i've been doing kind of crazy lately, to say the least. not quite sure how much i can pour out onto the internet for unsuspecting folks to gawk at, but also hey what else are we all here for? my dear friend and i thought it was time we reconnected with nature together, so headed down the coast to wilson's prom for a weekend in the bush.
yknow i was really excited to go, i got all dressed up and everything. but when i got there, everyone was wearing leggings as pants. i had a great time nonetheless. i wrote that joke a couple days ago on twitter and it totally flopped, so i'm giving it another crack here in hopes that maybe it's just an audience issue rather than accepting the fact that maybe it's just not that funny, prom not being an australian thing and all. maybe that's why it didn't land, but it's not like i could refer to it as wilson's formal. that just doesn't work.
alright, i'm getting wrapped up in the nuances of a bad joke. the prom! i had a great time. the drive down was half the fun, an eventful couple of hours including a near death experience. my friend said what happens in officer stays in officer, but it's just one of those things i have to share with the world.
picture it, it's an abysmal morning. people are starting their saturday morning commutes nice and early (too early for a saturday morning if you ask me) and the roads are slick and shimmering in the rain. it's the kind of weather that would probably instill at least an ounce of fear in the average person's mind if they were to be walking. the sky is a moody grey, and it pours onto the suburbs of greater melbourne. the road takes us through officer, quite a boring little part of town, riddled with road construction, as well as just general construction in the way that the outer suburbs of a city usually are.
this particular road is especially slick, with a poorly placed roundabout right at the bottom of an especially slick hill, accompanied by several very close together exits. you come down the hill and it's hard to slow down, even more so when you need to maintain the momentum to take the first exit on the other side of the roundabout. so you slide and skid and do some crazy wobbling from side to side, trying to stabilise your vehicle to make it out without rolling over. once you get to the other side, you just have to pull over in the mud and just sit in silence for a second and think about the fact that even though you were nowhere near death, and that everyone is alright and breathing, if god had any other tricks to play with a slight of hand, it could have all been taken away from you.
i'm being dramatic. i don't believe in god, or at least not in a way where he rules me. but sometimes small things happen and you come to realise that you've forgotten that life is a gift, and even though you feel so shitty on a day to day basis, it's a gift that deep down you're grateful for.
so this newfound gratitude guided me into my weekend in the prom. the second we cleared out of officer the clouds parted and the grass really was greener. pheobe bridgers plays and it's great. despite the frigid cold and the wind's icy cold fingers wrapping at the back of our arms upon stepping out of the car, it felt good to be out of the city.
sometimes you forget how claustrophobic it gets, all the streets and the smog. the air out of the city is different, and people say it all the time but no matter how often you get out of the city, it's a welcomed shock with every breath you take. it really is cleaner, and something about it really does clear your head immediately. i understand why back in the time before ssris were readily available, a trip to the seaside was prescribed to treat low moods.
i realised that often all it takes is to sit atop a mountain with your best friend and eat a cheese sandwich, to remember that shit, is in fact, good.
but then you have to go home, and although the high of being out in nature is one that you can ride for the week to come, it tends to dissipate as your chronically bad knees remind you they're there.
i'm balancing a fine line of "fuck i have bad knees and the pain is really flaring up from walking, maybe i shouldn't have walked" and "fuck my knees are in pain because i walked and it was beautiful" i'm working on the whole gratitude thing, which i think is increasingly apparent in this post. but damn, damn, damn, my knee hurts real bad. it's a weird sort of tendon pain, that comes and goes on a semi-regular basis, but has been especially bad this past week. i had to take a day off work because i couldn't stand or walk. which is a luxury that i recognise, and am again, grateful for.
maybe it's not all so bad! and i can't wait to go back to the mountains to fuck my knees up all over again. and maybe not get in any near-car-crash experiences.
Maeve x
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