I was once a mad woman. You might not have recognised me.
Balanced on a speaker with my hair plastered to my forehead, cigarettes tucked into my denim shorts, waving my hands with wild abandon. Completely tireless, and with the wild look you only see at 3.15 on a crazy afternoon.
Look closely - you can see plastic jewellery adorning my wrists, cheap sunglasses pushed back on my hair. They don't protect my eyes from the sun - and you would most definitely lecture me about the damage they were doing to my delicate corneas.
You would think me too thin - you can practically count my ribs if you try hard enough. My hair is too long, and out of condition. But I get away with it, perhaps that's what I believe, or maybe I don't even care. You would conclude there was little time or need in my life to go to the hairdresser.
You might want to pull me aside and ask if I was taking care of myself. By looking at me you would not know about the trip to the hospital, and I wouldn't mention it. Or maybe I would, making it sound comical, glossing over the grey reality of it, making it safe for public consumption.
You would think my friends too loud perhaps, or too strange. And you would want to tell me that ten years from now I will not remember most of their faces, or names. I will not be in touch with them, not even with the help of this thing called Facebook, which you cannot even begin to explain to me.
That the things that seem so important now really don't mean anything. Though you know I know it too. That all this is temporal, it's soon to become a technicolour snapshot of the past. Where I will always be thin, I will always be young, I will always be the queen.
Where I run into the back room and grab her hand because they're playing our tune and I don't even need to say a word. Because she understands perfectly that this is our time, this is our summer, this is our everything.
How we sit out on our terrace at night and bask in the heat of the night, the clammy film on the skin. Drink wine out of a box and scribble on the paper tablecloth. marvel in the wonder of this strange world that has sucked us both in and will soon spit us both out.
The strange thrill of being surrounded by people speaking another language and not really understanding a word, but pretending you do.
The horror and delight when the lights go on at the end of the night and the music stops. But it doesn't matter, there's always somewhere to go.
The pride that this is all your doing. A fly by the seat of your pants whim that became reality. Something that many other people would shy away from. It's too much of a risk, it's too far from home, it's just not the sensible thing to do.
You would see all this and you would be happy for me. You would tell me to stay out one hour longer, have that last drink, dance to one more tune.
Four months to last a lifetime.
You would understand, I know you would.
