My favourite thing to do, if I’m really honest, is nothing, I like to lay around thinking.
I actually wake up very early, between five and six most mornings, so I can lay in bed and think.
It’s never daydreaming. I lie there and ask myself millions of questions, I break down and analyse everything I can.
This morning I was thinking about water, water to swim in. When water is warm it’s soft and easier to swim in, and when it’s cold it’s much harder — not because of the temperature but because the actual water feels thicker. I have to push it harder with my hands and my body feels more separated from the stuff-ness of the water.
I can feel the water more as I glide through it. Then, of course, the colder water is the closer it is to ice. Simple and obvious to some — but not to me.
I was very happy with that thought, I sort of plumped myself up on my pillows in a very congratulatory way.
Thinking light thoughts are difficult — it’s much easier to go into a downward spiral from cold water to drowning.
I rarely think about suicide anymore. It used to fill my thoughts daily, not just suicide but also death.
I was so nihilistic, I just couldn’t wait to get off this f***ng planet. I’m sure the diet of 50 cigarettes a day and bucketloads of acidic white wine didn’t help.
Oh, Tracey, what a fool you were.
I did stop smoking more than 20 years ago and drinking just over three, but it’s taken me a long time to forgive myself. At first the anger was incredible, I loathed myself for being so self-bloody destructive.
A selfish, slow, bitter death, a lack of self-preservation or self-respect, a pure, deep subconscious hatred for myself, so terribly unhealthy.
As corny as it is, death had to come violently knocking at my door before I could see the light.
So much of my life I’ve been scared and messed up. I’ve always done exactly what I’ve wanted to do, I’ve never changed — just that I don’t scream, I just walk away. I don’t have that kind of energy or stamina any more.
My fight is daily, keeping myself alive. In the last 18 months I’ve had Covid twice, septicaemia, two kidney infections and countless urinary infections (no tract, as I haven’t got one) and a really strange rash that went up and down my body and burnt like hell. I’m a walking target.
I don’t like being kissed or touched and I can get very snappy about it because I DON’T WANT TO DIE.
I really like my life — I like being an artist, I love my cats, I enjoy and embrace the world that’s around me.
I love my painting, my freedom to express myself. My uncensored living.
Being an artist is a full-time job,
24 hours a day, seven days a week. As time moves on I need more time for me, I can’t escape from what I am.
Nothing is wasted — every thought, every moment of pain is sharpened and galvanised into making me who I am.
I am and always have been the last of my kind. Long live my selfish genes.
TO BE CONTINUED
