You know that feeling when you accidently swallow on your cereal too quickly and get a 60mph throatful of ice cold milk and a leftover mouth full of cold stodge and in that instant you're not sure if the milk went down the right way and the unpleasant shock will be thankfully just that and pass with no event beyond discomfort, or if the milk went down the wrong way and within a split second you'll be spluttering a regurgitated mess all over everything that happens to be near you at that given moment?
I do. All the time.
When I was 19, I visited my friend M at University. I had just read "Scar Tissue" by Anthony Kiedis and it had taken somewhat of a monumental toll on me. It brought to a head a lot of feelings of disconnection from the country I was born and raised in, being the UK, and how I felt trapped by the monetary restraints I'd had my whole life. A few years later, I would embrace poverty on a new level, throw my arms around its sinuous neck and say fuck you! I'm taking you back and this time it will mean something! But how did I cope this time? The usual. Firstly drink after drink after missing week after week, and secondly, copious amounts of cocaine. But during this uninvited visit to M is when I remember first uttering the self damning and shackling words.... Me? I'm a writer.
Hi, I'm Brida.
Dark? Of course it is.