HOW TO LET GO AND FALL
For The Guardian.
Several years ago, when I was quivering at the top of a rock-climbing wall, the instructor called up to me: “You just have to let go and the auto-belay will catch you. Just let yourself fall.” I peered down at the empty space below. Absolutely not, I thought.
I climbed all the way back down, grazing the tips of my fingers on the rough hand holds. The instructor shook his head and grinned. I stomped off, embarrassed. I was never good at falling. What I was good at was holding on. Keeping it together, at any cost. The ease of the fall terrified me. Absolutely not.
In early 2020, I assembled the pitch for a book: a collection of essays, about body image, art, sex, anxiety, death. It’s about the relationship between the body and the world, I wrote. The way capitalism tries to control our physical selves. You’d think that something might have twigged. It’s also funny, I noted. It’s important that it’s also funny.
One of the lies that writers tell themselves is this: that because they make sense of the world through their writing, they are also good at making sense of themselves. The closer something is, though, the greater the blind spot. Some things are so obvious, they’re invisible.
We had just moved to Geelong, away from our friends and family. The rent was cheap. We were ready to build a new life. Something quivered in the air, though. People I knew, the really online ones, whispered about this thing that was coming for us. In March, my mum died, suddenly and shockingly. And then the pandemic hit.
There are some lessons you have to learn over and over again, like a bird flying full pelt at a window, baffled by the suddenly solid air. The world tried its best to teach me. I was a terrible student. I didn’t learn when I was holding on to the kitchen floor with my fingernails, flooded with grief, trying to breathe. Nor when the syrup-voiced narrator of the guided meditation I was listening to told me to “surrender, dear one” and I told her to go shove it. In between the choking waves of anxiety, I spoke to friends over the phone. “Oh yes,” I said, “I’m writing a book about bodies and control.” I couldn’t even hear myself speaking.
Full piece online at The Guardian.