This Christmas has been drinks with pals, Christmas parties, festive morning brunches, lots of mulled wine, the funnest gigs, five full christmas dinners, nights out in my favourite East London pubs, nights in with boxes of Celebrations and christmas movies, cheeseboards, four actually fun Christmas gigs, espresso martinis, rum hot chocolates, more fun brushing my teeth than I thought possible, limited edition chocolate baileys, one beautiful new dress, a lot of beautiful people, a different Christmas playlist for every permutation of travelling, unexpected festive cupcakes, ribbons in hair, one awkward bathroom encounter, kisses on the cheek, SANTA BEER, dancing dancing dancing, Brooklyn Lager and Camden Hells on tap, best friends, old friends, new friends, one upsettingly absent friend, a boot full of Santa hats and antlers, a new reason for high heels, far too many screenshots, the loveliest screening of Gremlins, horribly overpriced pints, two uncompleted advent calendars, so much Prosecco, three nut roasts, seventeen hours of driving, too many empty white wine bottles, a couple of slightly stale mornings, unquantifiable amounts of merriment and way, way, way too much tinsel.
Boy friends who are stuck at home ill in bed feeling rubbish, but give you a hug as soon as you open the door because you had good news. Boy friends who punch the air for you. Boy friends who buy you lunch and tease you about the little things. Boy friends who buy you water and boy friends who bring you wine.
Boy friends you shared a bed with because there was no room on the floor and it was the worst house party in history. Boy friends you shared a bed with because you were too upset to go home. Boy friends you shared a bed with because they came to hang out but sometimes you need to stay in bed all day and watch The Herbs and that’s ok too.
Boy friends just in time for Christmas. Boy friends who go to the pub with you because your date was late. Boy friends who hold up three Christmas jumpers each so you can try on a dress behind them in a busy market. Boy friends who tell you that you have to get the dress because any date would ask you out instantly if he saw you in it. Boy friends who buy you the dress because you’re broke and you can’t see what they see and there’s a hope that maybe one day you’ll get it; who knows if that will ever happen but it’s nice anyway. Boy friends who’ve known you forever and boy friends who’ve known you a month. Boyfriends.
You died a year ago today. I could feel my life splitting into two parts. Before and After. I hoped I might get back some of the things I left in Before, but I am not sure how it works. I saw your Dad this morning. He said, this last year has been a bit of a blur, mostly focused on surviving. He’s right. It has.
People say you know you’re getting old when your friends start dying. That means I got old last year. It was the year of death; I lost childhood friends, family friends, treasured mentors and worst of all, you. I’d been having a whale of a time being young, being happy, inching towards success when suddenly cancer, suicide, accidents, funerals, eulogies, graves and cremation threw themselves into my path unexpectedly. I think a lot of me is still mourning. My dreams are filled with all the people I’ve lost, even the ones still alive, the ones that got away. Sam told me, Will told me, my Dad told me: you need to get over this and move on.
But I can’t get past it. I don’t have the right coping mechanisms and I’m scared of going forward without you jumping through the same hoops with me, as you always have done. And besides, you’re everywhere; you’re in my lyrics, in my playlists, in my wardrobe, in my Favourite Contacts, in my stories and anecdotes, in my inbox, in my cat ears, in the colours of the leaves, in pumpkins, in the names of all our unborn children, in Will’s stupid jokes, in my harddrive, in unedited photos and hours of rehearsal footage I cannot watch.
People say that when somebody dies young it can remind you how precious life is, and how important it is to live every day to the fullest. This is a nice sentiment, except that is how I lived my life anyway. It turns out that there is a limit to carpe diem; if you push it too far it’s dangerous. It’s reckless, it’s breaking into where you shouldn’t be, it’s fooling around, losing things, insulting friends, drinking too much, staying out too late, worrying strangers, horrible, messy, not giving a shit about waking up tomorrow. It’s just easier.
You would hate this, you would hate me worrying about it, throwing so much away and taking the time to write this. What confuses me most is this: how far away are we going to get? You were 25, and I’ve caught up, as I normally do. Except next year I’ll be 26 and you’ll still be 25. That’s all wrong. What about when I’m 30? It’s so much time to miss you. What if I get all the way to 40?! What then?! We were all so young. What happens when we grow again? Will we think, oh, we were so young when we were 25..? What does that mean for you?
You would not be at all happy with me this year. I’ve done all the things you told me not to, and I’m far quicker to get angry about things: boys, money, not being white. I’m either tired and lethargic, or restless and wild. I’m evasive and avoiding us. I mention you a lot – subconsciously, I catch myself after and feel stupid. I’m scared of our stories continuing without you. My Dad’s brother died when he was 27. I didn’t even know my Dad had a brother until I was about 12. I asked my Dad, why don’t you talk about your brother more? He looked at me kind of blankly and said, well, it was a very long time ago.
You and me won’t be like that. I’m so grateful, I’m so happy you were here – and you were here, you were here, YOU WERE HERE. You were here with me, you chose to spend your time with me, you chose to support me, you chose my projects, my gig, my shout, my birthday, this, us. I am so lucky I got that. If you were here you would probably choose all those things again. I have to think that. And sometimes, for a moment, the sun shines and makes everything golden, and the leaves are orange, orange everywhere, and I turn the volume up, and I remember that YOU WERE HERE and you chose this, and it makes me so so happy. And it is just for a moment, but it is a moment more than I had a year ago.
Whilst in Mauritius I spent a lot of time with one of my cousins and his adorable kids (pictured, do you see a likeness?). He’s the eldest cousin and I’m the youngest. Despite the differences in age and circumstance there is a lot the two of us share beside our grandparents; a sympathetic disposition, a tendency to laugh off serious statements, a keen interest in how our families have shaped us.
My eldest cousin spoke touchingly of his dream; to have the four of us cousins, our four collective children and our one remaining parent (mine) all together in a room. To just be together like that. He spoke so wistfully it made my heart ache. I have many friends who see their entire families every Christmas, every wedding, every funeral. I’ve met my cousins only a handful of times through my life, divided as we are by continents and expensive flight routes. I wish I were of more use to them, lame as I am with my poor grasp of language; my alien career choice; my bizarre hometown; my youth and naivety; my sincere unknowing of life.
My eldest cousin noted the similarities between all of us cousins. We are all independent, almost to the point of being loners. We are all sensitive listeners who try and help everyone out, but none of us are any good at asking for or accepting help of our own. We are actually terrible at accepting help: quick to retreat, happy to analyse our problems in solitude. We don’t like letting people in. We are all pretty laid-back about the trials of day to day life, saving ourselves for the bigger dramas. The kind of dramas that brew up over a lifetime because nobody knew what to do. The kind of crisis that can cause the rest of the family to dash across the globe and throw their best of intentions at; well-meaning but rashly executed.
I don’t really know what the role of family is. People to teach you, to support you, people who know you best, people who cared about you unconditionally? These aren’t really things I associate with my family. My local family is just me and my parents; three people with a backlog of misunderstandings and confusing geography. With the rest of my family, I know we are all similar people but we’re just too far away – and there’s not enough to go on, not enough to be getting on with.
The attributes of family are instead are the things I associate with my friends. It’s my friends who lift me up, it’s my friends who enlighten me, it’s my friends who support me. Why is that? Is it the age I am and the society I live in? Is it because I see my family so little? Is it because my family and I share the same flaws and therefore cannot look after each other properly? The same cracks in alternate mirrors, the same blots on our differing landscapes. It’s difficult to say.
September marks the end of beds. The fall of rain. The switch to darkness when I wander home from work, the start of lights on for motorways. The end of laughter down the hall and protein shakes in the kitchen. The sunglasses are out of my bag, instead replaced with an ever-present umbrella. I remember a younger me who came to relish September, the promise of fresh starts, breakfast in coffee shops. New pencilcases, walnuts in salads, poetry readings, looking forward to winter coat weather and frosty hands on playgrounds. I do not relish those things anymore.
This September is different. Journeying halfway across the world to solve a dilemma I do not fully understand. Sifting through my belongings and photographing them in the hope that some stranger may want them in their hands instead. Confronting the cold in my heart, the grit that has not really lodged since last November. The long game of scheduling when I would rather just write songs all day, songs I can not write because nobody wishes to hear. The pain sure to be stirred by the arrival of orange on the trees. Committing my frenzied, troubled thoughts to tape and airing my hard-won work to a discerning and unwilling audience. Worrying about fronting poorly-attended gigs. I’m restless, and there seems to be little left to come. Maybe this is the danger of living constantly in the moment, or just a comedown from summer, or just spiralling thoughts on a rainy Tuesday night whilst the boys move out.
Three weeks ago I finished a post that had been knocking around in draft for about 7 months. I’m a chronic perfectionist. I wrote about my life and my experiences, as I always do, and I didn’t hit publish until I was happy with it. Whilst I’m pretty open, this post was a little more personal than usual, and I thought it might get a few more hits than normal. 40, 45, maybe even 50.
After an hour the post had reached 100 views. It’s a very, very rare day when I hit more than 100. I ran downstairs to show my housemates – look, this is insane, I’ve gone from 12 views yesterday to 100 in an hour. I kept running back downstairs as the stats skyrocketed. 300, 400, 500. It was 1000 by the time we went to the pub; we joked; maybe it’ll go viral. I thought that was it, a weird fluke day, but the views kept climbing over the weekend. 3000 on Saturday, me frantically checking whilst out on a date, 5000 on Sunday morning, me frowning at my dying phone, 8000 that evening, laughing it off with my housemates whilst feeling utterly confused.
By the time I left London on Monday things were crazy. Comments by the hundred, comments that were actually lengthy posts about other peoples lives rather than the two-line comments I normally receive. My inbox overflowing; requests for interviews, names of journalists, people who just wanted to reach out. I went to Edinburgh, away from the internet at the largest arts festival in the world, out of the house for 18 hours a day and living utterly in the moment, partying, working, drinking. Fleeting moments of internet catch-up were overwhelming with my stats up by 5000%. I was on the front page of BuzzFeed, I was Freshly Pressed on WordPress, I was trending on Medium. Most of the madness happened without me really observing: catch-ups with friends would start “so you’re on BuzzFeed?” before moving onto safer territory like work, friends, the festival around us.
A lot of people thought it may have been cathartic or difficult to write my last post. It wasn’t. I wasn’t speaking up. I wasn’t raising my voice. I wasn’t trying to start a discussion. I just said what I was thinking: the same thing I do every day in my posts, in my songs, in my stories. Evidently, this was something that needed to be said. I really didn’t think my experiences would be that widely felt. I received hundreds of comments and retweets from all over the world, and the vast majority can be distilled into four words: “thank you” and “me too”. So many of us, it seemed, feeling the same things and thinking “it’s just me”. It’s not.
There was little backlash: I prepared myself for an onslaught of negativity which really never came. A few people told me I’m hypersensitive, that I need to chill, that I’m obsessed with race, that I’m the problem – attitudes I addressed in my original post. There was one comment saying they wouldn’t have read had my “attractive” pictures not lured them in, another saying I was beautiful despite my decision to write the post, a number of people saying that it’s equally hard being white. I responded to all of them.
Many of you responded to each other. Every comment was published, and every question that was asked, I answered. This is my blog, and these are my words, and I want to be accountable for them. I’m SO grateful to all those who read them, for sharing them, for responding and sharing their own words with me. I feel a lot stronger with 5000 strangers supporting me from afar. If your comments taught me anything it’s that we all need to speak up and call it out, we can’t laugh stuff off and ignore it and just suck it up or it will never end.
I live in London, in the UK. Where people like Katie Hopkins and Jeremy Clarkson are allowed to throw stereotypes and racial hatred around in the name of entertainment and journalism, where “immigrant” is a dirty word, where just 6.6% of our parliament is not white. I didn’t write about topical issues in this country or mounting racial tensions or social crisis in other countries. I wasn’t trying to share the “London perspective” my local MP Jeremy Corbyn is accused of having. I just wrote about myself.
I’d like to write more. I’d like to write more about my experiences, more about growing up in a white society, more about being mixed race; I’d LOVE to write about what it’s like being mixed race. I don’t get paid to write this blog, it’s my personal space, and it takes time just to get through the comments as I want to read them all and take the time to reply appropriately. But there’s more to come, I have more to say. I hope you’ll read my future posts.
If any of you have any ideas where I should write more, or what about, then please get in touch. And in the meantime you can follow me on bloglovin, or twitter, or wordpress, or my blogs Facebook or sign up directly for my e-mails or my personal facebook. It means a lot. And let me know when you have to #callitout with me – just this morning this happened. Thank you.
SOME OF YOUR COMMENTS – if you’d rather not be quoted here please let me know, and I would really refer everybody back to the entirety of the comments on the last blog, as there were so many valid and interesting points raised: here.
“Even if people say we’re being overdramatic by pointing out micro aggressions, we really aren’t and everyone needs to be properly educated on the impacts of these types of discrimination to stop them” – Abby R
“Telling you to ‘not make a fuss’ is people not wanting to admit they’ve made mistake, don’t doubt yourself because other people are too afraid to confront their own shortcomings. Society needs people like you to stand up and make a change.” – richardhp
“The ‘exotic’ thing is seen as a compliment when really it is a vocalisation of ‘difference’. You are different, you are not from here.” – impublications
“Most people don’t intend to be racist, but intent doesn’t have to present.” – GamerDame
“There are an army of us out here, batting away the insult and marching on.” – Nadine
Lately I’ve been feeling grateful for my friends. Friends who know you inside out. Friends who pick up on the quirks and mannerisms you haven’t yet observed. Friends who see your patterns and sequences and lay out the formula for you. Friends who tell you when you’re being too much, and when you’re not being yourself, because they know you in more ways than you know yourself.
Friends who tell you when you should make a move, and when you’re just being you and this will pass in two weeks. Friends who can’t quite tell because they see you every day, and your perspectives start to overlap. Friends who pick up when this is a big thing, and when this is the real thing, and when you need help, and when you’re holding back.
Friends who listen to your one problem and patiently analyse your one situation, although you already did this last week and nothing has changed. Friends who let you stumble grumpily into the sofa where they wordlessly provide you with breakfast before going back upstairs to get ready for work.
Friends who pop up once a year and manage to fill in the last 12 months, sharing your heartaches and high points, even though you’ve only got an hour, and the traffic was bad, and they’re out of Pimms. Friends who won’t remember that stuff by the time we meet again.
Friends who play music for you. Friends you play music with. The kind of playing where you don’t need to stop and communicate why you’re crying, because they’re crying too, because you hit the same point and you’re sharing the same memory and you’re on the edge of the same sadness, and you had to say goodbye together then, and you’ve got to hold each other up now.
Friends who stay on the line until you fall asleep. Friends who call you up half-drunk and even though you were about to go to bed, you go and make a full curry for them, because you love them, and one day you may need a curry of your own. Friends who pass by for a few months, suffusing your life with newness and laughter. Friends who stay, no matter how difficult and antisocial you get. Friends who love you, more than family, because how could family have possibly observed all the tiny things friends see? We grow up with our families, but we live our lives with our friends. Friends who endure.
TAPE PARADE 