A Renaissance

On coming home and starting anew

I’m nothing if not an entertainer so I’ll set the scene.

I’m sitting in my bed in my satin pyjamas, tanning moisturiser slathered over my skin. My hair is curled and pinned so tightly that my eyebrows are permanently raised in preparation for my first concert of the summer. The next morning, I’ll go to London to drink too many cocktails with

Tenecia

and watch Beyoncé perform.

It’s been a while since we last spoke. I hear my phone ring and I answer. You’re on the other end of the line.

It’s been so long! What have you been up to?

It’s only June and I think it’s safe to say I’ve had a good summer already. We could call it quits now and I’d be satisfied. I finished university and moved out of my flat, leaving behind the good and the bad.

But then I got on a plane to Italy with the good!! And we spent a week reading romance novels and having sandwiches by the pool. Limoncello was consumed by the jug and I collected a few new freckles before the flight home.

I’ve got a few more plans for the summer ahead. I’ll be seeing Lana Del Rey, Olivia Dean, Doechii, and turning 23! Oh, and graduating.

Graduation!! What’re you gonna do after university?

I reach over to take a sip of the iced mango green tea I made to sip while I curled my hair. It gives me time to formulate a response constituting more than a growl.

‘Well,’ I scrabble for an edge of certainty to my voice that hasn’t been present for weeks, ‘I’m going to have a renaissance,’

Maybe it’s because I have Beyoncé on the mind, or maybe it’s inspired by

Ella

responding to one of my notes a month or so ago, naming it just this.

I don’t know what comes next, but I’m going to make it great.

Really, I should write this on my CV for all the marketing jobs I’m applying to. My ability to turn a low and tired point of my life into an inspiration. A blooming flower, if you will.

Truthfully, I’ve spent a lot of my life in the future, eyeing up the next stepping stone, and now I stand at the edge of the map that was plotted. The wind is blowing and I think I’m losing my balance.

The coming summer is littered with plans to keep me afloat, keep me in the pockets of my best friends, to give me something to look forward to, something to celebrate.

The peaks will be heavenly but the troughs might be dark.

So I’m considering what the comeback will look like. When I come home to myself and meet her again, just as she is.

created using Shuffles App. Photos sourced from pinterest

I plan to read a whole lot more. I set myself a goal of 50 books this year and I’m already behind. It’s okay though, I know my summer will be characterised by the books I chew on. Like many postgrads, a lot of my summer will be spent in a bikini in my back garden wondering when the world got so small.

A few of the ones I’m planning on reading are:

💌 Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

💌 Simple Passion - Annie Ernaux

💌 I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman

I plan to write more than usual. In the recent months since my workload got heavy, I forgot to delegate. I’ve never been very good at that. Even when I had multiple exams to revise for, I could only focus on one until it’s done. I definitely treated my degree like that by the end. It became nothing but a word on a to-do list waiting for the check-mark to deem it achieved:

• finish degree

When I could check that off, life began again. The earth took a breath and the sun finally set, ready to start anew.

I think this renaissance includes stepping back into my writing voice. Lately, I’ve been feeling a little lost with it. It often feels like I have nothing of much value to say, and anything I do say would be executed a lot better by someone else. I wonder if there’s a place for me here. I question who could possibly be invested in my mulling over my own life when they’ve never heard me laugh or smelled my perfume.

But I suppose that’s part of the nature of writing. You meet a stranger from the inside out.

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I anticipate a lot of posts being written this summer, while I have way too much time, heavy in my sweaty palms. The only way to lighten the load will be to smear it onto my laptop screen and wonder if anyone can hear me out there.

I plan to re-decorate my bedroom. It hasn’t been touched since Covid. I invested my time into decorating my university bedrooms, even when they changed year in year out. I don’t always feel like I’ve come home when I sleep in my mum’s house. I wonder if that ever goes away or if I’ll just get more accustomed to being a guest in the house I once called home.

The posters I stuck up are a testament to my enduring music taste. A Florence + The Machine poster hangs over my bed and makes eye contact with the Stevie Nicks one at the opposite end of the bedroom. They can stay, maybe.

Postcards line my wardrobe. Birthday cards from friends who probably won’t write me one again. I’ll keep them close, of course. Maybe they’ll be better suited to a box or a scrapbook. I’ll replace them with the ones that fill the walls of my university bedroom.

I’ll move home and learn to merge two lives. Not everything will make it through the culling. I’ll have boxes of junk and piles of clothes for my younger sister. Her lucky day.

She’s counting down the days until I move home and she can spend time with her big sister. I wonder if she knows how much I’m grieving.

I plan on meeting my body again and loving her better. In the last few months, I’ve taken up running, inspired by my incredible friend and her running journey. It brings a peace I think I’ll be clinging to for a while. It’s the only thing that helps shed the burden of a heavy day of studying. It blows away the cobwebs, as my stepmum says.

I like the feeling of strength. I like learning what my body can do when I let her try. I plan to give her more time this summer. I’ll run and get strong and keep her able and appreciate the movement.

I’ll do pilates in my bedroom and sit in the feeling of owning a body.

I think this summer I’ll learn to lean.

I lean on my friends. I seek their comfort. But I’m somewhat stoic when I’m at home, and I can’t help but wonder where the feelings will go when I live at home. Maybe on substack. Maybe on facetime with my friends. Or maybe I’ll learn to lean on the people that made me and trust that it will be okay.

Maybe I’ll open up a little bit more instead of waiting until I’m crying in a sainsbury’s checkout like last time. Maybe I’ll give them a chance, or maybe I won’t.

I’ve heard people talk about how we’re kind of similar to the seasons. We don’t hibernate in the winter, but we’re slower, we do less. It feels a little off balance to enter a period of hibernation just when life is beginning to bloom again. When daisies litter the grass like glitter in the sun.

Maybe this will be a period of growth I just don’t know about yet. Maybe I’ll surprise myself with what I achieve. Maybe those achievements won’t be a graduate role or a number of subscribers on Substack. Maybe those achievements will be knowing myself and loving her and enjoying her family and slowing down, maybe for the last time.

I hope that the nerves I feel at the abundance of time I’m about to be gifted will unravel. I hope their knots will loosen and sit smoothly in my stomach and I’ll learn to appreciate my last summer.

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