I’m not quite myself right now you see

I woke up this morning late and hazy. Mondays usually feel relatively bright, although when I wake up alone in my studio, I find it hard to be disciplined. A different kind of “unwatched” sleepiness drifts over me and holds me there for a while longer than it should.

There is a scene in Alice in Wonderland where the Caterpillar asks Alice a fairly ordinary question: “Who are you?” Alice, who has already grown and shrunk several times that day, finds it unexpectedly difficult to answer. “I hardly know, sir, just at present,” she says. “At least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

I have always loved that line. This morning, lying in bed and trying to work out what exactly was wrong with me, it felt particularly useful.

Recently, I have barely slept alone. I have been sharing beds with my girlfriends, or my sister or, at one point in Nice, a group of colleagues who forgot to book their final night of accommodation and squeezed four of us into a bed made for two.

When I am around other people, I feel calm. I like waking up and making a noise at each other before bopping downstairs to put the kettle on. Maybe I’ll read a little, or we’ll discuss the adventures of the night before.

Moments of solitude have been rare this summer. It has been a constant high of work, travel, friends and concern only for the immediate future.

—

I know that I am lucky. For the first time, it has felt as though opportunity has fallen softly into my lap, time and time again. I’m sure it looks that way to other people. Every week has brought a new country, new faces and new things to explore. I have made so many friends. I have worked hard and done well.

It is the life I used to describe when people asked what success would mean to me.

Freedom and independence. The balance between fun and calm. Work that feels meaningful while leaving space for frivolity.

Everything is supposed to be excellent.

And it has been excellent. Alice’s difficulty was not that anything terrible had happened to her. She had simply changed several times before she had been given the chance to understand any of it.

I think there are less dramatic ways of growing and shrinking. Sometimes you just keep boarding planes.

—

My apartment in Amsterdam is a studio of approximately twenty square metres. I’m not entirely sure what twenty square metres is supposed to look like, but I assume it looks something like this.

It is not big. In fact, it is _small.

It is my kitchen, bedroom, library, dining room, dressing room, closet and bathroom. It has one large window that I like to sit beside and clothes spilling from the drawers.

On the walls are paintings of Mersea Island, where both sides of my family met and have sailed for decades. They were painted by my grandfather, whom I called BarBar.

There is an old wooden squash racquet, a green glass bottle I found in the mud, and a glass lamp that makes the corner of the kitchen glow pink. There is a Nude Project cowboy hat, stacks and stacks of letters, stamps and books, and my unicorn Monty, who sits on the bed. There is my grandmother’s jewellery box and mirror, and boxes of discarded hobbies including sewing, clay and paints.

In the fridge is a face mask and five beers. I don’t tend to drink beer and am unsure how they got there. It is otherwise empty.

On the floor is a rug given to me by an artist who was clearing out her atelier one day. It arrived full of dust and paint and, at the time, I lacked a hoover. This caused some dust-related problems. When I came across a discarded hoover on the street only a few days later, I began to reconsider my religious beliefs slightly.

There is also an open suitcase, my travel bag and an expensive camera that I have never properly learnt to use.

Unlike Alice, I do not have a Caterpillar sitting on a mushroom demanding an explanation. But if I did, I think I would point around the room and ask whether the contents counted as an answer.

—

I felt quite frustrated last night.

This is not an emotion I feel often. When it does arrive, everything floods out very quickly, like a hundred meter sprint. Afterwards, it leaves me feeling tired and a little hopeless.

I don’t think I would like to say too much about why. The reason isn’t really the point.

But it left me feeling odd this morning, as though I should find some grass and lie in it for a while, throw my iPad into a river and start rearing goats, or move to the Caribbean to live out my childhood dream of becoming a marine biologist. I can picture myself quite happily stomping down a beach in flippers and waving at octopuses all day. I enjoy snorkelling and have my open-water diving licence, so perhaps this would be a viable option.

Something else has been bothering me too.

I met with someone this summer whom I genuinely adore and think is wonderful. But I gave them a guarded, edited version of myself. It was the version of me who can catch a flight, make a plan, tell a good story and be funny if needed at a dull lunch. She is completely real, but isn’t all of me. And it’s not like I’m looking to give all of myself away to everyone - that would be far too dangerous. But that id have liked to this time and i just couldn’t.

Alice’s problem is not that she has become somebody else entirely. She is still Alice. She simply cannot explain which Alice she is, because she has changed too quickly to become properly acquainted with the latest version.

—

—

Upon reflection, i think that everything has happened so quickly that I had left parts of myself behind along the way. I’m not quite sure how to slooo000ooow down and be normal for long enough to let all of those pieces catch up.

It is funny how much time thoughts can take up. I ended up leaving the house much later than intended.

It was a nice day outside and I ate two boiled eggs. My bicycle seat is broken, but not so broken that it has become uncomfortable yet. The streets were busy with people clearing away the remnants of Pride weekend, and everything seemed quite okay.

I had to pause my writing just now because I feel an unfamiliar bubbling of anxiety. This is interesting and it tells me that we are getting somewhere. Apparently when we feel things we are supposed to stop and just feel them. Note it down, then take a breath and move on.

If i think about it, it has been almost two months since I actively felt a negative emotion. My therapist Paula says that this is nothing to worry about so long as you dont feel depressed, and i dont think i do at all - quite the opposite. I have been genuinely happy, but things that i have simply been moving too quickly for any emotion other than joy to catch me.

Joy travels well at ninety kilometres an hour. So does excitement. But sadness, anger and uncertainty seem to require you to sit still for long enough to let them find you.

Alice changes size whenever she eats or drinks the wrong thing.

My own transformations have involved fewer mysterious cakes and rather more airports, but the effect has occasionally felt similar.

—

It is nice to think of the objects in my room.

I can remember where they came from and who I was when I collected them, hung them on the wall or chose a place for them on the shelf. The room contains versions of me I had almost forgotten: the girl who dragged a bottle out of the Mersea mud, the one who bought clay and paints attempting to make a soap dish, the one who intended to learn how to use a camera, the one who wanted to become a marine biologist and study octopuses.

They have all been sitting here patiently while I have been elsewhere, and then i realised -

Other people have been holding bits of me. My routine. My conversations. My evenings. My opinions. Someone is always asking where we’re going next, what we fancy for dinner or whether I slept well. There is always another city, another train, another story to tell.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped asking myself those questions, which is why i think that i felt so strange this morning.

I had nowhere to put those feelings except back inside my own head.

So this week i will wake up early, make coffee and read beside the window. I’ll run. I’ll wander through Amsterdam without deciding where I am going first. I’ll learn how to use my camera, restring my guitar and finish some of the songs I started writing last month. I’ll buy groceries so the fridge contains something other than a face mask and beer. I’ll organise games night with my neighbours, eat late-night cheese with my best friends, restock the candles and fix my bicycle.

I’ll probably even write some more!

—

It’s interesting how we often believe that it is important to leave somewhere to find ourselves. I think that language gives the impression that the self is a single, polished object waiting to be discovered somewhere else away from home. For me right now i think it will be about moving slowly enough for the parts of me left behind in airports, train stations and borrowed beds to catch up.

Perhaps that is the answer Alice could not give the Caterpillar. “Who are you?” is difficult to answer when several versions of you are still making their way home.

I used to think solitude was something you endured until somebody came along to interrupt it. Now I think it might be where all the versions of you scattered across cities and conversations finally come home.

So I am not quite myself right now, you see. Not because I have lost her. She is simply running a little late.

Love,

Kate xx