Sea Change
'A profound and notable transformation'
The new oven is silent. I switched it on for the first time on Sunday evening, a chicken stuffed with garlic parsley butter under its skin poised to blister for the next hour in 200º heat. It took approximately 8 minutes to come up to temperature, a pace I’m not used to. The door opens from a side hinge and there’s a grill up top, so I need to crouch even further when placing the heavy cast iron pan inside.
At the time of writing, I am not in possession of an official fridge; although I do have a fridge of sorts stocking the necessities: kimchi, cheddar, orange juice, a chicken spine for stock, various herbs and half cut spring onions. I’m feeling out of sorts and although at the time of writing this particular sentence I am now in possession of the fridge, and it’s being left to rest before being turned on (a true test of my patience). It’s like I don’t know what to do with myself when there’s no food to browse, or a door open long enough for the fridge to beep at you, half an idea about what to make arising from various herb ends and Jersey Royals in the cupboard.
I spend most days walking around the house thinking about how I’d like to change it. My phone is awash with interior inspiration, so much so that I wonder how I can distinguish between what I like and what other people like, although that’s true of most external expressions of ourselves. I sometimes feel vapid and frivolous for spending time thinking about paint colours and dining tables, and I concede that perhaps that’s true but ok to do, as long as there are other more noble thoughts wobbling around in my brain.
Taste is about perception: how you see yourself, how others see you. I’ve been playing around on TikTok and can’t pinpoint the reason why, but I’m guessing it’s because I’m craving being observed, and even though I know being observed by strangers on the internet isn’t the direct route to intimacy and connection, it’s something I’ve been doing for years just in a different form, and it would be a little elitist of me to assume writing for validation is any more noble than posting one minutes videos about my life.
The definition of sea change is ‘a profound of notable transformation’. It’s a little on the nose to describe the transition from city to coast as a sea change, but nonetheless it is one. I keep shrugging off the idea that it’s so colossal. Friends keep asking me how I’m doing. I haven’t cried yet which makes me feel like a sociopath. As if leaving does not phase me. I’m used to leaving, but I’m also used to coming back. Perhaps it will hit me on my first return to London, knowing I can’t just cycle home to the flat and lie on the bed like a cat in the sun, the window wedged open the way only I know how to do.
Instead of sadness of leaving the place I left behind, I see the possibility of the place I have arrived; but with possibility I always see ways of squandering it. How easy it is to dream up adventures but stay at home because the weather’s not perfect, or (even more ridiculous) because I won’t know where to park or how to start or where I’ll end up. This has become more clear to me in recent years – how terrified I am of not knowing where I’m going. Or what I’m doing. My ability to be independent and self-sufficient is constantly overshadowed by an overwhelming belief I can’t do certain things (paint a wall, locate a fuse box), and the excuse that it’s ok to not be able to do it and that someone else will be there to help. If there was one idiom that truly summed up my life, it would be making a mountain out of a molehill. I have an uncanny ability to make even the simplest task feel like an impossible challenge.
The sea has changed in the past 24 hours. Once windswept and white-capped, it now ebbs and flows a little more gently, the sunlight softly dancing on its surface. I have a lighthouse in mind – a 2 mile walk from a cove named Lamorna. I know this car park only takes cash and for some reason it seems impossible to understand how to overcome this – I’m already considering not going – even though I could walk into town, take cash out, change it for coins and be back in 10 minutes. I’m aware how ridiculous it sounds. But for some reason my brain converts the simplest obstacle into a Herculean task – a wall to run into and not even try to break through. In other ways, an easy way to fail.
In truth, I am hoping to undertake a profound and notable transformation. I would like to believe I’m a capable human being. I would love to not second guess myself as much, and I’d like to not take everyone else’s opinion of me so seriously to the point of not knowing what I really want to do. I would like to feel confident enough to fall in love and stop making jokes about it or say things like ‘I’ll be alone forever’ so much that I believe it. I’d like to keep writing for the love of writing, and to do it more and turn off the switch in my brain that counts the likes or the views or the comments of all the other people on the internet, and to stop assuming that they’re better than me.
Much like this house, it’s all a work in progress – but there are good foundations. It just takes a little reshuffling, and the patience to not rush in and tear it apart before figuring out how it’s all pieced together.
