ten years ago i moved to new york

dispatches from depression #8

Hello hello okay listen do I need to tell you when to do. Oh my God I have to say. Right I just I just want you to know intuitively when the sentence needs to end I don't want to have to say. hi everyone I'm in the Familia kind of pickle of it's the end of the month and I wanna write something for you all but like do I? I'm not well but not quite totally depressed though my bedsheets would probably disagree I'm living life you know and it's hard and what's even harder is that someone is playing really like loud but inny techno, tinny tinny not inny they're playing really loud but tinny techno from their boat and it's travelling across the water and entering every single one of my orifices at the same time. Anyway, here I am and finally old enough to say alive when people ask me how I am. I wanted to write this month because it's an anniversary and I wanted to commemorate it. I'm also very sad and tired and afraid of myself so I'm trying something new which is not writing but actually doing speech to text which I've never done before in all my 20 years of writing I've never thought listen how about we give the thingies a break thingies I'm trying to say fingers but I'm saying it cute like fingies and use the voice I mean I've always maintained that I like writing because it's not talking and I've always kind of found talking difficult one way or another or at least not energising. I find it so much easier to think without pressured air leaving my mouth but at the same time I can yap. Like on the way home from my studio just now I responded to 4 separate voice notes and I know my voice notes are gold and so while I'm stressing about having to get home after a day of work and think and write and tap tap tap I have the thought that maybe life could be easy. Maybe I could go home to the boat eat the sentimental chocolate that I bought for a friend and just like yep yep yep yep yep okay speech to text doesn't like to know what yapping is when it's shortened. So this is what I'm giving this month

Hello

Hello new paragraph

Romie

Took a second but we got there. So the anniversary that I was talking about, is essentially my 10 years of not living in New York anniversary. I moved to New York in August 2014. I had just turned 25 and I had decided I wanted to move to New York a couple years earlier when I was there with the rock band I used to be in recording an album and quite simply definitely fell in love with the place. I remember in particular walking past a guy unloading a van full of flowers early in the morning in Manhattan and catching eye contact with him and him looking down at me from the truck, a halo of the crispest blue surrounding him and feeling like it was all for me in that way that the cinematography the drama the hyper-individualism of New York can make it feel like it's all for you. I also snogged a random Italian man in the photo booth of a pickle back bar? Is a pickle back a thing? I might have made that up, but it was some kind of Irish pickle juice intoxicant and I never used to drink or kiss strangers well I still don't, but I really felt the spirit of letting loose on that trip and I wanted more Carrie mama, Kara Lili, boo-boo, Doodoo Shashi Reba Reba. Sorry I was curious to know what would happen if I made bird noises

Hello.

Okay, I need to stop being lazy and just do the new paragraph thing manually.

So yeah in 2014 I acquired three separate scholarships just so I could move to New York City knowing nobody and nothing and I realised that in the ten years that have since passed I have spent five in NYC and five in London where I was born and raisin and that’s a cute equal split isn’t it. I have bounced between them, working hard to maintain friendship, work, health, romance, visas, responsibilities and group chats in both places, really stretching the limits of doublelifeism, but without the secrets because as you know I am an oversharer. But this isn’t going to be a reflective piece that’s like look how far i’ve come in a decade because that would leave me with no choice but to kill myself so this is more… what is this? I don't know.