The Future
When I think of the future, all I can see is a looming fog. Thick swathes of grey cloud creeping closer, blurring the present at the edges. I see snatches of moments — a desk, a novel, a bedmate — but they are as fleeting and fickle as mirages in the desert. It could be a desert within that fog, for all I know; a place where everything has withered and died. I will wither and die in that fog, too.
And I wonder if maybe it is best to die before withering. Every now and then a tendril of fog drifts into my lungs, tightens my chest, and that unknown is so overwhelming that I can’t face it. Don’t want to face it. I wonder if it will be easier to flee, to dip out of the world while it is still something I recognise and enjoy, to quit while I am ahead. The snatches of methodology are just as flimsy as the dreams, but at least I know they are capable of manifesting.
But then I’ll see the Lapis Lazuli figurine on my bookshelf, and I will step back into hours of technicolour aliens, desperately finishing a show so I am ready when Max brings it up again. I step into the house we have just finished painting, greeted by the sting of Dettol as Lucy and I scrub a painted footprint from the carpet. I step into the clothes I ordered from Depop; the long, sweeping green skirt that reminds me of Dodie and Shannon, but makes me feel like myself. These, I realise, are more than snatches of thought. They are tangible, and they are me. They are what I would desperately like more of.
When the next image flickers through the fog, I take to Pinterest and start a “wedding dresses” board. I can’t remember what the daydream looked like, so I gather everything I even vaguely hope was in it. Maybe I had a long train dragging behind me, one Max will later say he was sure I would trip over. Maybe I was covered in lace, or flowers, or in material so thin it didn’t really cover at all. Maybe there were sleeves, or maybe my collarbones were catching the sunlight as I caught his hands. Having the board there helps, as silly as I feel; I have something rooting that thought to the world. I have dragged it through the fog.
The hair comes next — vibrant pink around a giddy face. I trawl through the Arda Wigs website, assembling a favourite’s list and slowly whittling it down. It is months before I place the order, when the image is a little firmer. It might have been a festival in the background; that too is added to the list. An indie festival, I decide it was, because that’s the kind Max would really enjoy. I start Googling with fervour.
The writing is a little harder to manifest. I cannot create a Pinterest board of books I have yet to write, so I settle for the next best thing: beginning to write them. I zero-draft garbage, scribble half-formed notes and sentences in notebooks, start watching booktubers that use words like “zero-draft”. This drags me into reading, and then the image comes alive. I am gathering the words, the thoughts, the techniques that will, one day, morph into the books in that image.
Despite it all, the future is still concealed in that fog. But now I know it is concealed, not consumed, and that implies discovery. An assurance that whatever the horrors hidden there, I will find plenty of dreams within it too. Sometimes I still wonder if the dreams will outweigh the horrors. Now, however, I care enough to long for the answer.