Well, the regulars amongst you will be shocked and surprised at the frequency I am appearing in your inbox/substack feed/instagram stories. You are not imagining it; I am indeed currently writing little letters to you twice a week. What can I say? I’m a woman who is pretty much unable to work in a traditional capacity these days through my caring responsibilities, so here I am, trying to make a proper go of this Substack thing. I just need a celebrity to share my writing and all my woes will be over. Something like that. I mean, I don’t really believe that (a small part of me does… a girl can dream! Are you a celebrity? Go on… share, share! Please?)
I’ve been thinking a lot about perception and reality. And the chasm between the two. First b*tchfest of the day is about an old colleague of mine. She was awful. Utterly unpleasant. I can’t even begin to describe how much she hated me and wasn’t afraid to show it. I respected her for that. Imagine being so straightforward? She never smiled in my presence, often sat silently, judging in the Monday meeting. She found my exuberance annoying, of that I am sure. So I became bigger and more technicolour, raging against her, like a disapproved of toddler. She was the epitome of demure and mindful.
Anyway, one day after I did something that annoyed her more than ever before, she emailed me and told me to ‘find some time in her diary and book a meeting room’. Now you’d be forgiven for thinking she was my boss, but she wasn’t. She was my peer. But I did it anyway, begrudgingly. A form of self flagellation?
The meeting made me cry. Not in her presence I hasten to add. She went through a list of all the things wrong with me and why I did not deserve the role I had and how she COULD HAVE WORKED IN LONDON IF SHE’D WANTED TO BUT HATED LONDON AND THE PEOPLE THERE SO HADN’T. All I could think about was Sartre and the concept of living in Bad Faith, the insanity of the ‘could have’ when one hadn’t. I didn’t voice my concerns thank f*ck.
It’s free to subscribe…
(Though for the price of a coffee a month you can access the juicy bits too).
Maybe she was right (definitely not about the London thing ha ha, nobody has time for sour female faces in advertising down there). I can see now she might have had a point. I remember trying to defend myself, pointing out the experience I had. She replied with a line that I ridiculed her for later that evening after watching Russell Brand perform stand up (that recollection hasn’t aged well, huh?), “perception is reality Holly”. I think I probably didn’t get what she meant. It was word salad to me.
Back when I lived in London, probably being an insufferable c*nt
Anyway. Moving on to another cringe inducing memory. This time it’s a playground one. A mum friend informed me that another mum from the school had been describing me as ‘chaotic’. I felt sad and seen but smiled anyway. These days I am past the point of necessary playground friendships and baulk at the obsessive way I tried to force kinship with women who just happened to have sex in the same 12 month period as me. The parental playground hub is just a more ancient version of the one we endured as kids. Trying to foster friendships with people who are geographically similarly located and of the same age. Bonkers isn’t it?
But this mum who described me as chaotic, I wanted her to like me. Despite her clearly finding me irritating. No one ever describes another person as chaotic without finding them irritating. It’s a grand euphemism isn’t it? I wanted to tell her that I’m not chaotic, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not. She didn’t know me well enough to make this judgement call. Except perception is reality. She saw me as chaotic and therefore I was chaotic. (I am a bit, but also not, too).
If you like this piece, you might enjoy some of my writing about all the men I’ve ever loved. You can read them here, here, here, here and here. There’s also some pieces on all the men I’ve never loved. (Cunning huh?) You can read them here, here and then there’s an imagining of my life if I’d stay with some of these fellows.
And then, we come to another person, or people who have discussed me, outlining my personality. I recently learnt that my ex
