Room for Disruption
During the height of my “oh shit I think I’m a lesbian” character arc last month, I went to a guided meditation workshop at the LGBTQ+ community centre in Blackfriars. Meditation does not come naturally to me, but I hoped the peer pressure of doing it in a group would force my mind to focus.
The workshop leader guided us through a meditation where we imagined a conversation with a trusted person in a safe space. The meditation fell flat for me, because playing out imaginary conversations in my head is my main hobby, and it is not relaxing at all. I chose the wrong person to imagine, because the person I wanted to talk to was a little too close to the issue at hand. All in all, the meditation did not provide much clarity. But what I found interesting was where my mind went when I tried to imagine a safe space. My brain automatically went to the SSEES PhD study room, a stuffy space with windows that open of their own accord at inopportune moments. I am nowhere near enough of a workaholic to have a library room be the place I feel most safe, so I changed the location in my mind, imagined sitting on the grass in Gordon Square Gardens. I don’t think you’re meant to force the direction a meditation takes, but I’m a free thinker and I can’t be stopped.
It’s the Easter holidays now, and most UCL buildings have been closed for the better part of this week. I have a deadline on Friday that’s making me want to carve my brain out with a butterknife, so the prospect of fist-fighting undergrads for a seat in the Student Centre hasn’t done wonders for my mental health. Trying to read about the gendered experiences of Ukrainian refugees whilst everyone around you is inexplicably eating fish and cackling at full volume is deeply unsettling. I yearn for the SSEES library and its no food policy.
This disruption to my routine is trivial in the scheme of things, but disruption has been the dominant theme in my life this year, and it’s needled at me more than I’d like to admit. I traipse around campus searching for anywhere else to go, but everywhere is closed. I can’t even find a toilet to cry in. So I sit on the ground in Gordon Square Gardens, severing stalks of grass with my fingers and dismembering daisies like a botanical grim reaper. I see someone who looks like a friend from a distance and feel a flicker of hope, but it’s not him. And somehow that’s what sends me over the edge, the depth of my need for company and a listening ear. Tears spill out over my eyes and before I know it, I’m engaging in a classic Eliza pastime: crying in a public place. Quietly, stoically, subtle enough that no one will look close enough at me to care. I would love to be one of those people who’s not in touch with their emotions, because it is embarrassing how easy it is for me to cry.
I can handle big life changes, but it’s the small disruptions that get me. I no longer have a place to go where I can sit and write (until tomorrow when the SSEES building reopens. It’s really not that deep). It feels like a microcosm of the bigger issue. By ending my relationship, I lost the person that I could talk to about everything. I lost the audience for every inane thought that enters my head, and I also lost the sounding board for all my ideas, the person I would talk to about my research when I was struggling to identify my arguments. When I know what I want to say, I find it easier to articulate my thoughts in writing. But when I haven’t figured out what those thoughts are, I need to think aloud. I need someone to listen to me and hear me and respond to me. Trying to write my lit review draft without that is rapidly driving me insane.
There are all these empty spaces inside of me now, rooms stripped of their furniture. There are new rooms too, further down the corridor. Sometimes I see the flash of a key in someone’s hand and know there’s a whole new world out there that awaits me, a secret library hidden behind a humble bookshelf door. I know there is so much space within me for new experiences and new affections. But right now, loneliness lurks in all corners. I spend more time talking to my friends than I have in years, I am actively seeking social interactions. But I’ve gone from having one person who was my person, to having lots of people who I know love and care about me, but not knowing how much of my emotional weight I can rest on their shoulders.
If I push too far, I know it will cause more disruption. I trace my finger along the fragile line between honesty and self-sabotage, let my words slip out in the witching hours. I feel the neediness radiating from me, and push the shame as far away as my strength will allow.
I am used to my own company, there are many times where I prefer it. But these days I ache for the company of others. I need long hugs and conversations that last for hours. Instead, I get to spend quality time with my literature review and the 40-odd articles I need to read and write about by the end of this week. I find new ways to fill the silence, blast early 2000s pop hits at ear-damaging volume, until my thoughts are drowned out by Girls Aloud and Britney Spears. It works, at first, until the scent of microwaved fish fills the Student Centre and no amount of loud music or academic determination can counteract the sensory nightmare. So I sit outside and stare at the blurry bluebells in the distance until the urge to write shakes me out of my stupor. I finally have something to say, a room to rest in.
Virginia Wolf, fellow haunter of Bloomsbury, wrote that women need a room of one’s own. For me, this blog is that space, the room that exists inside me independent of other people. Perhaps it’s more of a lobby, furnished with soft chairs for you to sit and read, waiting for me to unlock the doors beyond. I often say that this is a space for me to scream into the void, to vent my feelings without requiring an immediate audience. But that’s not true. This ‘room’ is the key to me, it’s where I lay out my ideas, ready for consumption. Sometimes I have a target audience, a specific person I want to talk to. I can never know for sure who is reading, and there’s an element of risk to that. This is my space for secret love letters and misguided apologies, weaving my truths into the dense threads of borrowed metaphors, never quite knowing how transparent I can be. Sometimes I read back through old blogs and imagine them through the eyes of different people. Sometimes I look back at what I’ve written in the past and wonder how on earth I got away with it.
Writing here is my own form of disruption, where I get to play the hand of God instead of waiting patiently for it to smite me. Someone told me years ago “I don’t think you realise how many people read your blog”, to which I should have said “bitch, I can see the viewer stats. I know *exactly* how many people read it.” I learnt the hard way that being open about my experiences can backfire, and it took me years to regrow my painful earnestness. I self-censored for so long out of fear of the disruption my words could cause. I still self-censor from time to time, especially if I’m writing about things that concern other people. Writing used to be my safe space, and for a long time it was not. I’m learning to love it again, learning how to play games with my words and tempt fate just a little. It’s certainly easier than meditation.
Writing is a relief, because it means I know what I want to say. And, beyond that, it’s fun. It’s fun to say “fuck it” and tell your truths to whoever’s here to listen. It’s fun to see who reads it, it’s fun to know which people are curious enough about me to care what I have to say. My writing, whether it be blogs or novels, has been the core of my identity for half my life. I want to share that with people, I want to be seen as a writer. I want to be known.
Being known is the ultimate form of disruption, startling in its intimacy. Perhaps I’ve been enacting that guided meditation all along – going to a safe space in my mind, imagining a conversation with a trusted person. The difference is, sometimes they choose to read it.