Airtight

by Adelaide Faith

I wasn’t young anymore, but at least I’d got to a place where I could easily say: this is an alright thing to do with my time.  I was thinking — having new thoughts. That’s what I was doing, as a thing to do, and I loved it. If it got tiring I would treat myself, make more espresso, chain-eat sweet things. It was a special occasion, I’d say to myself, I was using my brain.

My new thoughts were like new love interests, I couldn't wait to tell my friends each time I’d had one. I’d imagine them clothed. This one, I would think, is wearing dungarees. I’d imagine their hair. This one, I would think, has curtains. I was thinking, and I knew what was happening whilst I was thinking—I was being held down by gravity on a planet spinning at 1000 miles an hour, and I didn’t need to be strapped in. It was like I’d finally got to the age where I was aware of my position.

I was living alone. I lived in Archway. An old friend got in touch once, he asked me where I was living and I said Archway, and he just couldn’t picture it, he didn’t understand. He seemed quite stressed about it. It can be hard to understand the lives of other people. I was always aware that I was thinking about other people from the outside. They were the same species as me but I was thinking about the outside of them with the inside of my body, by which I mean my brain. I was really conscious of the outside of them, like: this one is wearing a cardigan. I never gave a second thought to what was inside them, inside their stomach (vomit), inside their bladder (piss) inside their intestines (shit). 

In general, I texted my friends now, I didn’t even see them in the flesh anymore. I didn’t have any relatives, anyone who would pre-arrange a world for me, say it was important we met up. I knew not everything got handed to you on a plate, I knew I had the option of making my own relatives, if I wanted to. I could get together with another person, get married. But I felt like my body wasn’t straightforward enough to offer to someone else. If it was supposed to be the second half of somebody. If it was true, that humans started with four arms and four legs, then got split in half as a punishment by Zeus, then were stuck in a state of longing until they found their other half. I didn’t know what I’d started out as, and I didn’t know what kind of other half I was looking for.

It was Friday night, and there was a Friday night feel in the air, like anything could happen. An old friend texted me. She was sharing the information about what she would be watching on TV that night. She would be watching something about a serial killer. I texted back: I probably won’t watch that. Sometimes I text her: I’m the only adult in the house, and I say it as if it's dangerous. 

I’d had a new thought earlier that day when I’d been walking alone on top of the cliff, and had made plans to think about the thought later, with a takeaway dinner. Whilst walking, I’d noticed something pink stuck on a bush and my eyes had messaged my brain: that’s a pink rose. On my next step, I got another message: no, it’s the insides of a small bird that’s been killed and then caught on the thorns. Then I took another step and I got a new message, that seemed to be the final message: it’s just a pink nappy sack, tied into a bow. And that’s when the new thought came, the thought that I liked so much: the thing I enjoy most is seeing something in the distance and being wrong about what it is. It’s like drugs, I thought, it’s like the mushrooms of the old days, but there’s a quick return to reality, because my brain is working, sober.

I sat with my takeaway and entertained this new thought. I looked over at the folded up sleeping bag in the corner of the room and for a moment thought it was the face of Fleur Jaeggy. I thought to myself: I love seeing things and mistaking them for something else, then having myself correct myself just milliseconds later. I picked up a bag of fries, opened a dip. I glanced at the mozzarella sticks, thinking I would have them next and momentarily thought they were wearing a clown costume. Of course it was just the red and yellow wrapper.

Everything was falling into place. The reason I was alone, my sexuality. People in charge had been adding new sexualities to the list in what seemed like a rigorous method, but they hadn’t got to me yet. Thoughts were hard to define. I used to take it personally when I thought about my personality, all my bad thoughts. But when I gave someone details, they started using phrases like: that’s just what spoke to you at the time. I was paying this person to make me feel better, and she was trying to make me feel better, but I didn’t buy it. So I told her the thoughts I was having about her, at that very moment, and gave her details again. She tried to make me feel better about that by telling me we have 6000 thoughts a day and each one doesn’t stay in the mind for very long. She couldn’t give me an exact timescale but she knew it was measured in milliseconds. I felt like I had no morals. I wanted to settle down.

I texted my friend. 

Do you ever have the thought, I texted, when you see something and think it’s something else, then a fraction of a second later you realise what it really is, do you ever have the thought - that’s my favourite thing to do?

My friend texted back that she didn’t. 

So I texted back: if you ever have that thought now, you won’t be able to think of it as your own thought, you’ll have to think of it as something I once said to you, and my friend replied: ok

I felt a huge sense of relief. Every time I mistook something for something else and corrected myself, I would think about how much I liked that happening, and then I’d tell that thought that I loved it. I didn’t want to take it for granted. I’d try to hold its hand. Some evenings I’d have the thought a few times an hour, and I’d close my eyes and hear a strange noise, like a noise you’d expect to hear if you took a walk alone near a zoo in the middle of the night. Sometimes I’d open my eyes and find that the sofa I was sitting on had shifted to the exact centre of the room and I’d have no idea how it had happened. I was the only adult in the house.

Adelaide Faith is a veterinary nurse and zine maker from London and Hastings. She is currently writing a novel about obsession, partly told through therapy sessions. Instagram: @lollipop_pierrot