New to everything, the good and bad
First post! New to tumblr! New university in 3 weeks.
So many changes in my life at the moment, I felt like i needed a space to share my thoughts. Tumblr it is. I've been on this site for years. But I've never had the courage to actually write something.
Maybe I'll keep this little blog up and going, probably I'll abandon it in 4 weeks.
I'm feeling a lot of anxiety due to changes lately. I feel like my relationship is going rocky. My relationship with my parents is rocky. My friends and I are having some difficulties with keeping in contact. It's so bad I started running. RUNNING. I HATE running. However, I've come to find that the feeling i get from listening to Fiona apple while running for me is the equivelent to punching holes in walls for men.
I'm going to a festival in a few days. I've never been to one and I feel helpless and unprepared. After 4 days of drinking there, 6 days of drinking will follow during my introduction week. The introduction week is a week of festivities where you meet other people who will follow the same study as you the week after. So excited. I can't wait to party and dance and meet new people. But of course, irrational fears and stupid thoughts do rise. Will they like me? Is this my only chance of friendship? Do I act different and start a whole new life in a different city and abandon everyone I know to fully commit to my alter ego? The usual. Luckily I'm still more excited than scared. The pros outweigh the cons.
In three weeks i'm starting uni. I'll be a philosophy major (whoo! MORE to think about). I'm kind of hoping the study will help me rationalize my thoughts. I can't wait for the classes. They all seem super interesting.
Change feels like a double-edged sword to me. Exciting new stuff to try in exciting new environments. Also, terrible fear and constant pondering about failing and dying alone. We'll see!
I'm also new to writing.
I am where the sun shines
I realise that the warmth won't soften my skin any longer.
The warm sand
In which I will dissappear
What else is there?
I'm a whole spread out over shards of habits
How do you guys deal with change? I'd love some help.
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What other people did
Not her safety-obsessed partner swapping military issue boots for this. Not Nadine, on the floor next to an enormous cardboard box and surrounded by crumpled brown paper padding, lacing up a pair of rollerblades.
Chloe did not try to hide the mirth in her voice. "What's all this, then?"
Nadine gave her a look as she tightened the plastic braces. Click, click, click.
"'I'm done with Shoreline' means 'I'm learning an entire new sport'?"
Nadine, again, ignored her. Or maybe she was just more focused on clambering to her feet. Well, not her feet. Clambering to her wheels.
On hands and knees, she first lifted a leg and set one rollerblade upright, rolled it a few inches back and forth, biting her lip.
"Nadine, you need a helmet."
"After the shit we did in India?" The former merc snapped. "Climbing those hundred meter statues? Jumping that train? Really?"
So this was it. Chloe sighed, rubbing between her eyes. "Love...don't lose your highly developed self-preservation instinct just because you've met me."
Nadine was on one and a half rollerblades now, trembling like a baby deer, one arm on her mattress.
"Or do,” Chloe remarked. “This is hard to watch."
Nadine scoffed at her, and pulled herself onto the mattress, both blades on the floor, to sit down.
"Do the skates stay on during sex?"
"Shut up."
Chloe smirked at her. "With that attitude I might reconsider getting this mess of yours out of the way so you can have a clear shot to the living room."
Nadine was rolling each foot back and forth. She was biting her lip again, and her glance out the door was adorkable.
She didn't think she could make it.
"Give me a minute," she muttered.
"Come on, mate. Bed to couch and back.”
“I’m--the threshold.”
Chloe looked at the tiny speedbump of wood by the door. “Step over it.”
“Ja, I’ll just step over it!” Nadine exclaimed. “Like that isn’t at least five levels of difficulty past where I am right now? I’m still working on standing up. Christ. This was a bad idea--”
“Nadine--”
“--Oof!”
Chloe had tackled Nadine’s upper body with a leap. Nadine’s shapely arms pushed her off and into the pillows, scoffing.
“You knocked the wind out of me.”
“You had it coming. Stop overthinking it.”
Nadine looked at her suspiciously. “You just want me to faceplant on the floor in this room before I even get there.”
“As long as you stay there long enough for me to take a photo.”
Thus incensed, Nadine pushed off the bed.
She was so much taller on wheels. And so much less coordinated, too. Nadine didn’t glide across the room as much as run, her steps too quick, her legs too straight, making what could only be described as a yelp as she grabbed hold of the door frame for dear life.
Chloe was dying. There were tears in her eyes. Even Nadine’s angry flush being focused back at her like a death ray couldn’t stop her laughter.
“Baahahahahahaha--Nadine--the look on your face--”
Nadine had enough and pushed off the door frame into the living room, after stepping very slowly and shakily over the threshold, but there she may have panicked. She didn’t reach the couch.
There was, after all, a coffee table in the way.
Why Nadine had been more nervous about the theshold than an entire piece of furniture, Chloe didn’t know. The woman had a knack for plans of attack. Maybe she didn’t think the coffee table would betray her the way it did.
“--hahaha, Jesus, are you okay?”
Chloe had run out of the bedroom. She couldn’t fight back her laughter at the way the former soldier had gone down. It was like the skates had shot out from beneath her as she tried to brake to avoid the table, and she landed with a slam on her back.
“Nadine! Come on, it was just your first try. Went about as well as anyone’s, I think.”
But Nadine hadn’t gotten back up. She was apparently dead of embarrassment, hiding her face with her folded arms, on the floor.
Chloe sank to her knees beside her and patted Nadine’s side. “You’re even more tense and grumpy than normal, mate.”
She heard Nadine mumble, “Not my best moment.”
“Did you think I was making fun of you?” Chloe said. “Look...I’m not good at the people thing. I didn’t mean it like that.”
Nadine dropped her arms and looked at her now. She jerked up, the strength of her abdominal muscles bringing her to a seated position. She crossed her legs with difficulty.
Chloe heard her sigh.
“I’m grumpy because I knew I was going to fall.”
Chloe breathed a chuckle. “China, there wasn’t any avoiding it. Even if you knew how to do it.”
“I first saw someone skate in a movie. Or on a show. When I was eleven? Twelve?”
Nadine said it as she padded on hands, knees, and rollerblade toes around the table to the couch.
“Don’t tell me your mummy and daddy refused to buy you them. Said you’d crack your skull.”
Nadine looked at her with a smile now, but it wasn’t the smile Chloe wanted from her. It was a smile so thin it looked about to break.
“Did I guess right?” Chloe said.
“I thought that it was...something other people did. I had to be studying or training, you know. I was old enough then to know.”
Somehow that was even worse.
Chloe might have heard Nadine sigh as she pulled herself onto the couch.
“Come on, mate,” Chloe said. “It’s just roller skates. Fun isn’t some sort of exclusive club. Everyone gets to have it.”
“You don’t get to have it if you want to prove yourself. Or...repay your parents by showing them the success they want you to have--”
“Let me stop you right there,” Chloe snapped. “If you’re still thinking about what your Dad will think--”
“Frazer,” Nadine was looking at her feet in something like the cutest embarrassment ever. “The look on his face if he saw me doing something like this--”
“You’ll be good at it by the time he sees you. So you’ll just skate away really fast, eh?”
Now a real smile broke across Nadine’s face, and Chloe leaned in and kissed the top of her curls. Nadine was shaking a little. It was deep laughter. She was trying to hold it back.
“You like my idea, china?”
“Ja.”
Chloe held out her arms. Nadine struggled, balancing on the two parallel lines of wheels, to stand, and took them.
“It’s like learning to walk again,” Nadine mumbled, her eyes on the ground. “It’s terrible.”
“You’ll be tearing apart Johannesburg in no time. They’ll be giving you speeding tickets,” Chloe murmured. She was towing Nadine now. She took her partner on a trip to the refrigerator, where Nadine opened the freezer by accident by grabbing the handle in a panic. Chloe took out a six-pack of Castle Lager from the chamber beneath it and kissed her cheek.
“Frazer it’s not even four o’clock.”
“These aren’t for drinking, mate. They’re your obstacle course.”
Nadine held on to the counter, confused, as Chloe picked up the coffee table and set it against the wall. Then she arranged the bottles in a line on the floor.
“Are you trying to kill me?” Nadine asked as she walked back over to her. “And my house is about to be full of broken glass.”
“Then we’ll just go buy more, love.”
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