If I can’t be honest in my writing what’s the point?

I’m afraid there will be typos, an apology, brutal honesty, and cultural recommendations

I haven’t written in some time please forgive me. I’m writing this on the Northern line train to therapy in a rush and listening to Kokoroko, the London-based musical collective’s new EP called Get The Message, whilst clutching my very over priced soy latte that is about to leak - every- where.

I want to say it’s because I’ve been lazy, but that’s not the reason at all. Writing has always been where I can be most honest since I was 18 years old, and I haven’t been able to write “honestly” due to an ongoing situation that I can’t talk about until it is over.

If I can’t be honest in my writing what’s the point? I thought.

It’s been hard for me to write my raw emotions when I feel like I am being watched and subject to being potentially scrutinized for my inner complex thoughts and feelings as a person and as a “public” person (whatever that means) who is ‘‘online’’ who often treats social media like a visual diary and uses it to daydream.

The truth is, I’ve been grieving, but not in the traditional sense. I am going through quite the emotional transition but I am certain at the end of this discomfort: the endless calls with my therapist, the big cloud that swoops over my head every morning before I take a large gulp of my black coffee made by my husband, the hyper fixation on the reality of what has happened to me and is happening. That “this too shall pass”.

My joy has always been my armor against the world. So if you follow me on Instagram don’t be alarmed I am STILL that person, but underneath that, a lot is going on but I want to channel the truth.

I think about what Keke Palmer recently said in her latest interview for the Los Angeles Times about performance and social media and how she says:

‘‘I want to put my best foot forward every time for the people that are watching me on my platform. I’m an artist painting the best possible picture that I can because I care about what you’re looking at.” In other words, if the cracks show, it’s to serve a greater purpose. And the singer, Palmer says, is always in control of when or if they show. That’s what Palmer aspires to, writes Amy Kaufman.

The “grief” has got in the way of my writing this year. I was scared to write I didn’t want to lie about feeling “joyful” when I’m struggling with re-imagining what Joy looked like to me now. I didn’t want to write when my joy is my tool of resistance against everything and everyone. I didn’t want to share it because it was all I had to keep me surviving and thriving.

However, I was drawn back to what Audre Lorde wrote about grief in her book ‘‘The Cancer Journals ‘‘written between 1977 and 1979, which chronicled her journey with breast cancer and includes passages from her diary.

Raven Leilani wrote about what Audre Lorde was saying to us in her piece on grief called ‘‘Death of the Party’’ for N+ 1:

‘‘There is some merit in accepting that for some indeterminate time, you may be fucked up, and that is as fine a time as any to do the work. Lorde writes about the importance of not waiting until she wasn’t afraid anymore to write about her experience, in part because she felt it was likely she might die first. This is not to romanticize the idea of suffering well or the material forged from that suffering. Enduring a traumatic experience is plenty. It does not have to be productive. It’s OK to be inert, useless, or agnostic about the value we ascribe to perseverance. Being unable to persevere, or being stuck, can be a directive from your body to slow down or stop. Lorde’s account of not waiting to do the work is not about a denial of that condition, but an acknowledgment that it could go on indefinitely. It embraces a philosophy of anti-closure and imbues that endlessness with urgency. It complicates the framing of grief and death by liberating it from the past tense.’’

And so, I am back. I am going to write as honestly as I can about my transition or perhaps the discomfort about going through things and how every week is different and the feelings of “blah” and living in what I would describe as a “traumatized state” and still having to put your best foot forward because that is quite literally your job.

*checks notes * What is rest under capitalism anyway?

Hyperfixation gets in the way of your living, I’ve been hyper-fixating so much that I have lost track of time and realized the importance of time and how little time we have of it.

I am on a journey to re-imagine what joy looks like from where I am standing, but starting with discomfort and perhaps the reality is that you can’t have one without the other.

Perhaps Like Evie Muir so perfectly put it in their book Radical rest that:

‘‘To live is the work’’ Once we choose life, the question of how we live, how our living can be affirmed, can follow.

Now, how’s that for a handful?

Jackie

♡ and to keep your life interesting…♡

Here are some culture recommendations

To read: I want to ignore beauty culture. But I’ll never get anywhere if I don’t look a certain way - ‘‘Ask Ugly’’ column Jessica Defino for The Guardian.

To Listen: 'The Interview': Demi Moore Is Done With the Male Gaze - The New York Times Podcast. My favorite line from her was: ‘‘Would you trade your wisdom for a tight ass?’’

To watch: Anora a young sex worker from Brooklyn, gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch.Hands down my film of 2024, I even enjoyed it more than The Substance (and I LOVED The Substance) I watched it at Ciné Lumière - Institut Français a French arthouse cinema in Kensington which was gorge!

I can’t stop thinking about: BBC Documentary produced by Louis Thereoux’s production company called Boybands Forever for BBC Two, it is like eating a box of chocolates, it’s nostalgic, and fun and makes me miss the nineties even though I was a little one!