Escape Pod Heart

Writing is difficult when you have to write about yourself

February 16, 2024

The weird thing about stress, grief, any sort of trauma, really, is that you get over it relatively quickly in the beginning. In fact, almost as soon as you get upset, your instincts take over, and life creeps back in. For the longest time, 2023 wasn’t happening to me. I was dealing with blow after blow and just sailing on straight into the wind, but by the tail end of the year, there was nobody to fool anymore. The worst had happened, over and over again. I had tried to rebuild, without realising my vessel had broken down into just a piece of driftwood, and I was clinging to it in the middle of a vast, dark ocean. I needed to find a harbour. I needed to rest.

This week I’ve been writing a piece for Pellicle about the closure of Corto and everything that happened after that has forced me to look back at a period of time I was sure would one day break me, and you’ll be able to read it soon. At the time, everything was fine. That’s how stress works. But looking at photos taken when I was making it through the bin fire that was my life—no, the big gaping hole in the desert full of fossil fuel burning endlessly forever—I remember certain smells. The wool insulation of our van. Marlboro Lights and Guinness and Black. Rotten apples. The pink shower gel I was using. That time existed, no matter how unreal it feels to me now. 

I am lucky. I have support, and people who love me. My husband Tom was going through exactly the same thing as I was. We sheltered each other. In the escape pod of our van I lay awake in the dark and wondered what my life would be like in a week, a month, a year.

Can I tell you how I knew I was going to be alright, really?

Because I wanted to know what happened next. In all the difficult situations I’ve ever found myself in before, I’ve never had the true, survivalist curiosity to just… wait and see what happens.

Hey, Katie. You’re writing in the pub with a pint of cider. You’re going to have pizza for tea. You’ve just had a great idea for a book. You’re in love. You’re alive.

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