Bristol Doesn't Need Me But I Need It: Dancing, Drugs & More

Like every other second person, I hate talking about myself.

Though if you're a poet or a writer you'll probably find yourself writing about yourself (in some capacity) quite a lot. It's a deliciously painful exercise in self-reflection.

I, like every other second person (it seems), moved to Bristol as a young twenty-something to grab life by the scruff of its stubborn neck and live out my first shaky steps as a "real adult". I still hating saying that, but there is no better way to describe taking off the imaginary training wheels.

I still look for the trusted adult in every room before realizing, oh crap, I am the trusted adult.

I am going to maintain – with my mountains of experience of course – that your early twenties are the most beautiful and most painful times of your life.

Everything feels like a burn, and everything hurts, but everything feels so bright, and vivid, and euphoric at the same time.

I'm full to the brim and overflowing with the amount of love I have in my body. Nobody ever told me how my heart and my stomach would turn with my love for people, for coffee in the morning, for evenings with my best friends; for being alone and not and alone again.

I'm not very good at dancing, and I never have been. My fingers and my mind are musical, and I feel at home behind the curved body of a guitar or lips pressed to a microphone, but dancing? You can tell I wasn't a ditzy ballet girl or Prom Queen.

At the cusp of every drunken night you will always find me in one of two places: a karaoke bar or a dance floor. I like to be predictable like that. One of those activities I'm not too bad at, the other one much less so. A bit of balance keeps my life interesting.

You get to know people through activities like that. Are they an observer, tucked into a quiet corner, the corners of their mouth twisted up into the faintness of an amused smile? Are they the glowing star of the show, or the cheeks-tinged-pink, belt-it-all-out intoxicated mess? Or are they the familiar anchor you're drawn towards in every room, their eyes catching yours with and a daring flicker?

What's a writer to write about if it isn't love? I don't write about love, only because I think it's been done far too many times before and in many a pulchritudinous manner. I think if I ever tried to write about love, I would remember Sylvia Plath's 'Mad Girl's Love Song' and throw up every feeling I ever had, ink smudging my every page.

Instead, I write about the stepping stone feelings to love – yearning, confusion, and mind-and-soul-crushing desire that eats you apart from inside out. You know, the light stuff.

It's why although I like to joke that I prefer to take my suffering raw (not like that), my mind is able to work with the copious amounts of alcohol I lovingly gift my tired liver and turn it into a foaming, sullied, cocktail of emotions. I'm blessed with the curse of feeling too much, of loving too strong, and falling too, horrifically, painfully.

So I sit there in my head, with my heart wired to the Notes app on my phone (the modern poet's place of refuge), and write and write about every feeling that scathes enough to wound. And I yearn for affection in every aspect of my life and swallow down regret, bitterness, and loneliness in crowded rooms. And I lose my voice in sweaty karaoke rooms and chase their flickering eyes on dance floors, my hands in theirs, and splayed against them, pushing them away.

Everything is timber for the fire that is this writing.

Tomorrow, I'll wake up to the sounds of gaggles of hen do ladies chirping and giggling in the Turtle Bay a stone's throw away from my window. As the day crawls into the night and the tally of mimosas has been forgotten, they will be looking for a dance floor. Hell, the dance floor might be the very table they'll be lounging at, much to the staff's dismay.

I'll be looking for a dance floor too so inspirations don't run dry, but this isn't about me. I hate talking about myself after all.