Veni Creator - Arvo Pӓrt, Vox Clamantis, Jaan-Eik Tulve, Susanne Doll





I sit in the season of Self-Doubt. It is high summer, yet, a feeling of cloudiness makes all truth unhonest. Every word feels inconsistent. Nicole Gulotta describes this season in Wild Words. It’s a tome of rituals, routines and rhythms for writing. Practically, elements of it are incredibly applicable. Still, I would never recommend this book.
A woman is born with microscopic eggs stored in her ovaries. Moments old, she already has everything she needs to create. Her body, by design, was made to gestate ideas, story and life. We are creators. Every month, our body reminds us of that
Just as pee is stored in the balls, creativity is stored in the ovaries. Gulotta casually uses uncritical bioessentialist language, making her out to be a massive TERF.
Self-Doubt and not-meeting-the-Gender-Criteria go hand in hand. I wrote a whole poem about it. As a child, comparisons between me and Ron Weasley were frequent. Over time, it shifted to Ed Sheran and that was better. I hate Terfs for more reasons than this, but, it doesn't take much.
Summer is ubiquitous. It’s loud and gaudy.  It marks the end of exams and the advent of Summer. I always look forward to it. All will be warmer in Summer. Though, I look at the sun and I see its anger and I know my skin will be marked. Through red cheeks, I will be unable to show embarrassment. Summer acts in superlatives. Summer is the season of parents becoming fed up with me in the house. I lied to my mother about looking for a job. I was sixteen, and didn't want to work yet. Nor, nobody would want to hire me. I cycled through Belfast with the sun clapping over my neck. My hair was shorter then, but I was still as eager. The same year, I wanted to wear a skirt to my sixth form. My mother shouted at me, and encouraged my Dad to do the same. I am still learning the lesson taught to me then. You cannot fight back against somebody who denies your existence.
Summer can also swing into great sweetness. All warmth brought freedom. Everything is easier, looser, no plans could be interrupted by a timetable. There was no homework, only stupid jokes with friends. The warmest moments, while coming of age, happened in Summer! While gardening, I’ve learnt to let Summer in. To see their days of sun and be obliged to hold the door open. Last year, I became a sucker for wearing shorts. I felt cool, casual and like I was the baddest bitch around. I was still as anxious, still as doused in sun cream. 
I intend to enjoy summer. I look into its hazy eyes and fight to make the heat bearable. As much as I try, I cannot still the waters of Self-Doubt. The season of Summer, and this season of Self-Doubt overlap. Routine leaves, but I have to keep moving. I need to stay on my feet and keep breathing and keep hoping that I am capable of staying above an oblivious threshold. A mark where, if I fall below, I will blunder into comical despair. Self-Doubt will step aside, letting me know how good I am at blundering. The stakes for Summer are set. They are underneath me, waiting to strike. I have been staring at it for far too long. The season of Self-Doubt wraps me in its selfish arms. It embodies the muzzling heat of a windless city Summer. It is the red on my cheeks as I look in the mirror. It is the season of becoming the self abettor. My words become inconsistent, overwritten phrases that I hope to justify. All my input is now untrustworthy. Nicole, I am deeply sorry to report that my creativity does not stem from the ovaries.
Self-Doubt is never something I’ve lived with. It has been something that has been inflicted. Self-Doubt is the extended arguments with my mother in the kitchen, while my brother waits to go to the cinema. Self-Doubt is the impending feeling of realising that I’m bringing conclusions to things because I am so tired of this season. I conclude in hopes of closing this fog around me. The season of Self-Doubt is the drive home because I didn’t want to be at my Mothers any more. I didn’t want to be there, and I didn’t want to listen to her. In her every word, there was something new to hurt from. Self-Doubt is the worry that I am not doing enough. I can contribute more, and adding a link underneath a tweet is still just shilling my own work. Self-Doubt is eating the peas in the garden at night, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about that. Self-Doubt sometimes shows up in my dreams. It is not indecision, it is beginning to burn me up. It’s on every unfreckled inch of my skin, on every unmoving though frequently shaved hair. Self-Doubt is on the back of my legs. Self-Doubt is making me think that I am more important than I will be.
I had a tutor regard a fiction piece I wrote ‘rich with polemics’. It will be the previous post on this blog, and I still struggle to understand where they spoke from. Polemics are divisive, and I have been taught that is a bad thing. All risk will not help you. All freedom will not come. I would do anything to leave the season that hangs over me. There is the certification in a trusted routine. With that, with each morning sitting at a cluttered desk with a dying laptop, Summer will fade away and I will become seasonless. 


There is a thinning road, where the path will grow suffocative as I move forward into it. The grey seagulls that wait above stalking me like hot Summer chips. I will have to keep moving.  This should be a time to work on the issues I have with myself and the ideas that are toxic to my own body. Yet, I will struggle to give time to anything but myself. Time will be just as divisive, and just as immovable. There are days now, where I hope it rains. I hope the clouds swell and do not stutter. I hope the sun stays behind them for as long as I can imagine, because I know that as soon as it will return, I will be obliged to be underneath it all again. To smile at the sun. I will be obliged to meet the them in the eye, and as such, be scorched and scored underneath a coating of cheap sun cream.


Rainfall lets me stay inside, and that is one less fear I will have today. I know what this fear will taste like. I know how vapid it will all feel. I will grow tired of hating myself, and I will write too many words to keep track of. Still, as Summer will turn to September, I know that the season of Self-Doubt will still be there.





Last Friday, finding an article that I wrote uploaded to a page wavered me over. I was feeling uncertain that it was something that I wanted. In all honesty, I felt used. Yet, my feelings aren’t at the heart here. I had written that piece months ago, when I was far less self-aware. Uploaded to the page, two days after they had released their anti-racist reading list. Seeing that felt bizarre. It felt as though they had done their hashtag Black Lives Matter work and were happy to resume the schedule. By publishing an article written by a white woman, in a time where Black voices are by far, much more needed. A close friend used the term ‘deflection’. Seeing the fire that the university is presently under, and is trying to blanket away, I think that is a more than reasonable term. For a piece about realising and welcoming a feeling of safety in a foreign place, it felt, and still feels, inappropriate. Black lives matter, and that doesn’t mean for a week. It means for all time.

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