How should a person be?

Shamelessly stealing the title from Sheila Heti’s novel — one I’ve attempted to read over 10 years ago when a co-worker of mine recommended it — I pose the question to you, whoever you are who is still reading this.

One of my astrology readings of late has advised me to “start a new book”, which is obviously a call for me to begin anew, etc. etc., veiled in somewhat mysterious language. And, truthfully, I think I will sort of read it as literally as I possibly can. I’m coming up to a year of only reading Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series and I’ve finally reached Crossroads of Twilight, which is the 10th book of the series and notorious in the fandom as the sloggiest of the series’ slog: a stretch of very hefty books containing very little plot, including but not limited to a very posh-coded character that spends most of it in the bath, ruminating. A very long-winded paragraph to say that I am planning on restarting How Should a Person Be?

I read Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries when it came out, and I loved it a lot, and if I can love something as experimental as that, I think I’m at the position now where I can relate to and really comprehend the aforementioned novel. Is it a good idea to stop a quarter of the way through the dreaded slog? I don’t suppose so, but I really don’t think it’s good for me to only be reading very dated fantasy written by a man who very likely knew Patricia Altschul.

I have other books to read, honestly, but I have been really struggling with the question posed by the novel’s title. I don’t expect to glean any practical insight, of course, but I do think I need to be closer to a character or even mindset of anyone who would even ask such a question. Because I’ve never really known the answer to that, and lately, I’ve found myself farther away from answers that feel true.

I’ve had kind of a shitty couple of months. Which I say not to sound ungrateful, because the shitstorm came with really great things, too.

I’ve not processed the loss of my pregnancy, I don’t think. Some days it’s fine to joke about, and other days, I feel the loss more acutely. I think I try to keep it unserious because it’s so uncomfortable for other people, because it feels like they never know what to say. And it’s not really something I want to talk at length about either. It’s coming to a year (July) and we’ve been casually trying again, I guess — not in the way you get fertility tests or what have you — but obviously, it hasn’t happened yet.

In September, I travelled to Sicily with Mark’s family, and then I spent a month shortly after travelling across Spain with my family, which was an experience in itself. Again, mixed bag, but I suppose that’s just how it is with everyone. I just had a lot of big feelings during that trip — especially when I was away from my studio and from my husband for so long — and I didn’t know how to process them.

I was in New York in January for my first exhibition in the U.S. which was so exciting. I think it deserves to be a story for another day, but I spent two weeks there — essentially with anxiety-induced acid reflux the entire time — but so, so overwhelming and unforgettable.1 I still can’t believe it happened, truthfully, even though there’s proof everywhere.

Two weeks later, I flew to Manila for ALT Art (an art fair-type programme my family’s gallery was a part of) and another solo exhibition at West Gallery. It was a really intense trip. Our dog, Noah, was extremely ill and passed away while I was there.2 I extended my trip to be with family, only for my later flight to be cancelled because of the airstrikes. I managed to get a one-way ticket about five days later, going through a different route, and for way more money than I’d ever spent on a plane ticket (or ever will, hopefully).

I’m the kind of person who needs a lot of time to recalibrate, which is why I’ve increasingly rethought my excitement for travelling when I was younger. A bulk of what I had posted on my blog (which is still alive, by the way, insofar as the domain name is still up) had been travel photos and recommendations and navel-gazing about “seeing the world” but lately, it just takes so much out of me.

All this to say that it feels like I’ve truly forgotten how to be a person.

I’ve been back in London since the 10th of March, I think, and I don’t quite remember how to do anything. And I’ve fallen into “being productive” and “doing stuff” by doing housework. Building flat pack furniture. Making Filipino bread rolls from scratch. Finding another load of laundry to do, somehow.

Before leaving for these many trips, I had developed a more or less good routine of going into the studio, taking walks, doing at-home exercises, meal-planning, morning pages, et al. Recently, I’ve been having to give myself a pep talk to go to the shop three minutes away. If that doesn’t work, I order my groceries, and then complain about how expensive everything has been.

I don’t remember how to be a person.

Or how to be the person I had been before I got back. I’m sure I’ve been annoying my husband, even though he’s assured me that that’s not the case. If there isn’t a reservation or a person tied to the other end of a plan, I’d likely not make it. The other week, the highlight of one of my days was the walk to and from my GP for an asthma review. And then the day improved once they’d asked me to come back later that afternoon for a blood test. I remember thinking about how nice the day had been and how much I loved being outside. Have I gone outside for the sheer thrill of it since? No.

I realise this is not quite about art. Or anything else really important. But it is about this block that I have been having for the past month and a half. I don’t know how to get rid of it. I had a good cry yesterday — likely from the back-to-back socialising we had committed to over the weekend3 — and I couldn’t articulate it to my poor husband who then had no clue how to help.

My morning pages have been page after page about how unfulfilled I feel, but just because I unload it onto paper (and now, on you, an unsuspecting audience), it doesn’t mean I know how to course correct. This sort of writing doesn’t even really belong here, but I know that if I don’t write this down as a sort of break of a break, then I can’t write about anything else.4

I have a medication review for my SSRI on the 1st of May, because although health care is essentially free here, you have to wait for ten million years to be seen by anyone. Even if you need an inhaler but don’t have a prescription yet <3 My meds aren’t going to last that long, to be honest, and I don’t really know what I would do if they suddenly decide I don’t need to be on Lexapro. Does it help to be worrying about that now that I can’t really do anything about it yet? No, but it feels better to complain about it in the privacy of my own Substack newsletter.

I do feel better now that I’ve written all of this down. I’ve not been so responsive to people or all that online. I’ve always been introverted and hermit-adjacent, but lately, I’ve just felt so disconnected from everyone. And also I have some baggage I have to work through about relationships and friendships that is, again, another story for another day. I get so in my head sometimes, it’s hard to find a way out. When I get real deep in there, sometimes, I don’t even want to.

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Stuff I’ve been enjoying so that this doesn’t seem as depressing:

• Putting on podcast recaps of TikTok influencer culture (so I don’t have to do deep dives myself) while I’m cleaning or cooking or working on my freelance projects. I mostly watch Do We Know Them? which goes into unspeakable depths of TikTok trash drama. But I love.

• Knitting again. Helps with reducing phone screen time. I finished a top for spring (the first garment I finished in about a year) which was exciting.

• Doing fun eyeshadow looks again. I bought Byredo’s Vesuvio palette and made a custom Issy palette with mainly shimmer shades anyone over the age of 37 who had a beauty blog in the 2010s would tell you not to buy.

• T.V. shows: Beef season 2, Below Deck Down Under (such a class season), Survivor 50, Summer House (as an investigative journalist for Scamanda clues), Last One Laughing season 2 (apart from the last episode). We also finished the latest season of Married at First Sight Australia, but I cannot in good conscience recommend it, because while it was fairly dramatic, it was way trashier than usual.

• Freezing leftovers in those silicone trays so that we have food for days when we’re like, “Oh no, we don’t have any food.”