Keeping busy to avoid the feelings

Or how it is becoming so difficult to just sit and stare at a wall

In my late teens I lived in Amsterdam. We’re talking about a time before devices, before 500 channels of TV, and before the internet. There was a shop around the corner called ‘Betty’s’ and you could rent VHS videos for the weekend. I used to binge watch films like Kramer versus Kramer and Big. I lived with my Dutch boyfriend, and when he went to the studio during the day (he was a musician), I would pop the TV on for company, and I’d try and construct a routine, out of nothing. I knew I needed to keep busy to survive or the feelings would return.

These same feelings had once made me ram paracetamols down my throat. So many that my dad had had to drive me on his motorcycle to hospital where I got my stomach pumped and had to fill in a mental health questionnaire.

So instead I would do Cindy Crawford’s workout video, wash some pants in the shower (we didn’t have a washing machine), change the budgie’s water, and give him some seed, and the churning in my guts would be going. The uneasy, damn churning.

I just need to stay busy.

In the afternoon I’d head to the supermarket and get a few basic groceries and then I’d be back in time to watch ‘Oprah’. At the recording studio, where my boyfriend worked, there was a Sega Megadrive and I’d bike there, and sit upstairs listening to the banging house music coming from downstairs. I’d play Sonic the Hedgehog. Usually I’d play for about five hours, sometimes longer. Filling up an ashtray with cigarettes, sometimes peeing into a giant plant pot because I didn’t want to take a break. Then I’d head home on my bike and the next day would unfold pretty much the same.

I worked as a cleaner, but my cleaning was a haphazard, maniacal kind of cleaning. One day I cleaned the mixing desk at the studio and moved all the buttons so days of work were instantly undone. One of the clients in the studio was Lenny Kravitz and I sometimes wonder now if I messed up his record with my crazy-ass cleaning. My objective was speed, rather than thoroughness, but the truth was it was hard to stay busy all the time. The feelings would return because the days were different back then - slower and less manic. No emails. No Zooms. No social media. There was either being active or there was a kind of lingering, melancholic boredom.

I would sit, smoke and gaze out the window onto the Czaar Peterstraat where we lived. I’d study the small group of junkies that would pace up and down looking for gear. I’d think about my stepmum and sister, and then I’d try and find something to distract myself. I’d think about my dad and how I’d already put him through too much. Sometimes if the churning got really intense I’d do Cindy Crawford again (with a cigarette resting in a mug near the window so I could have a quick drag in between breaks).

This tendency to keep busy continued into my adult life. Even on mornings when I’d been out late at night, and was hungover, I’d spring out of bed and put a wash on, tidy out a cupboard, continue moving, just moving to get the churn out of my guts. I plastered make up on my face each day and refused to be steady and slow. I kept going.

Then of course children, much later and, combined with work and trying to create a life as a writer and creator…well there was rarely nothing to do. Each day presented a whole range of tasks. Always Coco Pops glued to the sofa. A PE kit that needed to be washed, and the pants pulled out from the mangled cycling shorts where they’d been left on the floor. Socks to be emptied of sand before they went into the machine. Cats to be fed. Dishwasher to be emptied and then filled. And then my desire to write, to create content, and the need to work and bring in money. To be relevant and feed the family. It was easy to stay busy now. The feelings found it hard to surface with all the noise and the busyness.

My cleaning became very slap dash. My content more shonky. There were balls of dust gathering under the bed. I couldn’t stay on top of all the stuff that had to be done. My hair developed a knot at the back like a kid in pre-school. And of course the phone, the phone gave me endless ways to stay busy. Checking WhatsApp, then IG, then FB, then LinkedIn, then work email, then work messages, then back to WhatApp, then IG, then FB, then LinkedIn, then looking at trainers, at floral blouses, at dungarees, at kittens doing fun stuff, at people doing fun stuff, back to trainers, floral blouses, back to kittens…

There are now days where I can feel myself keeling over slightly to one side. I worry that perhaps I’m having a stroke but it is mainly my body complaining that I am rushing too much. Right in this moment I am typing this, and I have been up since 6. I have put a wash on, cleaned, and put some wellies away, scratched dried cereal off the floorboards. And I’ve fed the cats, cleaned the cat bowls and am typing. I checked IG, LinkedIn, email and then circled back to IG in case I’d missed someone trying to show me how to apply blush (I’ve absorbed enough content about blush to last me three lifetimes).

On the landing I’ve put a postcard up on the window, that says ‘Slow The Fuck Down.’ I am aware that I need to be able to sit and do nothing. It was something my dad excelled at doing. He would like to stare into the distance. He especially liked to go outside at night and stare at the sky.

‘Just a minute,’ I shout to my kids as they ask me to watch them do a headstand on the sofa.

‘Hang on, let me put this away and I’ll be with you.’

‘Can’t you just wait a second and I’ll look. Please just one second.’

Something compels me to stop. The keeling maybe. Or just being dog tired. I pick the youngest one up. The churning is there, the thoughts of people I’ve lost and opportunities I’ve screwed up, and a million embarrassments since I took my first breath.

‘You’re squeezing me too hard,’ my daughter says.

I notice that she has cradle cap and I might need to tackle that next but for this moment I am holding steady.

‘What do you think? Am I the best girl on earth?’ she cries as she jumps and sprints across the kitchen.

A voice comes up from somewhere. I think it might be inside but I can’t be sure.

‘Just stay here’, it whispers, ‘Just here and no more busy for a bit.’

And this time I listen.