#jessicacowan

[jessicacowan]

TRIENNIAL, NGV, April 2018.

[jessicacowan]

TWO THOUSAND AND SEVENTEEN

For years I have written yearly retrospectives, not because I’m even slightly sold on the idea of a new year equaling a new slate, but rather because a year is a nice amount of time to measure, to look back on a slice of my life and ask: “well, what the fuck was all that about?”

2017 ended up being fucking bizarre, to try and find one word to capture it all. For the majority of it I have felt like I had no idea what or how to ‘be’ anymore. I have been more nihilistic, grateful, hopeless and, weirdly enough, funny than ever before. I do think I have the rare fortune of knowing why, which brings me to the story I have tried to tell consistently since April … the story about the time I almost died.

Throughout 2016 and into 2017 I was furiously combating the fact so much of my life I’d been too scared to do a lot of things. This, when referring to a medicated depressed n anxious person like me, is called flourishing. It was great, I bloody loved it. I did all manner of fun shit just because it was fun, I was well, and I could. So I went to a festival that was longer than one day, something I’d never done before because there was too many things that couldn’t be controlled. But I was into fun shit now! So I went. It was brilliant fun and I genuinely had the best time, but I also managed to contract meningococcal, which incubated for a few days before rearing its head as pneumonia, septic shock, and kidney failure. I almost died. I was in an induced coma for eight days, I was told that during the first 24 hours of my coma, the team treating me expected my heart to give out. It was never kept from me how incredibly dire my situation was, but I was never scared. So unlike me, I was overwhelmed with valium and gratitude I suppose. I never freaked out, but I also never wrote about it, and I write about everything.

I tried countless times to write about my near death experience, but everything I wrote was too sarcastic or too angry, and the only conclusion I was ever able to reach was that near death experiences lack context. I felt lucky, that was it to begin with. What a fucked up situation and what a lucky girl I was to be entirely okay. I feel that I reached a point of being fucking tired of being vulnerable. I had zero control while in a coma, my teeth were brushed for me, news of my situation was spread without my permission. As much as being vulnerable and real is important, more often than not it feels like shit. Not writing about my experience became my ‘fuck you’ to anyone who used my experience as gossip fodder when I couldn’t speak for myself. I felt it was better to present myself as not giving a damn. So I charged forward, doing my best to be cool and unaffected, but silence didn’t coax my trauma into vanishing. It made my calmness about the whole thing just become numbness. And then, because of the unpredictable nature of the universe, I was put in a situation where I was being discredited about my near death experience …. yeah. That’s a thing! I had to fine comb my experience juxtaposed with the notion I was reckless. Surprise, that fucks you up significantly. Being numb had me convinced I had been cauterised and was safe from the trauma I experienced, but I wasn’t. And it wrenched me from being numb into looking at this shit show through a lens of personal fault, which was awful and something I was exceptionally good at doing, see my history of shitty mental health. As a form of self preservation, I had brushed aside the terror that sat beside me in the hours before I was put in a coma to be intubated. I was oddly calm at the time, but I couldn’t breathe and I was in agony, and that memory is permanent. And I am completely okay, and astoundingly lucky, but that is a fucking scary thing to live through, but I lived.

All that being numb did for me was create heartache with no outlet - and that is not chill at all! It’s made me so angry and sad and stressed, it’s made me feel like the prozac that changed my whole life doesn’t work as well anymore. It’s made me feel like I don’t know how to be, but it’s not going to make me stop. I will likely make jokes about my near death experience for the rest of my life, because that’s what I do. I have to carve the good and funny out of every frightening and bizarre thing that might happen. 2017 cannot only be a year that was frightening and bizarre.

In 2017 I almost died, but then I totally stared death in the face and said ‘go fuck yaself’. And I saw Bruce Springsteen live. I read Springsteen’s memoir Born To Run which knew my sad and tired heart inside out. I read so much poetry. Music saved my sanity - as it always does. I cried in hospital listening to ‘Alright’ by The Attics on repeat because it was dreamy and I was alive, the opening mimics a heartbeat and I still had one. I listened to More Scared Of You Than You Are Of Me by The Smith Street Band everyday, I love it very much. I always said yes to cocktails. I saw Patti fucking Smith play her last ever Australian show. I saw Midnight Oil who I’ve loved since I was little with my beloved Smithies supporting. I danced. I made people I love laugh, and they made me laugh too. I tried to be what I thought I needed to be in response to my year, even though it didn’t always make sense. I went to galleries and a house of mirrors. I started getting an extra shot of espresso in my morning coffee. I went to Adele with the worst hangover of my life, and my Dad told me to ‘walk it off’ in the 32 degree heat. Which is SO funny - I’m glad that nothing in this world has ever stopped me noticing when things are funny. I felt like I ruined everything, multiple times. I continued to do fun shit. I dedicated afternoons solely to writing. I don’t end this year feeling particularly hopeful, but I don’t think you get that all the time. In fact I know you don’t, that wouldn’t be life.

Over and over this year I’ve thought about the Halsey lyric, “I hope hopeless changes over time” and I really do. Going forward I want to feel less sad about things that I cannot change or rectify. And I want to be calm in a way that is not a bullshit deception mechanism to awful things. But I’m trying to learn to not expect anything, given I could never have anticipated this past year. And, of course, I hope hopeless changes, I desperately, truly do. I want to notice when I am happy. And to love, always, and to be loved.

OH and no comas 2k18 would be fucking great, cheers.

Happy new year xxx

[jessicacowan]

One Second Everyday: July 2016 → July 2017

[jessicacowan]

I want to be calm, but I also want to say, ‘you can leave if you have to, but please never leave me.’ 

[jessicacowan]

27/03/2017

[jessicacowan]

[jessicacowan]

[jessicacowan]

A wall of windows (sometime in 2014).

One thing that stands out about working in a supermarket is being on the inside, looking out. We work beside a wall of windows. Our inside environment is controlled. The outside world, while inside, is our best guess decided by what we can see only. Stranger still, all we talk about with customers is the weather. “It looks like a nice day out!” we will say, and they will more often than not counter with something along the lines of, “It’s too windy” or “It’s going to rain, later.” Perhaps this highlights the unreliable sense sight can be alone, or humanity’s inability to be satisfied with anything in the present moment. Always looking forward, always anticipating something less good. I left work after being inclosed inside for nine hours yesterday, watching blue skies slowly turn grey, as the promised rain guaranteed. Nine hours of watching the outside world silently be thrashed around by wind, too much wind, as reported. As I stepped outside I was surprised by the warm gust of wind that tangled my hair. This, I thought, must be what it’s like to be at a close but safe distance from a rocket launching, readying to venture into outer space, lifting off from a bed of fire. I looked up squinting at the sky broken in two, bright blue and blinding, with grey inching across, aiming to swallow the blue whole.

Storm clouds always make me want to write about aliens. I don’t think alien spacecraft would descend on a nice, clear day, but after. Once the sky was blanketed dark grey. The element of surprise will be on their side.