#insomnimagic

You will see something today. It is meant just for you, for your eyes, exactly as they are, for your brain exactly as it is, it is meant for you. And when you see it, you will react before you realise, laugh or gasp and part of you will realise, that there will never be a way to explain it to anyone else, it is just yours. But it's okay, I understand, I sent it to you. It was about time you had it.

In that moment, as you realise, something will fall into place, a soft click, and you will see, you will see that this is where you will start your stories, your interviews, your memoirs, this is the moment where everything came together, and you saw clearly. That is not to say that everything will be easy after this, but it has shape, it is a story, it is your story, it belongs to you, just as the something, and you know, you know that there is an end to this, you know all this is building to something. 

Dearest You The Nightingale

Once upon a time there were two Cinderellas.

The Cinderella who stayed built up her resources as she could, knowing that both options were difficult. She was not responsible for the what she endured, or for staying at all, life is often complicated and without happily ever afters, and she could not have known which was the better option. She used her ingenuity to realise the bigger dreams beyond escaping and surviving, but some days it didn’t feel like it, and it took everything she had just for there to be another day. Without realising it, though, as she fought she became braver and more resourceful, until all her plans finally fell into place and she was free.

The Cinderella who left was no less kind, was no less loving. She was not a heretic to faaaamily. She found that being as protective and kind to herself as she was to others allowed her to actually make more of a difference in the world. Rather than helping her animal friends avoid traps and cats, she could help them grow and devour the world’s largest carrot, and write tiny angry mouse poetry. The Cinderella who left made the right choice for her at the right time, and braved the unknown to make a new family, not made of royal strangers, but of the friends she knew would stick by her in the tough times.

Both the Cinderellas are strong and complex, have different difficulties and regrets. Kindness and beauty, though, were the least of what they were. And how they lived, and how they survived, there is no enchantment, no pumpkin, no shoe fit for such a one. Or two.

Or you, Nightingale, or you.

Dearest You, The Nightingale,

It would be misleading to say these letters are for you because you are a survivor. It is easy enough to imagine what exactly that means, and often that easy drop into tropes is how we are silenced, more often than not. Everyone has an image in there mind, but there is not mind enough for us, for one in five women for a start, but beyond that every kind, every gender, every bloom of brain, devout and gleefully heretic, conservative and liberal, wild and reserved and vehemently alive, there is no word, no word yet can encompass that which you are, oh Nightingale, oh extraordinary, oh joy.

When I was just about keeping my head above water, a friend of mine said he was disappointed, you have so much more to be, he said. It is still a knot in my head, particularly on a down day, "You have so much more to be." And that is how not having the nerve to buy a loaf of bread becomes a referendum on your value as a human being. It is a common fantasy, I'm sure one that you've played. To shake off those feathers, to be the person that has nothing to do with any of this, to be much more. But you have proved your worth, a thousand times, this breath you take, another thousand.

It is not all that you are, not even close, it never has been. It is that fact that has allowed you to survive in the first place, and every part of you, your identity, your will that is particular to you, these extend beyond this fight, and many fights beyond. It is not what makes you special, it is not what make you strong. It sucks that you have had to expend so much on something that is in the end peripheral to all that is brightest in you. It sucks that often the bright things that you may have liked about yourself, your trust in people, your generosity, your compassion, gets turned against you, to the point that you are made to feel ashamed for these beautiful, brave things. It sucks that if these elements of your nature alter from what you have been through, you are made to feel broken, that forgiveness is a prettier narrative than self preservation.

You are not broken. You never were. You are exquisite, and if the one thing you can do today is have a shower and wash your hair, it will be the most magnificent hair-washing this planet has ever encountered. This washing of your hair will break the foundations of epic, Beowulf and the Iliad bursting with the suds against your infinite and expanding mind.  

"More to be." Ha. As if you were any less.

Dearest You, The Nightingale,

Awake again? Money, right? It seems like something everyone stresses about, but there are penalties upon penalties financially for being different, or for being ill. You have put so much more just into treading water than other people put into their entire careers, through no fault of your own. It is almost impossible too to divorce money from power, you have come up against the question, how much can I afford to open my mouth, to be myself, to speak out. You have been silent before, and sometimes you have pretended because you knew that would give you greater freedom later on. You have lost a number of safety nets before or have ones that seem awfully conditional, which is not exactly what one needs when falling. So I understand that when things get sketchy for you moneywise, when you feel that you are losing financial independence, it might feel like you are losing autonomy, authority, identity, control.

There are a number of things outside of your control, there is a lot of the unknown, which is not a friend of yours at the best of times. They are not your responsibility though. There are a lot of things, in hindsight, that everyone could have done differently, but you have done what you have done to get by, and by virtue of you getting by that was the right choice to make, and that is the end to it.

You have valued your independence, and that has given you a lot to work with, I know you will be able to pursue all the opportunities you can, as they arise. You are good enough, you are smart enough, you are hard working enough; maybe the things that come up won't be the one's you expect, but they will come. No one can fix everything at once, and I know you will work out how to get through to the end of the month, and in the end, that is all you need, to get by, one by one.

You have used the resources you could, and you have made compromises before. Relying on anybody else or anything else was not you lacking in independence, or any of the other things, it was resourcefulness, it was surviving, it took strength and guts, and more out of you than it ever could have those who aided you. You still have a number of people on your side, and maybe none of them can give you a golden stress free ticket, but they are all more than happy to do their bit, as I have told you, it is a magnificent thing when you ask for something, do not fear it.

There is no going back, and that is a good thing. Because even if you lose everything, you are still you, you are still strong, you are still capable and profound in so many ways. No one can take that away from you, at any price. You are never going to be powerless again, you are at no one's mercy, you are free.

Tonight, you are absolved. No lists, no pouring over anything, no desperately trying to distract yourself while actually obsessing and feeling more guilty for not dealing with it head on. You are dealing with it. It is being dealt with. You may make a schedule for tomorrow if it will make you feel better, but only to behold the richness of the hours: if you have slept, there are just infinite things you can get done in a day, you, more than anyone, you know this. Let go. It's done. You did good. You will do even better. Sleep.

"If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking. In the meantime, let me be that I am, and seek not to alter me."

Dearest You, The Nightingale,

You are not tricking them, you are not a fake. Everything you feel and experience is real and genuine and belong to you. If the way you engage with these feelings and experiences changes over time, that does not invalidate them, there were a number of stages you went through to survive, and you can respect your body for getting you there in whatever way it could.

It is easy to forget that a lot of what you experience is a physical thing. It, among other reasons, may make it harder to seek medical help, you may second guess yourself and what your body is doing. I know you, Nightingale, can go through all manner of hurt, and endure. Why, when you find something you can’t, would it be less real than that?

I trust you to know yourself, and I am incredibly suspicious. I trust no one but I trust you with the thing so precious as your future. Let the interrogation go, let the doubt go, let the layers upon layers of it all go for a night, let it fall through your hands like water too chill, that all at once leaves you numb, and then hot, and then alive. Extend the mercy and hospitality you have for others to yourself, for the moment. If you are wrong, there is time enough, if things change, there is time enough.

Dearest You, The Nightingale,

A thought of yours that stings at the touch, I have it on my hand, its legs like lightning, fuzzy licking feet, this thought of yours, that memory which you forget nine tenths of the time, but then you trip on, that wrenching blow that knocks the wind from you, that memory. A long lost sin, an unspoken knotted thing, a hole, a responsibility that no one holds you accountable for but you, I have that thought in my palm, and gently gently it is snuffed, you can see the smoke on my breathe, an iridescent greenish thread through it like a pang like a cricked neck, and like a cricked neck you forget, and unlike a cricked neck it is not going to find you again, sleep as funny as you like. I have murdered that thought of yours, beloved friend, it’s gone.

Sleep.