7 days in limbo [Billie Eilish]

DAY VII.2: road work ahead

Bright midday sunlight danced over the floor of my flat. I watched the patters move and change, listened to the hissing of water and hugged my knees closer to my chest. The kitchen counter was cool against my back. The tap was running.

After I had left the hotel so suddenly I had gone to my flat and straight to bed again. Luckily I had been exhausted enough to fall asleep. The nap had bought me some blissful time. Afterwards, I had gotten up to get a glass of water.
Said glass was overflowing in the sink now and I had somehow ended up on the kitchen floor.

It had crashed over me like a tidal wave. All of it.

I stared blankly at my desk. I had stared at it for the past ten minutes. There were only two things on it: the keys for the Hunted Hall and my analogue camera.

My eyes switched back and forth between the two items.

My phone had three missed calls, one from my younger brother and two from my dad but those were the least of my problems right now.
I stood clumsily, stiff from sitting on the floor for too long. After I turned off the running water I slowly walked up to the desk.

My hand hovered in the air between the keys and the camera.

I frowned and was ready to turn away with frustration when something weird happened, something inexplicable.
I watched my fingers reach out as if remote-controlled. It was like my body had decided what to do before the rest of me could catch up. As soon as I moved I knew that it was right.

Any choice was salvation at this point. Anything felt better than staying another second at the crossroads I had been camping at temporarily for the past years.

Relief flooded me. The sharp edges of the metal dug into my palm as my hand closed around the object.

~

The fluorescent tail-lights pierced into my eyes. The violent wind gripping my clothes buzzed in my ears only decibels short of a jet engine. A rope hit my back in a steady rhythm. It held down a duffle bag, tying it to the pillion of my Yamaha.

A street sign raced past above my head.

The NORTH
Birmingham 109
Manchester (M6) 192

I truly was a total sucker for blue eyes.

How I had managed to pack and organize everything in less than a day was still a mystery to me. It was late in the evening and in Manchester Billie's show must be at its mid-point.

There was still a lot to sort out. Meo would stay with Christopher until I could bring him back to Germany. I had called Richard to negotiate who would take over for me at the venue. Hopefully I could quickly resign my flat and somehow give my stupid houseplant back to my mum so it would finally stop dying.

I had not called my dad yet. It would be one hell of a call but he would have to come to terms with my plans whether he wanted to or not. I knew that sooner or later he would accept my choice.

Because a choice I had made if hastily packing up all my belongings and driving across half the country in the middle of the night was anything to go by.

My hand had reached for the camera with certainty. I chose art.
Just like that I was not in limbo anymore. Taking the camera was like finally being set free from that unbearable in-between-place I had been stuck in for too long.

There was no way of knowing where this job took me, what opportunities awaited me and where I would be a few months from now.
I only hoped it was somewhere close to Billie. I did not care if she and I were even going to be a thing. We would have to see if either of us wanted to be part of a thing. We both needed independence and plenty of room to breathe.

I saw my mistake now. Turns out in the past I had not been bad at communicating with others. I had mostly been bad at communicating with myself.
I was sick and tired of telling myself that I was a rational person who thought with their head first. It was a lie.

I kicked down a gear, released the clutch and accelerated to overtake a line of cars on the right. The motorway was leading me north through the indigo night and to my left the sky was still ablaze with the last light.
I almost laughed because it was so stupidly cliché-ridden and almost too cheesy to be real.

A part of me still believed I was making a mistake, I was being reckless, I was acting without thinking. It had become easier to tell that part of me to shut the hell up.
Blame it on my naivety but I did not think I was losing my mind anymore; I was finding it. If I wanted to feel ready I would be waiting forever. Nobody can be ready. Ever.

The urge to scream and laugh into my helmet at the top of my lungs was overpowering. Something in my ribcage wanted to break free and fly out into the summer night. Everything but that feeling was irrelevant.

A thought circled through my mind on a loop:

Truth is, nobody knows what the fuck they are doing.
Everybody just moves along somehow, sleepwalks from day to day and sometimes it's a nightmare and sometimes it's a lucid fantasy. And if it's the latter you better chase that feeling.

If I was going to mess up my future, I might as well do it following my heart.

_______________________________________

Nightcall - Kavinsky