the one. Long story short, my eczema stopped any chance of an army career. It then didn’t matter if I didn’t send off a job application that day, or the day after – what mattered was that I had done something. It didn’t have to be via Joe Wicks, but I think his perspective on health, food and fitness is as close to spot on as it could be. He’s a realist (and he drinks gin!), and even if his Essex twang starts to get on your tits as you huff and puff your way through squat jumps, lunges and burpees, what he says is relatable – as is when he stops mid-HIIT for a breather because, well, it’s a HIIT. When I got my job, I didn’t stop the JW, it’s become (positively) too much of a constant for me. I do a 20 minute workout every (most) weekday morning before work and I feel good. And even if I haven’t changed the world, or found my dream job, it doesn’t matter anymore. This is enough. If that’s all the productivity that came of this pandemic for me, I’m proud and at peace with it.

End Note

I think I’ll round this off here – maybe I’ll add to it tomorrow, maybe I’ll re-read it in a couple months’ time and think ‘fuck, Gabs, what a load of tosh’. 

Or maybe I’ll raise a glass to myself on 1st Feb (yes, I really am doing dry Jan), and everyone else, for getting through it all.