how to light a fire

dispatches from depression #6

ADRIFT

Some mornings ago i woke up to the sound (and feel!) of my boat crashing against the riverbank, and while that might sound like an emergency, i didn’t get up right away because (HEAR ME OUT) i was disoriented and trying to figure out if there’s any way that could be normal so i could go back to sleep (there isn’t) and also because getting up has become an act of will so powerful i am truly in awe of myself every time i do it. So much so, that i genuinely considered continuing to lay there, in my cabin, under my fluffy blanket of colour, beside the lilting warmth of my early morning hot water bottles, as my little plastic house made repeated violent contact with concrete. 

You see what had happened was that the metal ring i had attached my ropes to had come away from the concrete and so there was nothing keeping my boat in place anymore. i was unmoored, which is a bit of a nightmare for a boater because you could potentially float down the river crashing into more stuff, but because the part of london i am in right now is SO popular, i was actually pinned in by the boats crowded around me and therefore could only drift out a certain distance, before bouncing off another boat and making my way right back towards the towpath with a bang. I got out of bed, pulled the ropes out of the icy water back onto the boat, and drove to a new spot. Gotta keep it moving

Yes, i am on my boat for winter. At some point last year it was decided (by me) that I would spend the winter doing some shadow work (it’s not funny) because I had landed myself a kind of sticky, enduring discontent and had forgotten how to enjoy my own company (and also anyone else’s). A resounding feature of the last year was my struggle with socialising with more than one person at a time, which often threw me into a kind of dissociated, irritable state somewhere between depressive existentialism, burnout and autistic meltdown. I’m finding myself becoming much more sensitive to light, sound and sensation (as I get older?), and also, bullshit. 

I’ve been finding a lot of solace in knowledge shared by autistic QTIBPOC, one being

Sara Elise

, who after hearing speak openly about how hellish socialising can be for her at her book launch, definitely gave me a little space to breathe into the idea that perhaps there’s more to this than me being a huge brat. i've also been seeing some resonant stuff around burnout recently, particularly the idea that you never really recover from it lmao. this speaks to me! Where is the burnout recovery booth? Once that fire that lives in your chest or your brain or your pussy or wherever is fully extinguished by the sheer absurdity of life as we know it and your efforts to help or be heard or even just survive actually, where can you go, safe from the winds of late capitalism, to light it again?

Anyway, regardless of the specifics of what was going on, it was clearly time for me to stop resisting and step into the dark. To stop running around trying to nurture little sparks that would inevitably die as quick as they lived, and go back to basics. And you know what, I think there may truly be nothing darker than an underfunded towpath at night. and i am drawn to darkness. the luxury, the weight, the exquisite sophistication of darkness, and i am drawn to solitude when i feel darkness take over, and i want to remove myself from everything and everyone who might hurt me, and who i might hurt, under the comfort of darkness, and i want to rest even if it’s on the sea floor, in total darkness, and i want to swim towards the light when i’m ready, like look i survived.

Don’t get me wrong, that's called depression lol but it’s also something more. I mean it always is. But there’s something about the way life’s been snaking around, the way days and days are passing, but without me, almost. I am not present, in my body, I have become cold. 

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THE END OF THE TUNNEL

My boat has been moored in Kings Cross which used to be a famously “dodgy” area, synonymous with drugs and sex work. In fact, the first club i ever went to when I was 14, a gay club called POPSTARS was also in Kings Cross, so lets throw gays in there too. In the playground, we would shout “i saw your mum in kings cross” at each other as a biting insult. Somehow i missed its transition into the epicentre of commercial gentrification, now looking like one of those AI urban planning previews come to life with fountains and bins with increasingly small holes to put the rubbish in and tiny shops which all have the same lettering. I’ve been walkin around in a daze like WHO owns all these shops? To which my big brained friend Hannah added, and WHO owns this font??

To get to kings cross from east london you have to go through a 200 yr old, mile-long, very narrow, pitch black tunnel which i didn’t realise until i was approaching it because that’s kind of unfortunately just how i am. As it got closer, I rummaged with one hand to find a torch because i remembered from the helmsman course i once did that lights in tunnels are Very Important coz it’s dark af and boats can only travel in one direction at a time within them, so in place of proper navigation lights i sort of dangled my little hipster torch off the bow and prayed for the best. i was listening to my water playlist as i do these days when i move the boat and upon entering the mouth of the tunnel, SOPHIE’s Is It Cold In The Water? bounced off the edges of the perfect black circle and then on me like streamers and like arrows in the dark. and it was dark. front to back and back to front darkness, and i felt scared and held at the same time, like maybe I’m at the club though, maybe the darkness is pressed against me from behind. It’s dark and still we flow with adventure. The darkness is rich, it is the adventure. Everything on water feels like dancing