People’s Faces
I’m standing in the refrigerated aisle in the Co-op, between the ready to heat steak pies and the cheese, grated and whole. I don’t hold eye contact with a single person while I’m in there, and it’s only on paying at the self service that I’m staring back at myself on a screen above the other screen, and a word flashes; RECORDING. No, I think, please don’t record this. Not me buying cheese and basil (I made pesto). Record me writing, mixing, reading, applying for jobs, even record me writhing in agony last night as the fist of my period pain twisted in and out, and me, literally begging myself for mercy, straddling a spare duvet, two cushions, a hot water bottle and my childhood bear, J rubbing my back and helpless to my suffering. Record that. Record my life.
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Lockdown happened. Speaking generally, the isolation suited us. I’m an introvert at heart, so I really cherished being alone with the trees and open horizons (we were at my parents when lockdown was enforced). I wrote in my own time, we recorded and tracked the next EP in our own time, I picked wild garlic leaves and de-weeded the garden, all in this window of time we’d been gifted. I read dozens of books, and will read dozens more. I was furloughed, I was looked after, I felt happy, healthy (even when my back went and I fell on the floor like a sack of shite and had to be lowered into the bath like a malnourished whale).
Then I lost my job. I knew it was coming, of course. The coffee shop had to close for a number of reasons, but mainly due to the pandemic and the fact they just couldn’t make it work. So many people have lost so much in this time. The solution isn’t simple. I thought to myself, rather in the style of ITV’s Vera, Look, pet, you’re good at the coffee job thing. But you’re also really capable at loads of other stuff too, you don’t have to limit yourself. Try something new! This is a door. Open it. So I’ve been applying for jobs in publishers, editorial assistants jobs, working with books, copyright, anything where I can write or read or just be around words for a living. So far, it’s going okay, but I’m optimistic. There must be someone out there that’s quite taken with my wilfully positive CV, even if I am wholly unqualified...
But then some other stuff happened and I became really negative and scared, worried about my future again, worried about the world we were coming to know and normalise. The indecision, the lethargy, the restlessness, the not-knowing-when-to-start, the heavy sighs. Even my skin was showing signs that inside, I was panicking, because:
I don’t know how my life is going to look going forward, and that frightens me.
All of my live work was cancelled, all the groundwork I’d been building up on. The portfolio of work, the earnings that were growing and might have supported me enough after a few years so that I could think about getting a mortgage or having a babaganoush (baba, kiddo, sprog, littl’un, baby). Gone. When people lament that “2020 was the year that never happened,” I think, yeah, but I’m still losing all my eggs.
I’m luckier than most. When I really sit and focus on what I have, if my life were a barbecue, I really am the juicy sausage on the grill drizzled in honey and bathing in fat. I have a lot to be thankful for, and that calms me. Even if I am being cooked alive.
Weird analogy.
I think a lot of you will empathise with this, because it’s not just the work, or the coffee job, or time that was robbed from me, from all of us, but communication and interaction. Nobody can see my face, nobody can see me smile, and I feel desperate for recognition. I want my old life back. I want the motivation, the optimism, the touring, the being able to shake hands and hug without guilt, and the excitement for making plans with friends, the where shall we go next and being able to answer the question, “When are you guys going to get married, then?” The realisation that I won’t be going back to my life before, has hit me, right between the steak pies and the cheese aisle. Knowing that the year we had planned never happened and not even knowing if we can plan the next has filled me with dread. Because what is life when every small thing we cherish and take for granted every day is removed? When excitement is a luxury, not a common occurrence? Even the jobs we thought we hated, turned out to be the lifeblood behind our choices and decisions. The people that wound us up, the people that smiled at us, the people that knew our names and asked how we were. They were all in one way or another keeping us going, moving us on, passing us forward.
‘It's hard, we got our heads down and our hackles up Our backs against the wall, I can feel your heart racing...’
It’s not all bad. Writing this down I know that I’m getting caught in that cycle of negative thinking, and I’m freed from it a little. Thank you for bearing with me, and apologies if I’ve made you sad. But people need people. When I feel like I’m losing, I think about the very important people around me, even those who reached out to me during my grief who I hadn’t heard from in years who’d heard of my Nan’s recent passing. I think of their faces and our laughter and memories, and I think, I am lucky. I have a lot to cherish. So if you’re where I’m at, if you’re worried and scared and sad that you lost something or someone this year, think about those people’s faces. The people who bolster you, hold you up. The folks that remind you that nothing else matters when you have love. When you have a hand to hold, a dog to stroke, and if you’re more of a loner type, a hill to climb, a sea to swim, a stiff breeze to hold yourself against. We’ll get through it all together.
‘...None of this was written in stone The current's fast but the river moves slow And I can feel things changing Even when I'm weak and I'm breaking I stand weeping at the train station 'Cause I can see your faces I love people's faces.” - People’s Faces by Kae Tempest
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