SUNDAY JULY 9TH - SUNDAY JULY 15TH
This was never going to be smooth sailing, I was fully aware of it were to be a bumpy ride. Malaria attacks your immune system and makes you weak. This weekend I was good to my mind but bad to my body. I swam for hours, reformed back into a lush and sloshed back several to a many beers. I didn’t co-operate with my illness and lie in bed all day. Sunday night I payed for it, I was weak, my body ached, my mind drifted off back to the lava lamp room we shared last summer and my heart too felt pained. The flood gates opened and I didn’t have the strength nor the will power to over ride it. I ended up locking myself in the bathroom, a frantic pounding at the door briefly encouraged this to stop. It was my host mother and my room mate Pamela. Terrified I was going to do something stupid - which instantaneously stopped any further tears. Thing is, dragging a blade through fresh skin never crossed my mind, nor has it for a substantial amount of time, I long to live no longer to hurt. I realised how far I have come, here I was alone, Malaria ridden in Ghana and I was doing it, ALONE. Everything I had longed for, for so long. Rejection is cruel, its’ callous. I promised to never cry a tear over anyone again, be it of any gender.
I got up early Monday morning, I meditated with the sun slowly rising and the surrounding wildlife softly bleating and chirping away. I chain smoked my Rothmans’ and lay very, very still, playing Elliot Smith in my ears. I was happy.
I decided to take the day off work to catch up with all the Excel and Word heirachy hell.
Momma J sauntered into the yard and addressed me ‘Sister J, today is the start of you being strong and happy’. ‘Yes’ I replied, because it truly was. I completed my work in a matter of minutes, completing Dennis Coopers’ ‘Period’ after a failed attempt at Slavoj Zizeks’ ‘Event’ and began my embark of a lazy afternoon worshiping the Sun and encouraging skin cancer with full force. I had the home largely to myself for the majority of the day, it was utter bliss, I was in awe at how content I was in my own company. I no longer require others to proved my justification of happiness.
Tuesday I felt well enough to go back to work, it takes us roughly three hours to get there. It was a massive lie when they informed us our work placement would be situated by our host home. I’m sick to the teeth of both lies and liars. I long for a simple life, I do not wish to adhere to anyones bullshit forever more. I’d rather liv a lonely desolate life (in Bali or Mexico) than one filled with playground dramatics. By the time we arrive at work I am accompanied by a thick layer of pollution that has embedded itself into my pores. Also two marriage proposals, I am happy left be with neither. I’m happy to be at work, it’s a shoe production factory and leather merchant. I’m familiar with most of my surroundings as it mirrors m own studio back in England. Just as I get stuck into my work I am called by the staff at the charity. They are chasing up ‘the incident’ of which the staff had severely mistreated me last week. This bothers me. I’ve left that issue in the past, it’s a new week, a new day. Yes they’ve lost my trust and all my respect but unfortunately when someone who you insist on treating like a child and won’t allow anywhere unaccompanied, is complaining they feel incredibly unwell to the point they require hospital. You probably shouldn’t insist on them sitting through mundane presentations on empathy until the end of the day. I am deteriorating by the minute whilst they are becoming more hypocritical by the second. I was let down and angry at the time but now I’ve let go, please kindly fuck off and stop insisting on dragging it out. This also highlights a significant change in myself and my behaviors. I used to dwell, be impeccably vicious and breed hate. I never want to return to that person or that place again.
We pick up on the way home, though I opt out. My mood was was so low on Sunday, I’m going to trial this week sober to avoid any unnecessary depression.
It’s Wednesday, where we will here the same topic over and over, till my eyes and ears are begging to bleed. It’s days like this I envy my kid brothers deafness. My friend pulls out a bottle of vodka. We drink through class. It truly does numb the pain. That evening after contemplating suicide over spreadsheets I speak to a friend back home, we are starting a magazine once I am home so we get prepping. This numbs the pain further, I am beginning to get excited at my enthusiasm for productivity again.
We embark on our endless journey to work again, the sheer stench of gasoline penetrates my lungs, I feel like they are bleeding tar. It hurts worse than toking at a Marlborough Red. We pass a man siting on a dirt track, he’s basking in his own filth, his beige aesthetic encourages him to camouflage into his dusty surroundings. I want to film him but we are gone too quickly. A little further down the track we come across a group of blind beggars. Their eyes a haunting and soulless. I want to film them too but they scare the absolute fuck out of me. I run through Major Lazers‘ ‘Guns don’t kill people lazers do’. Last time I listened to this in it’s entirety was a Sunday spent in bed accompanied by a liter of rum and a half dressed soul with intervals of sweaty nakedness. That was a good fucking day. My boyfriend at the time was a total lush too, maybe I just have a thing for broken alcoholics. Seems to be my track record so far. Especially those who are scared of commitment, I make them fall in love with me and the moment they do, it totally fucks me up. Note to self: no more drug dependent alcoholics in the future. Please Jodie I beg of you to take this under strict instruction.
I regress to my inner child whilst Sam & I are filling out our work book. The manager keeps repeating ‘boner‘ and I am on the floor. Howling. Trying my best not to piss my pants but he keeps on ‘elastic boner‘ ‘measure the boner’. I’m choking on my own chuckles. He is referring to the board to make shoes but they call it a boner out here. I look like a total ignorant Brit but I cannot stop the hysterical tears. I have to pick at my split ends to allow myself to swallow up any further giggles. I am presenting myself in full rudeness at it’s finest. I get hassled from the staff who want to take me out, I tell them I have a boyfriend back home to get them off my back and I’m totally in love. Which the latter part is true, unfortunately little to their knowledge he no longer wants me as his girlfriend and it ended some months back. They ask why I don’t want a black man and they don’t care. They want me by their side forever. They will wait for me after work and take me out. I hope my day ends early. I find this particularly vulgar. Though I realise I am in the production room amongst them next week as I want to learn to make shoes start to finish as I have only dabbled in slight production in shoe making in the past. So that will be entertaining to say the least.
When we get back I look up at the night sky. I haven’t observed the stars since lying drenched in puke back in Singapore. Has it really been so long since I lost touch with who I really am and the core morals of my true enjoyment? I guess I had. That was almost five years ago... I get a text from an ex lover saying the moles on my chest reminded him of Orion’s Belt. He always had a way of knowing where my head was at, at that very second.
Friday I’m having to go back to hospital. I’m lethargic with lack of sleep. So far I get around three to four hours a night at best, broken, I’ve been paralyzed with panic since getting sick.
They are testing me, along with the usuals, for pregnancy. I hope this is protocol because the very thought of getting in touch with my ex who’s most probably busy fucking some sorry else makes me want to jab scissors into my temples. I’ve been in the hospital for four hours so far, I’ve pissed in a pot, narrowly missing my hands, I’ve given blood, I’ve lost my mind. Okay, I’m not pregnant. Crisis averted. I’ve convinced the doctor to fill out a prescription for Valium. I need to sleep, otherwise I will never get better. My Malaria is still attacking my body with a vengeance, I don’t know how much more of this I can take, I am so weak. I’ve had the shakes all weak. My insomnia is turning me into an anxious mess. even worry about the shoes I’ll be making and what colour way I will pick. What do you mean there’s only enough of the skin for one shoe? Not a pair? I worry if ‘Mr O‘ will be able to find more hides over the course of the weekend in order to start production on Monday. It’s not the days that get me here, it’s the nights. The endless nights. Locked away, in a room, with one other, unable to leave after a certain time. The days, really are fine. I’m not sleeping therefor I am anxious. Meditating isn’t helping, smoking isn’t helping, I can’t even read as I have no concentration. Even this very post probably makes a total lack of sense and I couldn’t even deliver it to the schedule I had hoped. I’m just anxious about real mundane shit. So yeah give me all the Valium I can get my greedy god forsaken mitts on doctor. I tell my room mate of my pharmasuitical triumph and instruct her not to wake me in the morning. It’s a Saturday and I will want to sleep until at least mid day. I need it. I am on a even stronger dose of anti malarial. So I end up begging her not to wake me, my host family have been instructed to leave me rest too.
Saturday morning 7.am.
My room mate is coming in and out of the room speaking excruciatingly loudly on the phone. I ended up taking probably far too many Valium the night before but after trying to fall asleep from eight p.m to no avail I had popped one every hour and a half. I finally crashed at one thirty a.m. So I was still pretty dosed up to my blood red eyeballs. I couldn’t be fucked with the conflict so I made it apparent she woke me up. But it continued. Then at seven fifteen a.m theres a rapping at the door of small childrens fists. I grabbed my smokes, cursed to the high hells, slammed every door I entered and exited and chain smoked and further cursed. This was the sixth night without proper sleep. I was so sleep deprived that I had no idea what sleep itself consisted of anymore. I am no longer the angry bitter person I was a few months back, I let go of her, all the hate wore me out but today I could feel her surfacing again. I despise children, I was beyond grateful my pregnancy test came back negative the day before. I would have got a coat wire and preformed my very own backstreet abortion if it had come back positive. God, I am pleasant today. I’ll just get strung out on Valium and forget the world. I decide to lay out in the yard and indulge myself with further doses of skin cancer and sunstroke. I’ve done nothing all day but move place in the yard to where a cloud allows for a sun spot. It’s not even that sunny. I’m starving hungry but too weak to walk to the shop where even there my only options are limited to carbs, coke melted Kit Kate or shortbread. I can’t even fathom reading, turning the page seems so much effort. So for now it’s slumping over in the shade, smokes and Kendrick. Today is the first day I truly want to leave. I don’t want to come home but I desperately want to leave my imprisoned situation. I want Broccoli, I want hot sauce, I want Garlic. I want peace and quiet. I don’t want to be sick any longer and really truly. I would just like to fucking sleep.
This was never going to be smooth sailing, I was fully aware of it were to be a bumpy ride. Malaria attacks your immune system and makes you weak. This weekend I was good to my mind but bad to my body. I swam for hours, reformed back into a lush and sloshed back several to a many beers. I didn’t co-operate with my illness and lie in bed all day. Sunday night I payed for it, I was weak, my body ached, my mind drifted off back to the lava lamp room we shared last summer and my heart too felt pained. The flood gates opened and I didn’t have the strength nor the will power to over ride it. I ended up locking myself in the bathroom, a frantic pounding at the door briefly encouraged this to stop. It was my host mother and my room mate Pamela. Terrified I was going to do something stupid - which instantaneously stopped any further tears. Thing is, dragging a blade through fresh skin never crossed my mind, nor has it for a substantial amount of time, I long to live no longer to hurt. I realised how far I have come, here I was alone, Malaria ridden in Ghana and I was doing it, ALONE. Everything I had longed for, for so long. Rejection is cruel, its’ callous. I promised to never cry a tear over anyone again, be it of any gender.
I got up early Monday morning, I meditated with the sun slowly rising and the surrounding wildlife softly bleating and chirping away. I chain smoked my Rothmans’ and lay very, very still, playing Elliot Smith in my ears. I was happy.
I decided to take the day off work to catch up with all the Excel and Word heirachy hell.
Momma J sauntered into the yard and addressed me ‘Sister J, today is the start of you being strong and happy’. ‘Yes’ I replied, because it truly was. I completed my work in a matter of minutes, completing Dennis Coopers’ ‘Period’ after a failed attempt at Slavoj Zizeks’ ‘Event’ and began my embark of a lazy afternoon worshiping the Sun and encouraging skin cancer with full force. I had the home largely to myself for the majority of the day, it was utter bliss, I was in awe at how content I was in my own company. I no longer require others to proved my justification of happiness.
Tuesday I felt well enough to go back to work, it takes us roughly three hours to get there. It was a massive lie when they informed us our work placement would be situated by our host home. I’m sick to the teeth of both lies and liars. I long for a simple life, I do not wish to adhere to anyones bullshit forever more. I’d rather liv a lonely desolate life (in Bali or Mexico) than one filled with playground dramatics. By the time we arrive at work I am accompanied by a thick layer of pollution that has embedded itself into my pores. Also two marriage proposals, I am happy left be with neither. I’m happy to be at work, it’s a shoe production factory and leather merchant. I’m familiar with most of my surroundings as it mirrors m own studio back in England. Just as I get stuck into my work I am called by the staff at the charity. They are chasing up ‘the incident’ of which the staff had severely mistreated me last week. This bothers me. I’ve left that issue in the past, it’s a new week, a new day. Yes they’ve lost my trust and all my respect but unfortunately when someone who you insist on treating like a child and won’t allow anywhere unaccompanied, is complaining they feel incredibly unwell to the point they require hospital. You probably shouldn’t insist on them sitting through mundane presentations on empathy until the end of the day. I am deteriorating by the minute whilst they are becoming more hypocritical by the second. I was let down and angry at the time but now I’ve let go, please kindly fuck off and stop insisting on dragging it out. This also highlights a significant change in myself and my behaviors. I used to dwell, be impeccably vicious and breed hate. I never want to return to that person or that place again.
We pick up on the way home, though I opt out. My mood was was so low on Sunday, I’m going to trial this week sober to avoid any unnecessary depression.
It’s Wednesday, where we will here the same topic over and over, till my eyes and ears are begging to bleed. It’s days like this I envy my kid brothers deafness. My friend pulls out a bottle of vodka. We drink through class. It truly does numb the pain. That evening after contemplating suicide over spreadsheets I speak to a friend back home, we are starting a magazine once I am home so we get prepping. This numbs the pain further, I am beginning to get excited at my enthusiasm for productivity again.
We embark on our endless journey to work again, the sheer stench of gasoline penetrates my lungs, I feel like they are bleeding tar. It hurts worse than toking at a Marlborough Red. We pass a man siting on a dirt track, he’s basking in his own filth, his beige aesthetic encourages him to camouflage into his dusty surroundings. I want to film him but we are gone too quickly. A little further down the track we come across a group of blind beggars. Their eyes a haunting and soulless. I want to film them too but they scare the absolute fuck out of me. I run through Major Lazers‘ ‘Guns don’t kill people lazers do’. Last time I listened to this in it’s entirety was a Sunday spent in bed accompanied by a liter of rum and a half dressed soul with intervals of sweaty nakedness. That was a good fucking day. My boyfriend at the time was a total lush too, maybe I just have a thing for broken alcoholics. Seems to be my track record so far. Especially those who are scared of commitment, I make them fall in love with me and the moment they do, it totally fucks me up. Note to self: no more drug dependent alcoholics in the future. Please Jodie I beg of you to take this under strict instruction.
I regress to my inner child whilst Sam & I are filling out our work book. The manager keeps repeating ‘boner‘ and I am on the floor. Howling. Trying my best not to piss my pants but he keeps on ‘elastic boner‘ ‘measure the boner’. I’m choking on my own chuckles. He is referring to the board to make shoes but they call it a boner out here. I look like a total ignorant Brit but I cannot stop the hysterical tears. I have to pick at my split ends to allow myself to swallow up any further giggles. I am presenting myself in full rudeness at it’s finest. I get hassled from the staff who want to take me out, I tell them I have a boyfriend back home to get them off my back and I’m totally in love. Which the latter part is true, unfortunately little to their knowledge he no longer wants me as his girlfriend and it ended some months back. They ask why I don’t want a black man and they don’t care. They want me by their side forever. They will wait for me after work and take me out. I hope my day ends early. I find this particularly vulgar. Though I realise I am in the production room amongst them next week as I want to learn to make shoes start to finish as I have only dabbled in slight production in shoe making in the past. So that will be entertaining to say the least.
When we get back I look up at the night sky. I haven’t observed the stars since lying drenched in puke back in Singapore. Has it really been so long since I lost touch with who I really am and the core morals of my true enjoyment? I guess I had. That was almost five years ago... I get a text from an ex lover saying the moles on my chest reminded him of Orion’s Belt. He always had a way of knowing where my head was at, at that very second.
Friday I’m having to go back to hospital. I’m lethargic with lack of sleep. So far I get around three to four hours a night at best, broken, I’ve been paralyzed with panic since getting sick.
They are testing me, along with the usuals, for pregnancy. I hope this is protocol because the very thought of getting in touch with my ex who’s most probably busy fucking some sorry else makes me want to jab scissors into my temples. I’ve been in the hospital for four hours so far, I’ve pissed in a pot, narrowly missing my hands, I’ve given blood, I’ve lost my mind. Okay, I’m not pregnant. Crisis averted. I’ve convinced the doctor to fill out a prescription for Valium. I need to sleep, otherwise I will never get better. My Malaria is still attacking my body with a vengeance, I don’t know how much more of this I can take, I am so weak. I’ve had the shakes all weak. My insomnia is turning me into an anxious mess. even worry about the shoes I’ll be making and what colour way I will pick. What do you mean there’s only enough of the skin for one shoe? Not a pair? I worry if ‘Mr O‘ will be able to find more hides over the course of the weekend in order to start production on Monday. It’s not the days that get me here, it’s the nights. The endless nights. Locked away, in a room, with one other, unable to leave after a certain time. The days, really are fine. I’m not sleeping therefor I am anxious. Meditating isn’t helping, smoking isn’t helping, I can’t even read as I have no concentration. Even this very post probably makes a total lack of sense and I couldn’t even deliver it to the schedule I had hoped. I’m just anxious about real mundane shit. So yeah give me all the Valium I can get my greedy god forsaken mitts on doctor. I tell my room mate of my pharmasuitical triumph and instruct her not to wake me in the morning. It’s a Saturday and I will want to sleep until at least mid day. I need it. I am on a even stronger dose of anti malarial. So I end up begging her not to wake me, my host family have been instructed to leave me rest too.
Saturday morning 7.am.
My room mate is coming in and out of the room speaking excruciatingly loudly on the phone. I ended up taking probably far too many Valium the night before but after trying to fall asleep from eight p.m to no avail I had popped one every hour and a half. I finally crashed at one thirty a.m. So I was still pretty dosed up to my blood red eyeballs. I couldn’t be fucked with the conflict so I made it apparent she woke me up. But it continued. Then at seven fifteen a.m theres a rapping at the door of small childrens fists. I grabbed my smokes, cursed to the high hells, slammed every door I entered and exited and chain smoked and further cursed. This was the sixth night without proper sleep. I was so sleep deprived that I had no idea what sleep itself consisted of anymore. I am no longer the angry bitter person I was a few months back, I let go of her, all the hate wore me out but today I could feel her surfacing again. I despise children, I was beyond grateful my pregnancy test came back negative the day before. I would have got a coat wire and preformed my very own backstreet abortion if it had come back positive. God, I am pleasant today. I’ll just get strung out on Valium and forget the world. I decide to lay out in the yard and indulge myself with further doses of skin cancer and sunstroke. I’ve done nothing all day but move place in the yard to where a cloud allows for a sun spot. It’s not even that sunny. I’m starving hungry but too weak to walk to the shop where even there my only options are limited to carbs, coke melted Kit Kate or shortbread. I can’t even fathom reading, turning the page seems so much effort. So for now it’s slumping over in the shade, smokes and Kendrick. Today is the first day I truly want to leave. I don’t want to come home but I desperately want to leave my imprisoned situation. I want Broccoli, I want hot sauce, I want Garlic. I want peace and quiet. I don’t want to be sick any longer and really truly. I would just like to fucking sleep.