The end of an era

There have been new ends to old eras lately. 

Firstly, my mother has finally caved and acquired a cell phone! This woman has resisted the technological bandwagon since people started playing Snake on their Nokias. Her rationale  - "i survived this long without a phone, so why would I need one now?" Though my compass tends to point to her when searching for the voice of reason, this particular logic fails to represent her finest body of work.

First of all mom, they barely even had cars back then, so what are you gonna do these days when you're somewhere off the interstate and your whip breaks down? Pull out your Thomas' Guide to find the nearest highway phone booth, and pop in your quarter? Call your daughter collect? Do you even have my thirteen digit London number memorized? To be fair, she is an engineering genius and would probably just fix the rig herself with a sewing kit. 

Secondly, your logic holds disregard for the impossibility of functioning in a world without two factor authentication. You must accept that Facebook is not going to send your login verification code to the landline (which by the way, isn't even cordless!). How will you post all those macro photos of the backyard plants or last night's fennel salad without it?

Thirdly, even in absence of these fatalistic practicalities, what about the deficit of wellness applications in your life? I survived the terror of many hospital night shifts thanks to the campfire soundscapes of my myriad wellness apps. They really help quiet the noise of a mind on tenterhooks. You know Meghan even has one that allows you to titrate your own combination of healing sounds to the perfect soothing effect- 20% interstellar rocket jet, 40% oscillating body fan, 20% amazon basin rainstorm, 10% grecian summer cicada, 5% los angeles city ambulance, 5% brown (not white!) noise. 

Anyway, all these points are now moot because you've finally signed a deal with the devil like the rest of us mortals. Since acquiring her new device, Mum has impressively taken technological leaps, mostly in her mastery of emoticon, although she still requests I ring her on skype via her Dell desktop, lest she "get too much radiation" cradling the cellular too close to her temporal lobe. (I promise she got her covid vaccines and does not wear tin foil on her head except when coloring her own hair.) 

Another era ended at Shepton Mallet this June when I attended Glastonbury festival. That was the end of the era of never having been to a festival before. Some would argue I've still never "properly" been to a festival because I remain street drug naive. Maybe one day I will pop my drug cherry. Lately I've been curious about tripping on acid because of the way people describe the connectedness they get to experience. I am desperate for this. Earlier this spring whilst out riding my bicycle and dressed in a caramel colored teddy hoodie, I spotted a cockapoo taking a shit. It was actually so windy that day I got a downstream wiff of his poo. What followed that afternoon was my own pilgrimage with violent gastroenteritis. Coincidence or connectedness? I thought we looked alike in our matching curly coats and glassy plush toy eyes, but the poo connection was really something extra by way of unification with the animal kingdom. Is this what LSD is like?

But back to Glastonbury for a second. You know, I had been warned again and again about festival toilets, particularly day 4 festival toilets. This is not a place that makes you feel clean, and it is definitely not a place you want to be negotiating with your period. I started my period on day two. I experienced another episode of connectedness to that Lauren Mayberry of CHVRCHS whilst she was on stage, splattered in red paint à la rock n' roll and I was hovering over the latrine with my dangling tampax. what a vibe! the toilets weren't even that bad. Highly recommend. 

Lauren Mayberry, Twitter

Another era which appears to have come to an end is my active dating life. What I mean is... I have a boyfriend(!). And no I did not get back together with my "ex" (is it really an ex if it was only a few months and now your demented brain can barely recall their last name?) although I did bump into that particular fellow on a flight to Seville back in May. To be honest, the run in wasn't much of a shock because I was the one who had booked those flights to go together way back when we were still pretending to like each other. He went off to his friends Spanish birthday party and I decided to go to Spain anyway with Janie and make it about a girls trip. I had checked us both in and specifically arranged for our seats to be on opposite sides of the plane. But British Airways had other plans for us and some sinister agent from the underworld pushed our seats back together between check in and boarding. How is this even possible? What is the name for the opposite of divine intervention? Anyway, we were polite and made small talk until he fell asleep. I subsequently wrote BA a scathing email and received a 100 pound voucher for the inconvenience. Now my focus is on trying to understand the five year identity shift from bachelorette to girlfriend, which at my age feels as serious a designation as marriage. Let's see. 

And finally, the most recent era to have taken to close is that of my twenty year hustle toward professional medical licensure. A couple weeks ago I sat my final specialty board exams, which if passed, will mark the final exam of my life, providing I don't decide medicine was all a big mistake and it's time to start the process of re-identification as a lawyer. Results out later this month. Mom, I'll call you on skype once I know. 

Freefall

There's nothing like being in freefall in an elevator to provoke a post episodic meaningful reflection of your life. This happened to me yesterday as I came home from a conference in London. Enter bicycle and me into lift. First we went up. Then we went down, fast. Then we got caught presumably by some safety mechanism that left us dangling, stuck between two floors and wondering what it would be like to eventually expire in there. With an adrenaline fueled heroic strength I managed to force the inner door open enough to achieve a single bar of 3G that would alert my building whatsapp group to call for help. The sound of sirens that so comforts me in urban life were finally for ME! The fire brigade came, pried open the doors, greeted me with big hands and smiles, then pulled me and my bike from the slot between floors. It was terrifying, but not terrifying enough to prevent me from realizing my fantasy of being rescued by firemen was at last being actualized and that I needed to document it. 

I got into my flat and texted a friend who served up enough molecules of compassion to make me burst into tears. There's something about kindness that really brings a person's intense fragility to the surface when they are stressed and scared. I wanted to be held by my mother. Or your mother. Any mother. As a matter of great happenstance, I was due to start my first group therapy session an hour later, which I had subscribed to six weeks prior after one too many near miss mental breakdowns and nasal herpes outbreaks this year (that I'm concerned are steadily migrating upward toward my brain).  In therapy we talked about one woman's anxiety accidentally leaving the hair straightener on and burning down the entire block of apartments, which made me feel better about imagining the shame I'd have incurred had I needed to poo before the fire brigade would set me free. 

So anyway last autumn after seeing the same usual suspects from six years ago popping up on my dating app, I decided it was time to try a little harder to cultivate love in my life by sticking to one person and forcing it to fit. I met a boy my age who was smart and even though I think we both knew it was doomed from the start, we were desperate and lonely enough to stick with it. Little signs from the universe - like when we both separately crashed into high, homeless people on our bicycles -  made me feel like maybe it was meant to be. He was nice too in his own way, like when I deliriously stepped into fox poo after finishing a 70 hour week of hospital nightshifts, dragging it all around his flat before realizing what I'd done, he didn't shame me but rather hosed off my Vans and delicately dug the poop out from the grooves with a tiny stick, and instructed me to lie down on the sofa whilst he bleached the floors. But I am a bit histrionic with quite high standards when it comes to relationship expectations, and he is born of the English state of mind, aligned to mottos like 'keep calm and carry on' and 'never complain never explain'. I have literally made a career out of dissecting emotions and mind things down to their nucleus. I prefer to freak out and then complain and explain EVERYTHING. I also like to give gifts, write letters, ask questions, hold hands. He instead offered to get the zipper on my puffer vest fixed when I protested after he didn't do anything for me for valentines day. Indeed, my vest now has a zipper but it also does that annoying thing where the teeth split from the bottom after it's zipped up. 

There is nothing like a new broken zip on your Uniqlo puffer to make a girl feel like a queen, and so we carried on, me trying to be mature about my apparently unreasonable standards and him trying to be a little more romantic. We decided to go on a ski trip to Chamonix which was disastrous before it even started when he was told by the surgeon he couldn't ski due to the bone edema leftover from his earlier bicycle run-in with the crack addict. But we decided to go and inhale some mountain and hammam air anyway. 

On day one we broke up. Promptly on arrival actually. I then drank half the bottle of champagne I had arranged to be put in the room in advance. Thank God for my advance planning. After downing two glasses I decided I'd had enough of that day and put myself to bed, but not before spraying the lavender pillow mist directly into my left eyeball after the nozzle had been turned sideways in transit. Hours later as I attempted to find the toilet in the dark, I walked straight into the wall and broke my nose. But like true civilized adults we managed to make the best out of a week that could have otherwise been from hell, until the very end when I got persuaded to do jägerbombs by a group of middle aged men on a bachelor party. I consequently came home and packed my suitcase whilst intoxicated, accidentally pouring the ice water leftover from the champagne bucket straight into my luggage. It had been outside on the deck (along with the nauseating scented loo roll we mistakenly bought) and was frozen solid the day before, so when I picked it up thinking it was still a block of ice, I was surprised by its aqueous state which showered out and filled my suitcase up with fluid before I could react . I travelled home with a hangover and a bag of wet clothes. 

I returned to London and have dove back into work and my relationships with females, if only for the provision of my extraordinarily unfortunate dating life anecdotes to friends. One of them has suggested I submit myself to a netflix show that capitalizes on the tragic lovestories of overly tanned airheads who are also incapable of relationships, and I actually considered wether this could be the answer for me. I think I'll wait for my latest nasal herpes to heal before getting back out there into that world rife with potential for freefall.