I watch the tiny black panther paw her way through the overgrown garden of my swanky neighbours. I can only assume they are due to both cadence, accent and names I have only heard of in movies about private schools. I’ve decided the panther is a she despite the gendered red collar. She moves with a grace and a curiosity, the morning sun rippling off of her silky black coat. I think how much more I would love to be a well loved silky black cat, than whatever this is.

everyone is hurting.

A friend wrestles with the notion of trust, of being loved and chosen. Just this once, to be seen and chosen. Another mourns what a relationship could have been. Another wakes in a state of low grade panic every morning surrounding the climate crisis, the slowly unveiling impending doom that saw London experience it’s hottest summer in its history. One is pregnant, surviving said heatwave whilst another wrestles with an impending health diagnosis. One’s marriage has broken down, another left a toxic relationship.

I look back at my silky friend in next doors garden. She’s chasing and grasping at some sort of bug. I miss having a little beast in the home. My own fat boy cat Capanách residing in Belfast with his other mother, Annie, myself surrendering custody in order to make the move to London again. I miss my rascally 16 year old Jack Russel Eddie, greying under the late Irish sun in rural county down, too old to chase birds like he used to. I found out that people with endometriosis can apply for a service dog, or an emotional support dog. How incredibly chic?

I’m navigating stage 4 endometriosis. I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. I’ve gotten a lot better recently at negotiating and navigating when I need alone time, and more importantly, time that is devoid of plans. It’s hard in a place like London, the city makes you feel shamed for not rinsing every last drop of life, money and joy out of every experience. Which in some ways, we thank her for. To be alive, to go for it, to rinse and repeat is what being young and alive in a big city is for, expect, for the chronically ill. We have a hard full stop put in front of our expectations, hopes and plans, at the drop of a hat. I wonder can an endo-service dog know when I’m going to flare up? I email the service dog help line to ask them if they know. I wonder what dog I would be assigned if I ever did get one? Can you accessorise a service dog? Or does that go against the ethos or a serious working dog? Surely you can bedazzle their little vest at least?

I’ve been thinking a lot about desire. Dating and the legacy that men have left on my life, for better or for worse. Dating in a place like London can be extremely volatile and vulnerable. Everyone is trying to not only survive, but find peace in the chaos, purpose in the mess, and look effortlessly cool sat outside a wine bar in some trendy new suburb that their friends have been ‘dying to try’. That’s maybe a bit cynical, I myself have wine bars that I want to try. I think London produces a porous sweat at a cellular level that renders single people both addicted to validation and desperate for approval. It’s a to-and-fro I wrestle with it regularly, wanting to be seen and desired, but also having desires, especially seeing as a woman having an appetite and any form of desire is still considered gauche by many metrics.

The funny thing about love is that it shows up at it’s most ferocious in it’s hand to hand combat against pain. I used to think that being a good friend was the absence of mess. The absence of pain. Maybe it was my religious or rural upbringing, (it is hard to extrapolate the two), but I have realised that through my own struggles, and witnessing the pain of my twenty-to-thirty-something year old friends, that the absence of pain is simply, not an honest existence. I’ve spent my thirty years on earth laughing off pain. Physical and mental. Not reaching out when I should have, not asking for help where it was needed. I have friends repeatedly chastise me when they have to find out through instagram stories that I’m bed bound, and ask why the hell wouldn’t I call them? I don’t know. The inherent shame of being needy? Being too much? Or simply being seen as anything other than strong and capable. Tears on the phone and deep breaths with my friends has brought me back time and time again, about issues big and small. Burn out, infertility, impending surgeries, money worries, the dating cesspit of East London - it all sounds silly when you write it down I suppose. None of it is really that deep in the end. It matters horribly and also matters nought. The earth will still spin on it’s axis if I approach the day with fear the same as it will if i carpe diem. I cannot stress how loud this revelation sang true in my head. All the while on the other end of the line, is a friend who herself is struggling to navigate huge crisis, but takes the time to call me and ask, truly, how are you? I wish we had landlines. Calls of this magnitude requires a curly corded house phone.

The doctors ask me “how is my mental health?” They hear what I have traversed in the last six months and ask if I would be interested in therapy. (I have been more than quadruple therapised at this stage, talking, CBT, private, public, but I know better than to turn down the chance to put the worlds wrongs to rights with a stranger.) If the stern GP offers therapy you better take it !!!!

I think about how being loved by my friends, truly loved and seen has irreparably altered the way that I date. For the better that is. I am deeply. platonically in love with my friends. I think they’re the coolest people in the world. I can’t believe I get to be surrounded by people with their own rich tapestries, constellations of talents interests and wit all wrapped up in a gorgeous chic packaging. The word ‘chic’ has suffered a huge blow through girly-slop reels and tiktoks, however I can assure you reader that my friends, although everyone differening in size,shape and style, are unmistakeably chic.

My friend’s changed how I date because in how I was loved with my baggage and my mess. Without the need to change, be moulded or arrive in an altered more acceptable state. to show up anyway even if not at 100%. They’ll listen to me talk about my new obsession or Thursday night date I have lined up because they not only like me, they love me. You may think that like and love are two sides of the same coin, but they are not. You can love someone because they’re family, but not actually like them. I felt this heavily navigating undiagnosed AUDHD in both my teens and early twenties. To feel, for lack of a better term, tolerated. Do you know how revolutionary it is to be loved and liked and hounded by people who choose to care for you in this big scary city? When the group chat pings are consistent with friends sharing pain, sorrow, fear ad burnout, and we all choose to sit in it together. That is divine woman hood. The intersection of uttering our deepest darkest fears followed swiftly by an incredibly depraved meme. How on earth could I date someone who wouldn’t plan a date when my friends would call me to check on my headspace while their partner is hospitalised? When the busiest friend I have still makes time to bake me a loaf of wheaten bread? When my iconic girl about town friend still makes time to meet for a pint and brings me sweets just because? Friends that delight in your presence, and you revel in theirs. True love.

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I truly do not know if someone can exceed the level of love that exists in my life. I cry to my GP as she cock’s her head to ask, “do you not want children?’ whilst discussing my next and final options for treating stage 4 endometriosis. I tell her how cared I am, how seen and loved, to have people around who make space for the pain as I would for theirs. “That’s nice,” she mutters, furiously typing up a referral letter that will see me start the process of figuring out which surgery awaits me. The gravitas of my friendships lost on her. I need surgery again. Maybe another excision where they will cut away the lesions that entangle my organs, but with a 6 - 8 week recovery time there’s never really an opportune moment as a freelancer to take that kind of pay cut. Of course the only other alternative at this point is to cut away my bastard ovaries, with a full or partial hysterectomy. The funny thing is, that up until this point, my main worry has been my workload and income. I haven’t had time to focus on being sick. A good thing I suppose? (Discuss amongst yourselves if this is the hangover of the famed toxic protestant work ethic idk I’m tired.)

I often don’t allow myself to enter into the severity of it all. I’m just trying to have my Sex And The City thirties story arc where I dress in day-to-night outfits as promised to me in the grailed pages of cosmopolitan and vogue. Very few things in our lives are ‘vogue’ adjacent these days. Trump (less said the better). The Genocide in Gaza rages on and it’s a death race between whether AI will kill us or soaring temperatures and climate instability. Life feels heavy and scary for everyone. I have not one friend who isn’t suffering under the weight of it all. But what the GP won’t tell you is that calling your friend and going for a pint or two or three is one of the best most immediately healing acts you could undergo. To laugh till you cry, and then cry until they make you laugh again, it’s all a part of the mess. To see the hope and love you apply to your friends, and apply that love within.

So eat drink and be merry. Date, date them all, may the best man or woman win, but remember that the first love is the one that carries you throughout.

I’m writing a book and I’m reading Norah Ephron at the same time. I Love the work of Norah, I watched the documentary by her son about her life recently. Famesick by Lena Dunham also had a profound effect on me, but admittedly I had to stop multiple times and skip certain chapters as a well woman who is mostly ill can find it very hard to hear about someone else living and recounting your pain.

The older lady works at my toenails. I feel sorry for her as it is a particularly hot day in London and the air and streets are dusty. The grass is dead in all the parks with the government refusing to address it as a state of national emergency. They say that crop failure and shortages will lead to a lack of food to feed the nation. I stare at the bottle of water inside my bag.

It’s a family run business where a little boy runs free wearing a Bluey t shirt and tiny blue crocs that make my heart ache. He runs over to me to show me his daddy on FaceTime and I laugh and wave at the unknown man. It’s a strange thing measuring the passage of time through the growth of someone else’s son.

I moved into the area in the depths of winter and would marvel at the tiny boy in the pram, being rocked by the foot of a woman so impressively multitasking over another woman’s feet. Months of passing by the glowing shop front accessorised by pots of nail polish in glass cabinets. My bus would pass or perhaps I would be on foot, to observe the tiny window into a world of women, all with whom had their own hopes fears and dreams. All came to the salon to spend 40 minutes being taken care of. A truly holy scene.

When the weather changed and April brought heat and sunshine I made sure to employ this as my local nail salon. Shocked to find this baby boy now up and running confidently through the sea of short swivel chairs, boxes and towels.

A young professional walks in and perches on the leather bench, awaiting a nail tech to see her. She’s dark skinned and has some of the highest cheekbones I have ever seen in real life. Her look is incredibly chic, a black satin and lace slip skirt paired with black Tory Burch sliders and a deconstructed boxy black T shirt. Of course it wasn’t the t shirt that I noticed first but the Givenchy bag. She was carrying. If my diagnosis was correct it would be from the Ghesqiere era. Black and boxy. It could be fake, but she didn’t give fake luxury energy. It’s funny how we see strangers and how they see us, when we spend most of our lives wondering about what strangers believe to be true about us without taking the time to build out robust enough inner worlds. What does that mean when we devote more time to perception than to the actualisation of our own personhood? I fear I’m not smart enough to answer this question but it does feel Orwellian.

Perched on my leather throne I notice another young woman boarding the bus I used to ride. She was wearing the same brand of headphones I was at that exact moment. Except mine were pink and hers were white. I wear one of my headphones off my ear just incase the small lady needs to communicate with me.

Tech is so desperate to sell tech to women, not to involve them. When what women so desperately is to simply be seen and heard, not utilised and strategised down the drain of cables and matter to be absorbed into data that regurgitates into some CEO’s pocket. What we are ultimately sold is desirability, I mused. is that why I paint my toenails red?

It’s not a red red. Not a pillar box postal red, but it’s not purple either. It’s definitely on the wine side of dark rather than bright, and it’s the same colour I get every 4/5 weeks. Mostly because of my neurodivergence and need for order. I peruse the nail colours so neatly lined up in their plastic padel’s, like little acrylic soldiers ready for neon war.

I scroll through the multitude of options, musing upon what it would be like to be a woman who had a French mani pedi. What if I was crazy and got neon yellow? Sparkles? Or turquoise blue. The girls yearns for turquoise blue this summer that is so crisp it could crackle in your mouth if you could taste it. Like those popping candies your mum wouldn’t let you eat at birthday parties. But if I choose a trend based colour, even if I love it, people will think that I’m someone who chooses their nails based off of trends, and not what I want. And what do I want?

I want red. I want consistency. I want to feel like an 80’s starlet. A seductress. A strong confident Alexi Carrington Colby of the 1980’s hit series Dynasty. I want to be feared and desired. I want to be adored.

I walk past fruit lined streets where pears wilt under the weight of the oppressive heat. I never eat pears. Maybe I should start

I wonder what I will have for dinner.

A teenager walks past me in fur lined ugg boots and I’m as appalled as I am comically amazed by teenagers resilience to commit to styles and trends that go against human nature. Refusing jackets and coats in the winter, and wearing fur lined Ugg boots in the summer. To be young is to rebel against the way we are taught things are I guess. I began to recollect my teen years and winced at the mental image of cropped skinny jeans and converse with crop tops and cardigans and chokers.

I think about grief a lot.

I think about grieving that girl that never really got to be a normal teenager, and a young woman who had to fight her way back to the beginning. There’s mixed evidence essays and peer reviewed studies to suggest that being. A pushover and a people pleaser can accurate and corrupt one’s body into a vessel where auto-immune disease, chronic illness and pain run rampant. If that school of thought is true then so I am the proof.

I think about the woman I want to be.

Not just the misguided woman I have been. Would she be proud of me and my red toenails? Or would she want pink gel polish? Would she think I was cool and kind? Would she marvel at my effort to not only survive but thrive? Would she like my outfits or call me a sell out for growing out my buzz cut? Would she care for the buzz cut I had in the first place. I think so.

It was high July in the countryside. The scenery in the North of Ireland in full bloom, offset by the hangover of the loyalist celebrations. The Hedgerows reach for the sky, as if they too wish to tear the flags of King Billy from their lofty lampposts.

I haven’t been home in 6 months. For no particular reason other than being focused on a demanding work schedule and endometriosis flare up’s causing me to cancel any of my previously planned trips. I’m glad I waited until now. High summer in Ireland is magnificent. The colours are loud and unapologetic. Almost as if they were emanating their own light, light is everywhere.

Ireland in the sun feels like it’s high, floating in a mysterious daze, as if the real colours and way things are wake up when warmed by the striking blue sky. It’s so bright at midday that it feels like there’s a permanent haze over the hills, heat rises off the unmarked roads that wind through the Mourne mountains, and honeysuckle lines the verges. You can suck the nectar right out of them, if you get the right batch. My great uncle Cecil taught me that. He had a silky black and white border collie called Prince, which I found odd that a hyper masculine man with hands like shovels and shoulders that hung almost frankenstine-ly large against his wiry figure, should call his dog something so gentle. He was a loyal, hard working and gentle dog that was completely betrothed to Cecil.

Cecil lived in a wonky cottage at the foothills of the mountains, my fathers family of course, farming sheep in the hills. The cottage was white, dark inside with a red painted trim and an immaculate garden. I remember feeding a small grey/black lamb in that garden, and being surprised by how strong they were. My mother always called me ‘Lucy-Lamb’, I recount as i touch the 1950’s style lamb with studded black collar that permanently frolics up my right forearm. Ironic to now be the black sheep of my own family.

I eat a kiwi for breakfast and find it odd because I never consider the kiwi to be a viable option. My cousin is allergic to kiwi’s and I find that so funny, how the body would choose such an obscure fruit to banish from her Irish gene pool.

The hairdressers smells of Barbicide and Biscoff biscuits. The clear cellophane wrappers glint in the breeze as the fan turns to ease the room from the Irish heatwave. My roots black and my hair frazzled as I type. A small hunched woman with cherry red hair and Katy Perry-pink lipstick hands me a coffee and remarks on the weather, I tell her how bad London has been and we begin the usual dance of comparing dry heat to humid heat. I feel my natural cadence breaking forth, and hadn’t realised that i had altered it at all.

Three colour books lie on a table an arms reach from my station, where I sit and wait for the bleach to take hold. They are the colourists’ books with looped hair samples of every tone. I want to touch them, but that feels weird. I remember going to the local chemists with my mother, I couldn’t have been older than 5 but I remember she would leave me in the hair isle, and I would stroke all the different tones, wondering which one I could be. The hairdresser lady hands me a bitter black coffee which I wait to let cool down.

I try to return. I try to find home all the time and I can’t. The return requires constant death and a humility that was already beaten out of me in such a way that there are no morsels left to submit. Returning feels like holding my breath, underwater, not relaxing into.

It’s hot and I’m hungover. A bank holiday weekend of festivities just past and too much fun was had.I’m house sitting in Deptford, it’s 32 degrees and I’ve awoken filled with rage. I stumble down the powdered blue corridor with it’s dark wood flooring of my friends apartment, slowly to the kitchen to salvage the late morning with the strongest coffee I can make. All the while, Binx the baby cat follows in tow, trying to catch the lacey hem of my nightdress in her claws.

“LKJHGFDGSFAZSDFGGFFFffffffFFFFFFFFFGGEEEE” - Binx types with her delicate paws before i can swipe her off my macbook. She promtly follows the computer based offence by dunking her suspicious nose into my mug filled with chia pudding and honey. The result is great grief from the tiny cat, and a lot of baby wipes to clean up the sticky mess. You forget little animals are like toddlers, little excitable children. I suppose that’s why we use our baby voices for both?

Binx settles down on the table, clutching between her paws an iphone charger and an emotional support receipt from last nights kebab. Truly things are so much simpler if you’re just a little cat.

Turning thirty was a revelation. I felt a guttural urge to commit myself in new ways that I had never once given much thought. To hold two truths at once, truths of caring far too deeply about everything, whilst the gnawing jaws of nihilism remind me that it also doesn’t matter in the slightest. To commit to my own ways of thinking, how I see the world, how I dress my body, how I date and love, how I show up in authenticity and integrity to every facet of my life. And it’s exhausting.

Committing to loving myself in a way that is not impacted by outside factors. A love for ones self that is forged in pits of despair and worry and sleepless nights and loveless days. One thing I consider when I think about the upheaval of two breakups in two years, is that I have never been without love. I’ve maybe been without facets of love and commitment that I yearn for, but in the highs and lows of life I cannot believe that I get to be loved and known so well by the friends around me. It’s my best friend filling a shoe box with vintage toy animals and figurines, just because he knows they’re my favourite. The friend that knew I was having a rough week navigating work and health worries, so baked me a loaf of soda like my mum would make back in Ireland. It has the potential to make a grown woman weep.

Toy pigs are my favourite fyi**

I think a lot about love now that I’m thirty. I’m equally confused, resolved and terrified by the prospect of love. (Apparently it’s a pipeline of hyper femme/sexual women to celibate idk) Maybe what has changed the most, is that relationships and being loved and held was my driving force for most of my chaotic twenties, the need to belong and be desired. The need to find safety through being loved by someone else. Now, I find myself convincing myself of an inner stoicism that said I am okay, that I don’t need the approval, I don’t need the attention and I am in fact not a freak and am completely normal (a stretch perhaps.) I don’t need to get a text back, I certainly won’t wait around for it (a lie of course).I won’t scan the room and hope to be noticed, certainly not. (Another lie of course.) I won’t look for approval in the eyes of strangers on public transport, (the biggest lie of all.). I won’t seek comfort or pleasure in the virtual accolades of likes responses and comments. I won’t hope to be seen.

We spend so much of our lives as women hoping to be seen. to be noticed, for the rom com walk-in-the-room-and-he-gasps moment. To have your social media stalked. To have someone who needs you. So much of our formative years is clouded by the deep desire, often conflated with need now in the digital age. Desire is not of course an inherently wrong thing to want. To hope someone searches a room to find you, one eye on the party and one eye on you at all times. To be remembered, valued, considered.

But this is where it gets confusing, and also, possibly revolutionary. We as women who live under patriarchy (regardless of our gender expression or sexuality engage in the dance of male approval at every hurdle of our lives.) How do we see ourselves? How do we romance and notice ourselves and show up for ourselves in ways where you can enter the party alone with your head held high knowing that you are instinctually enough, with enough to offer, whether people (namely men) notice it or not? Truth be told, this kind of work takes decades.

It’s hard to consider romanticising yourself when you first learnt about desire through the lens of how others perceived you. Namely men. Men perceive, perv on, and desire girls when we don’t even understand what desire is or feels like. But all we end up knowing and feeling is that it is dirty and wrong. Something to be dodged like a bullet, ran away from, hide at the end of your garden in the shed air raid style fear. Because when desire is taught and exposed through a male lens, it shows us that we are never the consideration in and of the need, but simply a vessel to them achieving their desire. We are in that sense, innocent bystanders in our own lives when we arrive at being desired.

Men look at me and howl like dogs. Not because I’m pretty, or beautiful, or have some form of untapped ‘je ne sais quoi’. But because my attention granted is rooted in desire. But not mine. Never mine.

Men see a larger woman who takes up space, drenched in tattoo’s with bold lips and a sway in her walk meant for no one but herself and assume, it’s mine. It’s meant for me. Why else would she perform like this? (I could say its years of undiagnosed AUDHD but men don’t want to hear that.) SO instead I put my eyes to the ground when walking in public, keep my head down so as not to invite attention. Tattoo’s mean you’re a freak, an ironically blank canvas for one so inked - to recieve and platform mens desires and their ideas of who you are. I’m shaking as I type.

One recent tiktok i stumbled across and forgot to save, inspire of the profound affect int had on me, was one woman with a microphone prosthelatising how all men in her life either understood her or appreciated her, but never the tandem of both. Men look at me and howl like dogs some more. They appreciate, but they don’t want to understand. And also, women want to be able to move from their home to public transport without being bayed at from transit vans motor bikes and taxis. You spend years building your confidence only to have to retreat inward for your literal safety.

I’m reminded of the van on bank holiday Monday that pulled up along side me as i cycled through new cross, while we were both moving, three men flashing their teeth and yelling through the open van for me to say hi. I had to continue this interaction across two sets of traffic lights before I was able to change my route and ditch the losers in the beat up van.

I’m reminded of the men that were walking home ahead of me trying to locate my Uber, feeling vulnerable in an LBD and kitten heel combo, who stopped and declared ‘let the lady through’. Fanning feminism that claims chivelry, but is in fact so that a group of four men can walk directly behind me, watching my hips, and trying to discuss the size of my back tattoo. I stumble under the weight of the quadrupled gaze and the jokes rolled in about how they surely needed to bring me home.. I didn’t turn around once. When I got into the Uber I put my head in my hands, my heart pounding and cried.

I’m reminded of the men who tried to get me to hop into their slick Lexus in Soho, howling once again. I sent them off with a middle finger from my bus stop Vantage point. No more than thirty seconds later another drunken man entered stage left, hailed a taxi and beckoned and yelled for me to get in. He also received the middle finger and a look of disgust reserved for men like these. In this way, we transform from being women who dream about being noticed, to women who’s safety relies on traversing through undetected. How sad?

Binx sighs as I notice she’s pieced the receipt, stuck to her little paw. In this sense, I wonder, no matter how mature, developed, at one with our own selves we are, we cannot escape the male gaze. If the root of all desire is suffering, then so is a world where keeping my eyes to the ground feels safer than meeting the gaze head on.

I’m tired.

The thing I love about women is their ability to die and rebirth daily. Every day they experience a million tiny deaths that chip away at both heart and soul. And yet they persevere. You can’t believe that this is your body, that the pain you feel is real and it’s yours. Therefore you must own it and claim it. But who wants to claim pain?

My Uber glides past Friday couples with oat lattes in linen skirts and gorpy shoes. Hate them. I awoke this morning accompanied by the profound feeling of loneliness. Which makes no sense because I am the most loved I have ever been, but alone in the sense of ticking single/unmarried on your A&E forms and still putting your mum as your emergency contact. Being single with a chronic illness is not fun. It’s the opposite of fun. How are you meant to even meant to begin to negotiate dating?

“I hear the salmon is good here. I can’t have children. Do you want kids?”

At what point of a date do you disclose that your condition will mean countless surgeries, a reduced lifespan and of course, no biological children? (This is a serious question that I am asking.)

My driver works a knot out of his braids and negotiates a tight wisteria lined street. I check the time. I’ve officially missed my flight.

Why the hell is my GP in Wembley? I don’t understand the system. My neck hurts from yesterday’s seizure. My whole body in fact. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. Large sunglasses covering the bruising around my eyes. All the broken blood vessels that protruded aggressively after I hit the clinically blue linoleum floor. The intensity of the convulsions and not breathing causing them to burst across my eyes forehead, cheeks and neck, like a raspberry coloured constellation of freckles.

I don’t remember it really. I remember falling, and i remember coming round again, immediate pain and fear, in a room full of faces. I remember being acutely aware of how embarrassing it was to be on the floor of Homerton A&E in my yellow dress and boxing boots. Far too frivolous for the floor of my local hospital.

I later look down later to see Uber drivers hair on my jacket. Tight black coils, blown from the front seat on the north circular. I need to get my roots done.

As if the seizure wasn’t enough, I was due to fly home this weekend to surprise my mother extended family. We had it all planned out, my dad was taking her out for lunch, and i would roll up, fake Rimowa in tow and ask “room for a small one?” It was going to be magic. I had to tell her over the phone and break the excitement. I had been building up collectable London based trinkets for my Niece and Nephew, aged six and three. It’s hard to buy cute London paraphernalia for kids that isn’t emblazoned with the king or queen or the flag.. of course my niece and nephew are impervious to the connotation. I settled on paddington (i don’t trust that bear) and a set of stationary with iconic London landmarks. Seemed the most politically nuetral.

My sister is just home from her first family trip to Disney Land Paris. A parental landmark of iconic proportions. I got my new pair of Missy Elliot 2002 boxing boots that Veneda Carter wore to her wedding a few years back and sent the pinterest girlies into a frenzy. Different strokes. It hurts not being able to have kids. Even if I was unsure of the need to have them in the first place. It feels like a wide open chapter with no end. People use children as the markers of success, measure and worth. What happens to a woman when those markers are removed? Where does her worth come from? Some women replace children with a career. Other with activism. Whether wildlife, conservation or dismantling the patriarchy. I suspect that romantically I will end up with a woman over a man as it is women who have the emotional trepedation to traverse such difficult conversations, saturated in sacrifice and more often than not, shame.

I don’t remember taking this. Morphine is one hell of a drug.

Benji dropped everything to come take care of me. He buys me an oat chai latte and a vegan rocky road. I try to talk to him with eye contact but I can barely keep my eyes open. I warn him that it looks worse than it is, because sadly this is my normal. It’s a funny thing that the mothering instinct within is to mitigate the worries of those around me. I do however take the time to tell him that theres an unnecessarily hot doctor who’s so tall that he needs to duck under doorways. Hot doctor in the carhartts. I might be high but fierce is fierce.

Benji marvels at the Homerton trade and we both giggle every time we see a hot doctor, which is surprisingly regular? Benji has an incredible capacity for physical comedy and turns to make a face at me every time someone hot passes through the corridor that I’m holed up in. I giggle maniacally like a schoolgirl who’s just smoked my first joint. A woman is screaming in a private room guarded by security, and another lonely woman in a matching tracksuit vomits profusely and consistently two chairs down. I instinctively give her my clean sick bowl. taken as a precaution. She later thanks me when I leave. Being in A&E alone is a harrowing experience. You are naturally reverted to a child like state of fragility.

Benji and I laugh after he realises that he was the final of the original housemates to take me to Homerton hospital. Everyone had served their time. Stamping their friendship loyalty cards. How lucky am I to have friends that would give up their time to sit with me in hells front garden?

The taxi swings into a new area I’ve never even seen before. Pedestrians walk expensive breeds of dog, and red brick houses sprawl out before me. I feel car sick. The hospital wouldn’t allocate me my usual medication, because “WHAT IF I GET ADDICTED?” It becomes exhausting to fight your corner for agency over your own health. The strong Opiods I need to manage stage 4 endometriosis taken off me because the NHS lost all my medical records in the move from Ireland to England (the english are in-fact, at it again.) Men from dating apps and Whatsapp blow up my phone, asking what they can do to help? A massage? Chocolate and snacks? A movie? Deliveroo me dinner? My stomach churns and I focus on the red bricked houses to stop myself from vomiting. The pain killers rattling around my large intestine.

I don’t have faith for this appointment. It took me 10 years to be diagnosed, the average span of time to identify endometriosis. In my time I have been told everything, to stop crying, lose weight, get the coil, take the pill, lose weight, take manukka honey, medical marajuana, lose weight. I pull at my tracksuit that i threw on 5 minutes before the Uber arrived. It doesn’t really go together. But why am I worried about aesthetics and my bloated stomach when my very quality of life is at stake?

That feels like a profound though I must return to when I’m not holding back tears inside the four walls of a Toyota Prius. Write that down - women are allowed to be sick only if they appear to be collected and pious and persevering. Women are not allowed to be messy, bloated, aching and visibly in pain. Women must persevere because to relinquish that sense of duty means to become obsolete. Anne Boyer writes that we, “embarrass each other with comfort and justice, happiness or infirmity. It is embarrassing to be pornography; it is embarrassing to not be pornography.”

Anne Boyer writes that we, “embarrass each other with comfort and justice, happiness or infirmity. It is embarrassing to be pornography; it is embarrassing to not be pornography.”

It is unholy to be seen to be weak, or as Gen Z call it, “caught slipping”. I marvel and hold close to my chest that unless I shared publicly my struggles with a chronic disease, that no one would know. Part of me takes pride in my ability for stoicism, and equal parts of me is saddened by the need for perseverance and an allergy to honesty about my condition. It is shameful for women to display any sort of need. Through health, appetite, sexually, or ambition. To desire is to be dirty. Even when it is a biblical need.

The appointment is over, and I hold back more tears that flooded the fluorescent lit clinic. Why will men in power not believe women? The doctor explains to me that I should have never been prescribed the only pain relief that gives me agency, and now I must submit to a three week medical review and physchiatric evaluation to prove that I’m of mentally sound mind and body to take on such heavy pain relief. “Of course I’m not of sound mind you bald-”…. I stop myself. It’s never okay to come for someone’s looks lucinda, (even if they look like someone skinned bob mortimer and gave him a spray tan.) … relax.

I shuffle down the road to get a Lucozade, back still twinging from yesterdays fall, and feel faint when hit by the smell of raw meat in the butchers-come-corner shop that I stumble into. Instant regret. The old man behind the till has box dyed black hair combed aggressively to the right, and asks me what team my track top is from (It’s just vintage adidas, but it looks like the Donegal jersey, so I meet him half way and muster up the might to say Ireland - with a weak smile.) IRELAND - he exclaims, and reached out to shake my hand. he’s Iranian and loves the Irish people. I tell him God bless and shuffle back out of the shop with my XL Orange Lucozade sport.

The taxi home commences and I call my mother. I think about what agency looks like with a disability in the digital age. I wonder can i monetise or weaponise this for some sort of reparations? I listen to Lord of the Isle’s, recommended to me by a man on a date last week. I hate when men actually have good taste. The soft scotts-woman narrates as I hold back tears and check in with my housemates. I’m scared and I feel deeply alone. Which is a lie of course, because I have never felt so loved.

I now try and sign off this essay, in bed with another fresh Lucozade, not bought from a meaty corner shop. It will be okay, childless and hurting. It has to be okay. All i know how to do to reclaim agency is by getting dressed. Maybe that’s why personal style IS so deep to me, because it’s one area of my life that submits to me. Where agency and mood and authority reign, and I get to make a choice. Funny that the pain never makes me want to retire like a wallflower, but continue to stand out. I muse whether this is due to my deep running streak of contrarianism, or more to do with not letting my disability dictate every facet of my life.. I’m unsure. More food for though when not in the back of the Prius covered with my drivers hair.

Love Luce xx

Closing on my 29th year on planet earth paired with a move from fashion to music has caused me to delve into the tracks that shaped me. Or at least the ones with the most visceral memories attatched. These past few weeks I find myself reflecting a lot, these notions are of course in themselves not revolutionary. To look back on music and the culture that shaped you; however, my upbringing in the bible-belt of rural north of Ireland meant that direct access to culture and music was not always accessible.

Access to secular music unless pre-approved by my Baptist parents was not allowed. Unless it was observed through my neighbours hot pink groovy chick box tv, a CD snaffled away from a friend in rucksacks after playdates to listen to the Black Eyed Pea’s in my portable CD player, or of course, once technology caught up, bluetooth, Limewire and YouTube converter for our ipod nano’s. The 45 minute bus ride to school was made worth it by going halfers on the headphones to listen to the new playlist my bus buddy had made the night before. Hours of sexy euro trash, clubland and rap.

This lack of accessibility meant that whatever did make it through the gates stuck. And in some ways, had much more credible impact due to the scarcity politics of secular media in the home. Janet Jackson and Veggie Tales don’t exactly go hand in hand.

So without further ado - please enjoy this non perscriptive list of the tracks that have shaped me, as I barrell toward 30.

The duality of (wo)man.

full playlist here

1. Aretha Franklin - Precious Lord, Take My Hand.

1. Growing old is such a gift. I didn’t think I would make it If I’m completely honest, but we’ll get into that later. Growing up evangelical in the North of Ireland is funny, because you’re in the culture, but also never fully immersed. You’re neither here nor there, Protestant nor Catholic. It’s all you know, for better and for worse. My mother never really let us hang out in town, my hometown held the highest suicide rate per capita in Europe for a number of years. The hangover of the troubles scarring deep. My church did a lot of work to remedy this, with drop in cafe’s, youth clubs and free meals/workshops for people struggling. My dad used to play this album with James Cleveland on his Sony Hi-Fi system he had since college, which sat in our kitchen usually covered by letters, toys and junk. I left the church behind a few years ago, but this is one of the first songs I remember having an undeniable spiritual experience to.

   2. Madonna - Hung Up

   We never had the fancy channels in my home. We only got sky TV when i turned 12 and even then, the cables weren’t strong enough to carry a signal to the old farmhouse I grew up in. Ironically, my grandmother had ALL the music channels. I used to squirrel away to the farthest corner of their house in order to glean as much as I could from this foreign landscape. I didn’t understadn the cultural connotations of MTV, just that the girls were pretty.

   It was 2005 and Hung Up had just been released. I had rejected all notions of femininity after being bullied badly in school. Turns out being in a wheelchair and nuerodivergent is not super cool. Who knew? I remember feeling the beat of the opening ABBA sample, the glitter in the tacky wooden dance studio, and I felt pure fizziness running through my arms and legs. I now understand that as my awakening to being attracted to women, but simply didn’t have language to put towards it. I quickly changed the channel when I heard footsteps on the staircase. And spent the rest of the afternoon surfing the chart channels so. could find the music video and watch it to the end. A portal to another dimension.

3. Eric Prydz - Call On Me

I have a lot of male cousins. We’re all tall and rural. One NYE we all barrelled down to my grandparents cottage in Galway, with cousins great and small camping out across every possible surface. A littering of children sleeping across campbeds and sofas. We stayed in the conservatory with one of those TOSHIBA Noughties plasma screen TV’s where you could cup the static off the screen. Our parents drank wine and had smelly cheeses in the far room. Call on me came on the TV, and fulled by off brand pepsi and fizzy laces swung from the rafters and bounced on the sofa’s till we felt sick. It was another sexual awakening but also perhaps the last time I truly felt like a child, before the damn breaks and you are aware of your own existence. There’s a sadness with that. I also remembered being acutely sad as I watched the hot women on m screen as I knew then that even at aged 8 I would never look like one of those girls. Svelte and lean, no lumps or bumps, bouncy fun hair, big white smiles.

4. KT Tunstall - Suddenly I See

The devil Wears Prada opening montage is one of the most important pieces of cinema in my personal lexicon. I understand Andy as someone apparently ‘fat’ (she wasn’t) unstylish (she was). This was the chicest thing I had ever seen, and I believe it to be a pivotal seed planted in my brain that led me into fashion.

5. Dolly Parton - Raven Dove

There has to be something pivotal about the fact that all of the women my baptist parents introduced me to are almost all gay icons? Idk you guys sit down and figure that one out. This song is about the end of the world, something that often struck fear into me as a young child imagining that Jesus would come back before I would get to have my first kiss with Zack Efron. On car journeys I would take the insert out of the Halo’s and Horns CD and look through all the rhinestone outfits in AWE. I would read the lyrics and stare at the pictures until my car sickness prevailed.

full playlist here:

6.Kelly Clarkson - Since You’ve Been Gone.

America’s sweetheart Kelly got the seal of approval from my conservative mother. I used to lay in bed falling asleep with the album on full spin via my portable palyer. I played it so much that it began to jump and skip. I suspect this was the first piece of music that made me maladaptive daydream. I also used this song as my background to perform a sort of dance (question mark) for a school talent show. Dance is a loose use of that word because it was more me acting out the words a half second off beat. Safe to say I didn’t win.

full playlist here:

7. Cher - Does Anybody really Fall in Love Anymore?

In the name of pragmatism I’m only including ONE Cher song. I found this CD collecting dust in a bucket in the garage. I wiped the dust off the cover, took the booklet out of the sleeve (physical media, bitch) and became obsessed. I’d never seen anyone so beautiful. My dad was a classic rock man. The eagles, Queen, Bon Jovi etc, and somehow this and only this Cher record made it into the mix. I’m forever grateful. The odd time that my dad wasn’t travelling for work, he would drive me and my older sister to school in Belfast, and we figured out where to start the track so that you would hit 2.24, (guitar solo) as we rolled up to the school gates, getting amped for the school day which I dreaded. This album and so many more from Cher became something deeply aligned with my psyche, I am an 80’s girl at heart, after all. Also funny that another gay icon introduced via the baptist car pool.

8. Lady Gaga - Poker Face

A gaggle of 13 year olds went back to Megan’s house after school on a Friday. We were waiting for youth club to start. Megans parents bred Irish Wolfhounds that were closer to horses than dogs. The smallest of the group Leah used to hop on and ride them round the kitchen. We snuck up to Megan’s sisters bedroom because she had something to show us. We huddled at the pre-fab desk underneath her sisters pink bunkbed and turned on the dial up computer. It took 15 minutes to load the computer because her mum was on the line, and we sat still while they argued. We sat in absolute stunned silence as Lady Gaga ascended from the swimming pool, chrome masked and gloved and wigged. It was something that our minds could not comprehend. We set about learning the words immediately.

9.Elton John - Shine on Through

My father and I are not close. We never have been. I’m from a deeply religious and pragmatic family of agricultural workers and academics. Where I came from the family are still unsure. In my older age I am told that I resemble my mother more. We throw our head back in laughter and are tall LOUD women. Outrageous even. But my father and I have never seen eye to eye. There was always care, and attempts at respect, but the queer tattooed creative child of a rural autistic man who works as a scientist are bridges often too large to cross. But the love is there.

Trying to spend time with an autistic man of that generation is like sneaking up on a deer in the wild. You can’t spook it. I sat on the opposite end of the sofa to my father, watching Morcombe and Wise re-runs. It was the Elton john special where the whole bit is that Elton can’t find the studio where he’s meant to be performing. Wearing typically Elton fantastical suit. We just sat in silence and watched, and my dad sang along. It felt sad, but extremely vulnerable. This track holds a special place in my heart because of that. Navigating parents is never easy, but our capacity for grace grows as we do.

10. Michiant - Bon Iver

I was introduced to Bon Iver by a man I met on my gap year when I was 18. I fell hard and fast. We called every week as he lived in Hungary at the time. He was an addict in active recovery. Tormented by a dark family past. I was drawn to him like an injured lamb needing bottle fed. I was a sucker to playing the part of whimsical wide eyed youth, vs man who shows you the world - such a pastiche really. Things burned hot and fast. We had a fight and it was bad. We didn’t speak again. We never spoke again. I woke up one morning shortly after, to find out that he had died. It later transpired that he had taken his own life. My parents prohibited me from going to the funeral.

I never really forgave them for that in spire of the fact I understood their approach, I was a volatile undiagnosed AUDHD firecracker ready to explode without any of the emotional tools to manage my intense emotions. He was my first love. The grief was all consuming and shortly after this I suffered a complex emotional break where I couldn’t speak or eat for some time. My mother called and I couldn’t even pick up the phone. Despite our complexities, her care for me was, and has always been, ferocious. She knew something was wrong and asked the simple question, do you need me to come get you, and it took all my strength to utter the final word ‘yes.’

What unfolded was years of therapy, and the inability to listen to this track without it ripping my heart out once again. I love this record and I will never listen to it again.

full playlist here:

11.Building Steam with a Grain of Salt - DJ Shadow.

James and I met because a friend of his came into the vintage store where I worked and told me I would like the music that he made. James was 18 and I was 21, but his taste deeply impressed me. We began emailing and he asked me what I took from the record they had shared with me, a small cascading EP that was self titled. I told him that I sensed journey and momentous strength to overcome obstacles and personal drama. To choose to divorce ones emotions from ones-self and run for freedom. He told me that no one knew the circumstances around the record, but I had clocked it immediately. That sparked almost a decade of friendship, parties, raves, falling over in pleasers and crying with laughter after a bottle of wine (or two.) (or three.)

We joke that we’ll find each other in every other life on a beach in Cancun, as we can’t seem to both be based on the same plot of land for more than 6 months. James bought me this CD one Christmas. It was a fundamental record based pillar of our friendship traversing time, space and hardship.

James outside my house, South Belfast, 2018.

12. Flashmob. - Need in Me.

Quite interestingly, this was the first track that I heard and understood that music had a connection towards my mental health. The language wasn’t even there in 2013 to diagnose a woman with ADHD. But I understood that repetitive sound patterns made me feel focused and a serious dopamine hit. I felt like I had accessed a hidden world alien to me and my rural upbringing. Youtube was my escape and I would trawl the web to collect and convert samples, even before I had no one to speak to about my new found love.

13. Three Steps Ahead - Drop it

The opening sample is from Wall street, the Charlie Sheen one. The 180bpm beat served me in a way I had never understood, again, the language of hardcore music soothing nuerodiverse brains. From here I went on to be involved in Belfast’s Hardcore scene, running underground parties, events, raves, and making costumes for dancers. I could listen to 180bpm and go straight to bed. Speedy sounds made my brain feel focused and slow, and I felt surprisingly safe in a very male dominated community for the most part, being able to be strong, masculine and able to move and dance without judgement. Discovering the likes of Thunderdome and Gabber Eleganza continued to build this little secret world where I was self soothing my AUDHD without even knowing. Funny that.

14.Sophie - Is it Cold in The Water

This record shaped every facet of my creativity when i discovered it. I can only hope to make something as powerful as ‘Is it Cold’ in my lifetime. It felt strange to be traversing pioneering trans artists whilst involved in the Church. I was a youth leader with my ex and we ran a drop in group for teens in east Belfast. During that time, and since, 5 of those young people have since come out to me as queer. Being able to be in a faith based setting, and have young people trust you with their sexuality, and be able to affirm them that not a single thing is wrong is one of the great privileges of my life. I don’t regret my time in the church. It gave me structure and safety for when I needed it. I would say I still have some sort of a faith, but no longer within the framework of Sunday service. It’s a strange thing to have a glass container that you’ve existed within your entire life, and then one day, be on the otherside with the lid tightly shut. Sometimes things can become more damaging than good and we need to know when to save ourselves and jump ship.

15. The beginning of the End - Headache

2025 was a year in my life that could be used to train the SAS. While on my sickly victorian child death bed after an incredibly difficult endometriosis extraction surgery, my partner and first ever boyfriend of 6 years told me he had doubts about our future, and was unsure if we should get engaged after 2 years of planning. My world crumbled in an instant and it transpired that he had never bought the ring that was promised to me. I ended things. My whole future that I had built and worked towards was suddenly gone. Recovered from surgery, lost two stone to grief and a new body that was now Endo-free, worked full time retail to get back on my feet after losing huge portions of my income to my disability. I left the church, I lost an entire friendship group and became estranged from family due to being outed by a family member. I didn’t know how I was going to make it through.

My family would reach out but I had to protect myself. The day I moved into my incredible new flat, an old linen mill in North Belfast. I painted an entire mural on my wall through tears and stifling sobs so that my new housemate didn’t think I was insane. The builders erecting scaffolding outside however definately thought I was. This album played on repeat. I had never heard such emotion delivered with both pragmatism and frankness. Something about this album allowed me to access an emotional space that I didn’t feel safe or able to otherwise.

Shortly after this image the stress of the trauma sent me into an extreme psoriasis flare up that riddled my confidence. I’ve never even shared this image before. I was working 4 jobs and still only scraping by. Not the hot last year of my twenties that I had envisoined..

This space healed me. Living with Annie healed me. We adopted a cat together and went on adventures and cooked and laughed and cried and supported each other. This record is rooted in so much pain for me, but instantly transports me back to freezing cold candle lit nights in our perfect studio apartment. I got to live my New girl fantasy and made a best friend for life. It gets better.

I love you Annie.

full playlist here:

16. Au Pays Du Cocaine - Geese

I fell in love again fast and in a whirlwind of care. That love, although now ended, healed me and my fear of being too much. I received fresh flowers at any given moment. Sometimes the last bunch were still alive. I was given care and understanding of a boyfriend who never judged me for my illness or made me feel like less of a woman after I discovered I couldn’t have children. I think of driving the M1 to see him listening to this record. It spoke of heart wrenching gut based love and possibility and devotion and desire.

Love is risky. Messier even. Terrifying and vulnerable. I’m both infatuated by life’s possibilities and scared to engage in love again. But one of the best things we can do in heartbreak - whether it be platonic or romantic, is to turn and face the music. (Pun intended). Face that huge wave that you feel is going to over take you and pull you right under. It won’t. It will pass. The heartbreak will stop hurting, and new joys will come. Staying soft and open and refusing to let circumstance steal joy is one of my lifes main goals, personal mantras and proudest achievements.

listen here:

17. High Hopes - Pink Floyd

I saw a podcast clip recently, where a woman expressed that in all her hetero relationships she had only ever either been understood, OR appreciated. Never both at the same time. This hit me like a tonne of bricks and i tore my journal to shreds immediately dissecting all of my past entanglements with men. I’ve always felt appreciated in love, but rarely in effect, understood. To be seen, to have this burgeoning inner world that is made up with the muppets, a love for hardcore and pop music, queer culture and cottage-core, collecting trinkets and dolls to ward off evil. Locks of my friends hair, longing and yearning and journalling and writing and fighting with ones self to never allow any space for complacency. Longing. I am loved and appreciated and understood and adored by my friends, and I will not settle for any less love as I move into this next decade. This track encapsulates that feeling of journey grief struggle and triumph, and moved me through one of the hardest times of my life, where I had to abandon a burgeoning costume career in east London , to move back to Belfast and wait on a life saving surgery. High hopes for life I guess.

18. Dennis Sulta - It’s Only Real

This probably encapsulates my years at university. I remember being hungover at AVA and this coming through the wall-to-wall speakers reverberating my bones and I had to move for fear of disintegrating on the spot. That same day he dropped an iconic Kylie Minogue mix and a drunk girl accidentally put her cigarette out on my arm. I still have the scar.

19.Talk to me - Robyn

Within a month I had died my hair back to blonde, a madonna adjacent attempt, found out that I couldn’t have children, needed to find someone to take over my flat and move back to London for the 3rd time. I was excited, tired, and petrified, starting over AGAIN at 29. Our first morning I made my flat mates a fry, and we played Robyn on repeat, mimicking the choreo in our dressing gowns in our proud magnolia kitchen. Matt on the floor, writhing with his abandoned cup of tea while teh rest fo us squealed and clapped. What a blessing to live with those you love.

listen here:

20. U + Ur Hand - P!nk

I was at my lowest financially in 2025 I refused to move home and give up, so I started working as a delivery driver. Ashamed and armed only with a playlist and one hundred Shein parcels in the boot of my Citroen, I would faithfully hit the roads of North Belfast to deliver the ever so essentials. I would get chased by dogs, drenched in the cold autumn rain, yelled at and flat tyres without the money to repair. It was the age of 55p Koka noodles and eggs. Sometimes not even eggs.

I used to scream this on repeat to keep me sane, to keep some feeling of control. Within a month I was offered my new role at Universal. Funny that.

21. Stay for Something - CMAT

A theory of mine is that we don’t recognise grief in our society. We associate the word ‘grief’ to mean physical death, but I believe grief to be interwoven into the very fabric of being a twenty-something. I spent my twenties broke. Confused. Substituting food money for fuel money and so on. Fighting to be seen and known and to make a living from the things that bring me life. I’ve failed at a lost fo things, I’ve grieved many more. But music like this track open the door to allow me to access that emotion. That raw feeling of abandonment where one cracks one’s chest wide open in mercy and acceptance to fate. Life is confusing and messy and terrible and wonderful all at once.

I saw her perform this live last summer on a hill in the rolling irish countryside and I cried. This track so deeply affected me and I played it so many times that my housemate banned me from playing it anymore, due to the paper thin walls dividing our bedrooms in our studio apartment. It’s funny to call that place a studio apartment when in actuality it was a factory converted by cardboard walls and vicious landlords. Fires used to break out regularly in the car parks, joy riders in the street and fireworks in the park. It was heaven.

22. Virile - The Blaze

I went to berlin for the first time at 22 to see my friend play Panorama Bar in Berghain. I only had £60 in my bank account.. I have no idea how I managed. I knew I couldn’t miss the opportunity to get guestlist so I made it work. I made friends with a guy who I met off a dating app, and he introduced me to his mostly Irish friend group. We stayed up all night, drank beers, and I spotted them as they tagged multiple locations around Nuekölln. We went back to the boy flat (you guessed it, mattress on floor) and one of the group insisted we sit down and listen to this track. We all danced and I remembered feeling distinctly uncool but enamoured with this music video. To this day it’s the best I’ve ever seen.

James flew from London and I from Belfast, for 24 hours and we spent the whole night dancing, rolled over to the hostel (sunflower, if you know you know,) and straight onto the train to the airport.

23. Supernature - Cerrone

Being in love with a friend is never easy. And seems to be a key non-original experience of ones twenties. What I experienced more was the phenomenon that I like to call the girlfriend experience. They’ll drive to your house, spend all day talking to you and telling you their hopes and dreams, but you’re not quite girlfriend material. Or maybe they just don’t see you that way? You’re the shoulder for them to cry on, the late night McDonald’s drives (pre boycott duh). You’re funny and amazing and kind and a great cook and hospitable and you smell good, but you’re not the girlfriend, you’re the one that listens to your male friends escapades in love while you’re not even considered for drafting. You’re not even on the sidelines you’re in the changing room picking up damp socks.

This is not to say that men cannot confide in their female friends, but in my experience a lot of these men cannot fathom that platonic love exists, and displays itself in a very different manner to eros love. I think it’s something to do with men never really graduating from the love of their mothers, and in that sense, needing to be held by a woman at all times. I spent far too much mental real estate of my twenties on men who had no interest in me other than how I could affirm them. Some of those friendships became real and have lasted a lifetime. Still, the sting of not feeling chosen is something that I feel women all over flee from.

I went to see Climax in the cinema with one of these men. It horrified and engrossed me to the point that I forgot to blink. The dance sequence is something I go back to as a feat of cinema.

24. I have a love - Overmono remix - For those I love

I remember exactly where I was when this came across my desk (headphones). I was walking along the canal in Belfast, it was overcast and muggy. I was wearing athleisure wear, which spiritually has never really sat right with me, too many tight pieces. I was NO seams touching me. When I heard David’s words ring out about regret and sorrow and what could have been and what will always be - I broke down sobbing. I feel everything too strongly, it’s an prevailing weakness of mine. To this day it cracks my heart wide open.

25. This Must Be The Place - Talking Heads

A partially ruined song for me. Being with a partner for 6 years of your twenties feels like a lifetime. You’ve planned your life together, baby names (ironic) and first dance’s. This was mine. Even though I was the one who ended it I couldn’t listen to it without feeling sick. That version of your life is now dead, alongside the actual relationship. It haunted me through petrol stations and shopping centres, picking up the pace whenever it found me so as to escape the melancholic air. David Byrne always supplied a sense of safety. I was obsessed with Tina Weymouth and his backing singers and the grey sweat apparrel they wore. I saw the renewed film at the RIO in Dalston and we danced atop the battered velvet seats and cheersed to being alive. A renewed sense of what the song means. A reclamation if you want to make it that deep.

26. Clarity - Zedd

Simpler times when instgram’s algorithm was chronological and the filters were better. This song soundtracked an aggressive eating disorder, that ravaged my teens and took - you guessed it - all of my twenties to repair. ED’s are funny things. One of the few illnesses where you are congratulated by teachers and responsible adults for losing 55 kilos in less than a year. I looked like a Pez dispenser. I already have a large head as it is. I used to walk or run the rural four mile route around my house at least 4 times a week, on top of school, part time job, gym and hockey training. Deeply unecessary. The pavements were pounded and I just focused on the dopamine of the 2012 global hit that was EDM adjacent pop. I’m thankful to be in a place now where I truthful LOVE myself. Not every day obviously I’m not a psycho - but at least I don’t push myself to the point where I forget what hunger pangs feel like…

27. And So I Watch You From Afar - The Voiceless

This track was introduced to me in the back seat of a Corsa filled with teens and twenty somethings hurtling through county down. Probably on our way to McDonalds because where else are you gonna hang out? I remembered being blown away that you could do instrumental music that wasn’t classical. I also couldn’t believe that they were from Belfast. I asked the oldest boy who owned the car if I could borrow the CD to burn onto my ipod. He said no because I needed to buy it and support local music. Fair enough dude but i’m 15 just let me borrow the CD? He sat atop his Vauxhall Corsa-based throne introducing me to instrumental post-punk from the states and I ate it all up. The girls in school made fun of me and stopped sharing ear pods with me on the school bus. I thought it was cool. I still have the CD.

28. Experience - Ludovico Einaudi

Shortly after my breakdown, This is England 90’s aired. I had never seen the movie nor the series leading up to it, but channel 4 aired the trailer with this classic music over key slowed scenes from the series and I remember falling in love with Shane Meadows honest story telling. I watched it in it’s entirety over the course of two days. The series and characters is something I hold extremely dear to this day. Someone once said my blonde buzzcut reminded them of Vicky McClure’s character LOL and I was chasing that high for weeks.

29. Lothlorien - Enya

We adopted a cat one day after a run in with an abandoned Jack Russell. Annie and I decided we were fit parents and got in touch with the local no-kill shelter. I sobbed the entire day trying to choose who got to come home with us. Capanách made the cut, after charming us wit his wile ways. It was as though he had been taught by the other cats, how to be a cat, and was performing it rather than being it. Long lengthy steps and an awkward run and meow that seemed unsure of itself. He was distressed when we brought him home and in our typical manic pixie dream girl fashion, reached for Enya as natures salve. It worked. I miss his silky little body curled up in my aran sweater. Annie took chief custody when I moved, we joke that I’m the absent father in the relationship. I miss having a little beast to come home to at the end of the day.

30. Just a Touch Of Love - Slave

30. Very few things are as important to cinema as a good montage sequence. It’s one of the ways I distance myself from stressful days is to think what would it look like if this were a movie of my life? One of my prevailing friendships of my 20’s is mine with my long term collaborator and dear friend Matt. The lexicon of inner worlds references and jokes that we have accrued over our 5 year friendship is both worrying and incredible. Meeting someone at any stage of your life that speaks the same language as you is such a wonderful thing. Sacred, even. Especially if it’s a montage sequence of the first Sister Act movie where Whoppi Goldberg isn’t like the other nun’s she’s a COOL nun.

If you got this far, well done. Be kind to yourself, your twenties are a mess.

Love Luce x

listen here:

Hi, its been a while.

I’ve been noticing something in the water recently, pondering the consequences of that fact that modern visuals have been obsessed with the medieval, the peasant and the victorian wench. Bloomers and the opera and velvet lace curtains (for which I am guilty.) Marionette Dolls, dark romance, vampiric horrors, the theatre, the list goes on.

You can't talk about romanctic gothic aesthetics without mentioning The Last Dinner Party:

This of course is nothing new, the people have been yearning for lace and crochet, ancient aesthetics re-modernised and reimagined. There’s a sense of comfort and safety in the arms of linen and lace. It’s been all over our media holding us in an archive lace based chokehold for 3 years.

What I do find interesting however, is that these aesthetics and interests in modern culture (most notibly across film and TV) are actually signs that point to economic downturn, coined as ‘recession indicators’. Across fashion beauty music and film we have noticed a seizemic shift in how we (millenial), gen Z and Alpha absorb ideals. We’re not as easy to be marketed to anymore, which I guess ultimately is a good thing, as I staunchly believe in being un-influencable and resisting the grubby mits of capitalism…

HOWEVER; I couldn’t help but wonder…..

If these romantic gothic notions have had the creative industry in a choke hold for the past three years, what comes next? How do we read the tea leaves to assess the direction of popular culture?

But in order to step forward, we always need to go back. Nothing in culture is new, and everything is just a conglomerate blob of what came before us.

So I asked myself, when was the last time that we experienced this gothic romance Heathcliff adjacent Nosferatu obsessed wave? Enter 2004-2008. The early adopters of this wave being of course alt pop rock bands like Panic at The Disco, MCR and Fall out boy. The visuals especially come to mind of ‘I write Sins Not Tradgedies" from Panic. I bought this album to have on my turquoise ipod nano so that the school bus girls with their sweeping side fringes and dr martens would also think I was cool. (It didn’t work).

This era was littered with heavy velvet ropes (and high hopes.. sorry I couldn’t help myself.) Military jackets, victoriana creepy doll aesthetics and a penchant for the macabre.

The absolute peak of this era was 2004-2008, almost exactly 20 years ago. And if you didn’t know, everything in popular culture operates on a 20 yer repetitive life span. Circling back to my point about this aesthetic being a recession indicator would lead me to point out that the Twilight series launched straight after the 2008 Great Recession… (mic drop)

Are you still with me?

Based off of the 2004 - 2008 model of an aesthetic lifespan, we are about to hurtle into the next phase.. and how do we assess the new phase? The tea leaves? We go back and assess 2008 -2010.

I started by googling the Pantone forecasts of those years, which, to no surprise, are the exact colour schemes that early adopters are pushing as of this moment.

Turquoise already has a chokehold on the tiktok girlies. Now please, read what i say with pinches of maldron salt - you do NOT need to buy new clothes to be ahead. I just find dissecting popular culture FASCINATING.

I feel as though the natural pendulum swing from dark, high contrast clothing is to reach for bright irreverant shades like mimosa and turquoise. Everything in fashion and aesthetics exists on this pendulum. From body shapes to facial aesthetics. Assesing it is fun, and also deeply sad. Is it not enough to just be?

What this triggered in me however, these bright, bold and unabashed shades, was the term - MILLENIAL OPTIMISM.

Addison Rae - early adopter.

Do you remember the 2010 VMA’s?

If you’re old enough to remember the most iconic Video Music Awards of our life time, then you’re also old enough to get your pap smear. GET BOOKED !!!!

Think meat dress, Cher, Archive Mcqueen, Rihanna and Eminem? Justin Beiber, Katy Perry dip dye hair (Millenials awaken, for this is your time to shine)

Celebrities were also noticably bigger, plumper, stronger and healthy looking.. but that’s a rabbit hole for another day I guess.

Lady Gaga - wearing Alexander McQueen’s last collection before his death. note the turquoise dip dye hair**

The above image needs no introduction, but Cher holding the meat purse still stands the test of time***

The colours are what struck me the most about this specific VMA’s is both the colours, and the siphoning of aesthetics. Lady Gaga kind of doesn’t count, because her and her team were not early adopters, but instigators of shifting the zeitgeist’s tectonic plates - but other celebs fell into one of three categories.

Business Casual - Whimsy Millenial Optimism - Tech Focused

Business casual, as seen by (redacted) beneath was still huge at this time. Hervé Leger and heeled court shoes had us looking like we were working on the 10th floor at 6 and in the club by 9. Scary times. Not to mention the huge chunky chandelier necklaces, which i saved up for to wear to my formal.

a relic found recently on my charity shop travels*

Rihanna is an interesting case study when it comes to pioneering busines scasual, because she used it as a vehicle to launch her new red hair (July 2010), and truly subverted the notion of blazers in the club

I can’t mention subverting business casual without mentioning André 3000. Black artists tend to before early adopters of style and are the undercurrent of what drives the zeitgeist, especially in the 2008-2010 gap.

Millenial Optimism is exactly what you think it is. A grown adult women with pink and blue streaks in her hair. all clashing colours, the thrown together look. Patterned tights, MGMT.

White people rally peaked with MGMT.

Mismatched colours, artificial high hats, sampling, twee and post- indie sleeze.

Getting papped by Cobra Snake was all that the fashion magazine consuming, polyvore editing tumblr obsessed girlies wanted in 2010. I would have sold a kidney to be irreverently photogtaphed looking chic in an off the shoulder colour clash.

Not (redacted) wearing almost every trending colour lol) This space age forward thinking dance music aesthetic was everywhere. I blame the Black eyed peas.

Tech Focused. The cultural equivalent in 2026 is adaptive sportswear, mixing arctyrex with Engineered garments, Francios Girbaud and united nude shoes that I’ve seen popping off all over my vinted recently.

@constantpractice have been pioneering this move towards adaptable tech hybrid wear, popularised through tiktok.

I wonder will our adaptation of the tech futurism craze look like muted/ earth tones? Think Alien or 28 days later.

Online presences have labelled 2026 the new 2016 - and I get it. There’s no way to finish off such a heady deep dive, but maybe we should all claim millenial optimism in our day to day aesthetics. That it’s not that deep, not everything needs to be ‘curated’ and ‘intentional’ The last stand in the fight against the clean girl aesthetic. Skip a shower. Wear your natural scent, and as John waters once said,

“Have faith in your own bad taste.”

Luce xx

MONDAY.

It’s Monday. I have no money in my bank account, and I’m frightened. I’m starting a new job in 5 weeks, and moving back to London in 4. I need to upheave my whole life, studio and friendships once again, amidst the chaos of Christmas, and move for the fifth time in under 3 years. I’m not complaining, of course, the new role is a dream come true, for the first time i’ll have stability, access, (not to mention free healthcare) in a city like London which is simply dreamy. I feel bad for allowing worries and fears to work their way into my heart and mind, when I’m in the front row of my nephews nativity play. He’s playing the famous Christmas camel number three. I love being an aunty. I love turning up to school functions wearing Japanese trousers, Tabi’s, spiked leather jackets and a freshly bleached bob. The little row of literal angels stare at me with thier heads tilted and noses full of bogies. It becomes extremely obvious in this moment that I am most definitely the aunty - and not the child-haver in this situation. Looking back I can see that this was some sort of biblical foreshadowing. I watched my nephew dance and shimmy across the stage, proudly displaying his first missing tooth that made him look extra rascaly -and felt a sharp pang in my heart.

I always knew that I wouldn’t be able to have children. You may laugh at me, or dismiss this, but even as a young child, I was acutely aware that there would be something wrong with my ability to have my own family. Most kids play family and mothers and baby’s, I wasn’t interested. I wanted drama and war and despair; (growing up rural without many friends and access to day time soaps will lead you into an incredibly overactive imagination.) I had a small aqua marine sketchbook that was filled with drawings of myself in multiple careers. Lucinda the fireman. Lucinda the Nurse. Lucinda the artists. Lucinda the dog groomer. But never have I ever drawn Lucinda the mother. I had an extreme sense of melancholy which later turned out to be undiagnosed AU-DHD. It’s hard to describe, and I’m sure even harder to believe, but I had a deep unabiding sense that there were to be issues in the future. Even before I had my first period. So when I started having more extreme reproductive issues by 18, and what followed being a 10 year campaign to being diagnosed with endometriosis at 28. Endometriosis being of course, the lead cause of infertility for those with Uterus’s.

As my condition worsened post surgery in 2025, i was prepared for the fact that my options were dwindling. My symptoms returned 7 months after my laporoscopic surgery that cleaned house in November 2024, resulting in myself and my specialist hatching our master plan for more aggressive treatment.

Dating is a funny thing when you have a chronic illness, you have to be extremely open with who you date to make sure that you are honest and realistic about what a future with you might look like, and the restrictions your condition will have upon your theoretical future. To endure awkward conversations that the treatment plan you are undertaking will ensure that your partner won’t be a biological parent. These conversations are clunky, awkward, and usually filled with tears (mine.) Because even though I’ve always known that I would have issues, making them somebody else’s issues is a more uncomfortable weight to bear.

FRIDAY

I had been out the night before, seeing an old friend. The kind of friend that you get silly giddy with and forget that all of your shared problems existed. The next morning I got straight to work, with a sore stomach that I ignored. My last flare up was in October that left me bed bound for a week. but within an hour of working I could feel the pain building, unearthing my stash of meds I steeled myself for what would become one of my worst flare ups to date. I told my housemate through gritted teeth that I was going to wait for an hour before going to A&E, to which she replied, ‘“No, you’re going now.”

What resulted was a very teary taxi ride where my Uber driver had to walk me to the doors of A&E, I couldn’t walk myself. He did however supply a very lovely complimentary bottle of water and a packet of tissues. Sweet man.

My knuckles turned white gripping the desk as I waited my turn to check myself in. My name became heavy and breathy, with more syllables than it usually has, as I fought to stay standing long enough to speak to the receptionist who didn’t seem to care if I lived or died.

Crying in front of people is so embarrassing. I keep my sobs stifled as I hunch over gripping my hot water bottle. At least I’m wearing my festive pyjamas. My hair is unwashed and my teeth are unbrushed. I feel so flustered. Silly to be embarrassed when you feel like you’re about to die. The pain comes in waves. The crescendo terrifies me. I can ride it for about an hour before I lose my nerve. My mum arrives and swiftly starts mum-based-advocacy mode. Which in any other circumstance is embarrassing, but since I can’t speak, it’s needed. I’ve been waiting for an hour. I know that the second wave is coming, and I sob in my mothers arms telling her that I can’t do it. I can’t take another wave. I can feel it coming and I’m not brave enough. The couple sat next to me move to the other side of the room in awkward haste. There’s snot dripping from my nose.

Mum gets me a wheelchair when my name is called, but the pain in trying to stand results in me collapsing in her arms. I faint into the chair and only wake up to briefly see myself being rolled backwards through a see of horrified faces. My mother keeps step and holds my head to stop it from hitting the door frame, my cheeks soaked with tears. The referred pain goes straight through my back and legs. I convulse like in the exorcist, my body locked in spasm and with my mum still holding my face for safety. The nurse asks me questions that I can’t answer or hear through the pain. My mum answers them and I am promptly whisked in for a bed. I can’t stop crying. Im scared. I’m tired. My body is still locked in spasm and I can’t move. I’m given morphine with no questions asked. The doctors say they might keep me over the weekend. I’m happy to be believed, but sad because I have to move house, move studio, finish planning the event of the Christmas season that has occupied my headspace for the past several months AND deliver a talk on Monday night that will mould young minds. Right now I can’t even mould a sentence. The nurses tell me how pretty my tattoos are and say how sorry they are to have to stab the pony on my hand in order to put my cannula in. I’m exhausted.

After my first 5mg or morphine, the nice scottish doctor who believes me comes back to ask about my medical history. I tell him it took me 10 years to get diagnosed. He winces and shakes his head. He cocks his head and asks, '“any children?” The morphine has taken a hold and I feel an itchy heat rise through my right arm into my chest. Mum reaches for my hand as I burst into tears. Again. I think about my nephew as camel number three. My nieces debut as the virgin Mary. The doctor continues, and I can’t believe we are here. This is no longer a theoretical bridge to cross. The bridge is here and I am hurtling across it. Childless. The grief is all consuming. The grief that I don’t get a choice. I don’t get to have a child who has my brown spots on green eyes. The grief to not be able to have it all.

Im not sure which came first, the chicken or the egg. The premonition that I couldn’t have children, or the uncertainty that I would ever want them. Either way, there was an illusion of choice. Until now. My last two remaining treatment options will both leave me irreversibly barren. I could prolong these treatments, try coming off of my meds and birth control, both which afford me stability and improved condition, to become even more sick, for what, 6 months? 12 months? Whilst being incredibly sick, bed bound and unstable. Unable to work or have any form of normalcy. I could take all of these risks, and still, most likely due to my stage four diagnosis, be unable to have children.

Where this leaves me, is to make the choice. To be or not to be. To try to be, or to try and live a life healthy. I choose life.

I speak out online. We women carry so much shame over not holding fast to patriarchal standards. I dread people pitying me. I always chose strong optics. Even if the version of strength means sharing what it looks like to be weak. Luke tells me there are plenty of ways to be a mother. I take strength from that. People message me with beautiful intentions telling me how their aunty or friend got pregnant, and even though the well intentions are appreciated the message of hope stings like hell.

Sometimes hope does need abandoned.

And it will make way for something much more beautiful.

My nightmares have been terrible. I’m tired and no matter how much I sleep I’m never quite rested. 10 hours could still have me arising with aches and pains. I sit in the midst of this worship service at the very back row. I don’t want to be here. My lips are chapped and I sip on a horrible ‘oat latte’. My sixth of the day.

This guy keeps talking about angels. I’m convinced these people like talking about angels so much because no one really understands them. The whole thing is very wishy washy. I wish I was back in the pub with my friends. The cozy nook of the reporter bar that I left them in to come here.

Hands are raised for the chorus of “you are worthy of it all”

I don’t want to be here.

Did I mention that my lips are dry?

My headache gets worse.

The veteran worship leader on the keys keeps throwing out off beat, “"yeah-yeahs”, making Jen and I snigger. His American accent rattling through the North Belfast church’s locale like a knife. I wish I was back in the pub.

I can’t believe I got charged for a bloody church coffee. I haven’t sat in church for about 10 months. I didn’t know my last day of church was going to be my last, but my panic attacks were becoming more and more intense. I suffer the same affliction now as i roam the halls for a coffee. I didn’t realise you had to pay and was too embarrassed to rescind my order by the time the purple haired lady tallied up my order. Surely church coffees should be free? Why does the church feel the need to capitalise off of it’s coffee (I was going to make an Alan Sugar joke but I’m too tired and distracted). I’ve tried to read the Mark Fischer book but i fear I may need to wait until I can access my new jobs free medical to access Ritalin for that.

The coffee is mostly milk with a whisper of coffee. I payed £3.50 for holy coffee flavoured milk.

I become acutely aware of the fact that I’m wearing a badge pinned to my cap that says ‘Patti Smith piss factory’ on it. I’m wearing white alligator (genuine) leather cowboy boots pink striped pirate linen trousers a pink real tree skirt I made from an old tee shirt, 15 bangles, hoop earrings a vintage trucker cap and white fur coat. I wouldn’t have dressed any differently in my last church, but I feel grateful to be sat at the back.

I think about Gaza. I think about Hind. I think about Council Baby and Spice Bag’s work on display in my friends gallery in city centre. I think about how the peace walls separating Shankhill to the Falls, on the Shankhill side is decorated with pro-Israeli IDF propaganda. Less than 50 ft from the front doors of the church.

Council Baby & Spice Bag - 2025 ‘I’m afraid of the dark’.

I wish I could go back to being like these people. I’m not sure I ever can, or ever would want to. I’m unsure if I can ever again access that place of blind faith and trust. They sing into existence the glory of the Lord - and I think about Hassan. I think about Bisan. I think about the Baby I saw with my morning coffee through a screen, who had been blown into a razor wire fence by the force of Israeli strikes, and was engulfed in flames. The street preachers of Belfast preach hell fire and brimstone without ever understanding that Hell is real and it’s located in Palestine.

“heaven is here right now”

“here comes heaven”

Jesus was Palestinian. A Jewish man from Palestine.

Raving is a funny thing. A lot of times I have encountered more elevated sober highs in the throng of the dance floor than Sunday service. If God is omnipresent then I guess we could expect such encounters. I don’t appreciate preachers who rely on their own charisma to whip a crowd up into a frenzy. The resistance of American imperialism also applies to their flowery use of language and gargantuan statements like -

“heavens possibilities collide with earths realities”

????????????

What realities babe??? War? Disability, infertility?

Maybe I’m just bitter at my own situation. For the most part I’m resigned to my fate as a barren woman. It’s 40 days until my next appointment where we will arrange the start of my artificial menopause. Menopause at 30. Yikes.

I’m 30 in April.

Luke squeezes my hand when he can tell I’m worried about it.. he tells me it’s going to be okay.. and then sends me memes about he DINK lifestyle. (Dual Income No Kids)

There’s a singer on stage, twenty something with a studded belt and Swarzkhoff blue hair. I bet they love having her up there as the token ‘alt girl’. She has a beautiful voice.

Okay, now I am being bitter.

I think faith is important. I grew up in a community where resources were pooled, where needs were met, where our guest room was full with people who needed a place to live. I once saw my mother give a brand new north face full length puffer (an anniversary gift from my dad) off of her own back to a homeless woman. We were morally conservative but socially socialist. How very confusing.

A pretty young Iranian/New Zealand woman speaks about Elijah. Her hair is so shiny. I wonder what conditioner she uses? I automatically scratch my endometriosis caused bald patch under my hat.

Maybe I’m just allergic to large public declarations. Of anything for that matter. Maybe that’s my conservative past rearing it’s head. Or maybe it’s being too grounded for big flailing American revivalist language. idk.

Now she speaks about prayer. I believe in prayer. I believe in God - but I don’t know if i’ll ever be able to align with this iteration of corporate prayer and church life again. The hieroglyphics are on the wall.

I don’t mind sitting down during worship. I enjoy being still when there’s a buzz going on.

“less of me and more of you”

I can Amen that.

Less and me and more care for others.

The pretty Iranian woman starts declaring healing over the room. I can’t attest to knowing her theology of healing, but I immediately feel uncomfortable and shift in my seat. She invites people to the front of the church to be prayed for. Declaring that you will and can be healed. I start to seethe. Does she not think that I prayed every day for ten years to be healed? To be better? To be able to have children? But no because I showed up to this very worship event, God will now honour my cries and choose to heal me - because you said so? I turn to Jen and hit the red button of the safety word we had pre-arranged when one of us got overwhelmed and needs to leave. “oranges” I whisper. Her eyes widen, “really?” I nod my head slowly.

I grab my coat and head for the door.

Crying is the deepest form of catharsis. The gen Z’s have labelled mini inconveniences as ‘crash outs’ - and don’t worry, I have plenty of those too. But a deep guttural cry is sometimes all the healing we need in a moment.

I sat on the panel for Album of the Year this week, as part of the NI music prize. The unanimous vote was for an artist named Róis (pronounced rawsh) and her second album MO LÉAN. A challenging, compelling yet utterly cinematic work rooted in tradition, and steeped in mourning. MO LÉAN is deeply inspired by the mostly lost Irish tradition of keening, where professional mourners (usually women) would attend funerals to sing and wail for the dead. I’ve discussed the Irish’s penchant for lamentations in past substacks, but this practice, that has become a dying art since the 60’s is an important part of the lost Gaelic tradition of helping souls pass safely to the afterlife.

I couldn’t help but be struck by the fact that it is usually women that come to know and understand grief, in a way that fundamentally alters our worldview. In a way that often men do not and will never receive.

I had an ex that used to laugh at how I would take selfies when I was crying, as if the practice of taking photos of a tear stricken face somehow undermined the emotion that brought the tears forth. I always felt compelled to take a photo after a big cry. I’m sure there’s some deeper meaning that I’m not yet privy to, but the only way I can now rationalise it was that I’m compelled to document all areas of my life. Proof that I was here. In the good and the bad.

I feel things extremely deeply. The good is great, and the lows are the lowest. I have crippling nightmares because of my medication. Sweats and terrors. I wake up tired because no matter how much I sleep I never quite achieve the rems needed for someone pushing 30 and chronically ill. I forget I’m chronically ill. I wake up after 10 hours of sleep and feel like I’ve had 2. My adhd becomes more acute, the longer I wait for access to medication. I’m worried about the cost of gas and electric, we’re meant to be in for an extremely harsh winter. My car has a flat tyre, and my insurance has almost doubled since moving back into the city.

I work multiple jobs and still I fear for my finances. My wardrobe doesn’t look like the me I want to be. (I’m aware that people are dying, but as a stylist feeling at odds with your own curated archive feels like a real kick in the teeth.) I wake up and reach for my phone only to be accosted by the fact that new research shows that Hitler had a micro penis and the leaked Epstein emails show Trump blew Bill Clinton. I log off.

I love to cry. I love having a salty face. I love acknowledging the emotion. Facing it head on and not denying myself the human response of grief.

Something that struck me during my Friday night sob, was that women will cry, ugly, mouth wide, tears streaming and nose snotty, but continue to fold clothes and carry out skincare routines because the emotion doesn’t stop the need to continue. Women endeavour to persevere. I will cry completely overwhelmed and seemingly inconsolable, and take a brief pause to reply to an urgent message from a supplier. I’ll cry with my head in my hands whilst writing to do lists. Scheduling emails to be sent at 8am the next day so as not to seem completely unhinged.

My cry was nothing new. Feeling out of control, not where I should be at the ripe old age of 29. My finances (what finances are abysmal.) I’m riddled with father issues (what’s new) and a new revelation from therapy that I’m deeply anxiously attached in my friendships and relationships. I never quite feel like I’m doing life ‘right’. I learn that this is a common trait shared by the late diagnosed neurodivergent individual. To never quite feel good enough.

Wailing doesn’t fix any of this of course, I’m still sad and confused. But- I’ve acknowledged it. I’ve leant into the wave of sadness and allowed it to wash over me. For what will never be, what is yet to be and what will maybe come to pass. I’ve sat in it.

Surviving a year that I didn’t think I could has taught me a deep theology of suffering. Suffering that you can’t manifest your way out of, nor wish away the pain. Sometimes it just IS. Pain is just present, sickness is a part of life and people will hurt, disappoint and let us down in ways that we believe that we may never recover from. It’s not right, and yet, we BE. We endeavour to persevere. We survive and we will thrive.

I leave my sad bedroom and go to the living room. My housemate is playing Leonard cohen and printing Christmas cards with acrylic paint and Lino. Our adopted cat shrieks that I should give him some Bombay mix. Annie pours me a glass of red wine. She giggles and laughs and dances around the kitchen with the cat wrapped inside her favourite red cardigan, illuminated by the soft glow of the cheap warm fairy lights adorning the lofty heights of the old converted mill in which we live

Do the big cry, and move on. It will all be okay. And until it is okay, keep going.

A man walks up to me and asks me where I’m from. It’s a rainy day in north Dublin, not a heavy rain, but a steady grey mist. I’m sat in the back of a bar me and my boyfriend frequent, it’s quiet, cosy and full of characters. Not performative and the perfect place to kill time until he finishes work in the city.

I reply ‘Down’. Bluntly, and with that fake smile women do when we really aren’t interested and wish to be left alone.

'“DOWN???” He didn’t expect that.

“I thought you were French?” He exclaims.

Would it matter if i was? I wonder.

That’s the thing when men approach, you’re always trying to find and assess the immediate warning signs, the intermittent flashing red & green lights. Stop or go. Stay or leave. Fight or flight.

The mans father (Paul, apparently) shouts over to get the verdict that they had been clearly discussing for some time. You can always tell when men are about to approach. They think they’re so coy. It’s loathsome really. Sean shouts back that I’m from County Down, his arms in the air, animated and filled with disbelief. '“DOWN!?” Paul slaps his knee so hard that his beer stool wobbles. “Down?” he repeats it as if it’s not possible that someone from the rural north could look like me.

“I thought you were Italian.” he says with shrugged shoulders staring deep into the abyss of his 4pm pint of Tennents. I smile politely and tell them i’ll take the compliment, offering the remark that it’s probably the dark hair.

Sean grabs the reigns of conversation once again. He continues to ask me about my tattoo’s. They always do.

I don’t show him any, but my tatted hands betray me.

Paul asks me if Sean is bothering me, and the question catches me off guard because he obviously is, and yet he hasn’t said or done anything up until this point that crosses the line. It’s the kind of question men ask not because they care, but to absolve themselves of any true guilt. Sean shoots his stooped father a bitter glance, annoyed at the very suggestion that he would be annoying the nice tattooed French lady from Down.

Before I have the chance to reply to Paul’s pressing question of my annoyance, Sean charges ahead to tell me that, I’m “really very pretty”. I ignore the statement and tell him that I’m waiting to meet my boyfriend once he gets off of work.

“BOYFRIEND!?” Sean cries, throwing his arms in the air then clutching his chest, stumbling backward, imitating being shot. I wish I had a gun.

“Well he’s a lucky man.” Sean announces to the almost empty beer garden.

“Lucky man”, Paul solemnly chimes from the back.

Sean leaves to finish his pint. I take a deep breath and return to my book and my Guinness, wanting to eat my buffalo flavoured crips and wipe the crumbs off on my faux fur coat in peace.

[ 5 minutes later ]

Sean returns, and walks towards me in the kind of way you do if you want to establish a bond with a wild animal. That creepy and unsettling side step that men do when they wish to approach the bench. I do everything to stop myself from rolling my eyes.

At least approach me with some backbone.

He says something to me before I’ve even had the chance to remove my headphones and I didn’t quite catch it. “pardon?”

Paul bites his lip for a moment and says, how many piercings do you have?

There it is, the cardinal offence. Men don’t care about your piercings. They care about two very specific piercings. My face drops as I know exactly where this conversation is leading.

‘Ten.” I answer, blunty, rearranging my makeshift beer garden desk to seem busy and disinterested.

Sean shifts on the spot, giggles and covers his face, “no no, I can’t, I’m being bad, I want to ask you something..” He stammers. We all know what that something is.

Part of me wants to challenge him. SAY IT. Say whats on your perverted mind you disgusting freak. The other half just looks for bar staff and the nearest exit.

He looks me square in the eye, mouth open, motioning his hand across his chest, “and you don’t have them, anywhere - else?”

-and there it is.

Men always do.

My taxi driver was young and handsome. But handsome in the scary way that makes you feel uneasy and avoid all eye contact. Like a value cabs varnished Ken doll. Like he wouldn’t have been miscast on love island. He’s shaped like a cartoon Venice beach body builder and I’m surprised that his shirt actively retains all of its buttons considering how tight it is. He has a large 22 tattooed on his neck and for a moment I consider striking up friendly conversation about it when i remember it’s 4am and I genuinely don’t care that much. He’s playing tropical house covers of oasis and I’m as fascinated as I am disgusted by the concoction. Whenever the music swells he mindfully reduces the volume to a classy 8 on the screen of his hybrid Jeep.

The small Arabic man in front of me in the queue looks like that grumpy character from ted lasso. Your man with all the one liners and dead pan face. I’ve never watched the show. I don’t like being told what’s cool and current. Im too contrarian.

There’s a young man working the security desk with a tightly cropped head of full dark hair leading into a spectacular unfurling rats tail in loose ringlets, cascading down his back. It was glorious. Stick it to the man. A wide smile strikes my face until I realise that’s probably creepy and I should stop. I take a photo of the glorious hair and post it to my story. I don’t often believe in photographing strangers but this was too good. We’ve all gotten far too comfortable documenting strangers for content.

The pedo sunglasses - peaky flat cap look for men is a look that really perseveres despite the odds isn’t it?

I panic in WH SMITH and buy a biscott protein bar for the plane. Once boarded I realise what a terrible mistake I’ve made. How can something be simultaneously so sweet that my teeth ache, but also dull and utterly lifeless? I grimace and force myself to finish the bastard bar but what a disappointment in my own palette to have chosen such an abomination.

There’s something deeply profound in being able to see the sunrise through the groggy Ryan air windows of one side of the plane, and complete consuming darkness out the other. I’m not quite sure what it is, you do the work.

I have a whole row to myself. Sublime.I chart the looks I have planned for fashion week. Pretty devoid of colour this season but I only had a small suitcase and a dream so we’ll make it work. It’s a delicate eco system packing for LFW. I’ve found as a veteran attendee where the sparkle has died, the best thing to do is dress as yourself. The more you pack for any trip where you hope you have the right “look” is when you end up hating every look you’ve planned because it’s not YOU. I wonder who I am these days. (touches window for a sense of pathetic fallacy- or whatever the hell turn of phrase works idgaf anymore.)

The tattoo itches on my right leg. I got it done by a polish hardcore gabber DJ in krakow when I was 21 and it never quite healed properly. He didn’t speak any English. He drove me home in the snow in his souped up 1980’s golf GTA. The cassette converter played Thunderdome 95. It was the beast from the east freak weather from Siberia at the time, and Europe was thrown under heavy snow and -20 degrees after sundown. I don’t regret any of my tattoos. I’m getting my entire leg blasted tomorrow and I’m excited for some cathartic pain. It’s my version of those strange women on Instagram reels that do somatic release and energy work. Except I want to be stabbed with a latte in hand, trauma dumping (concenting) with my artist.

I pass my favourite house from all my time in London on the train, nestled into the countryside, surrounded by horses. I wonder what it would be like to own your own home.

I’m 12 years old. I realise that I’m not like other girls. Not like other girls in the kooky, off beat, Dinner in America kind of way, but not like other girls because I’ve been raised rural baptist, have a blunt bob that makes me look like a receptionist (not a cool one), and whilst other girlies look like they are ready to star along side Hilary duff, I look like I have three kids and a mortgage.

It’s okay you can laugh.

There’s something intensely painful at growing physically fast. The slowly unfurling horrors of puberty. You’re engaging in an alien-nostromo like becoming, this new body aggressively bursting forth from the once child’s safe cocoon. Except for women, these changes come with more sinister overtone, often not understood by the 12 year old child in their meat suit.

I grew exceptionally fast. I was always tall, but once I hit 13 everything stretched like beige playdoh. Riddled by shin splints and growing pains that kept me up at night. During this time two very interesting things happened, and to this day I am still unsure if i have the mental reasoning to explain the order of events. Thing one was that i became very womanly. I never experienced the wonders of a slender teenage body. I went from chubby disney-channel-comedic-effect-side-character to people-carrier-driving-chilli-con-carne-soccer-mom. And not in a hot way. I was a competitive swimmer until the height of my eating disorder, at the same time as my extreme body makeover. I quit the team due to comments made about my breasts and body hair and told my parents it was to focus more on my GCSE’s. Years of 5am training sets made me built like an NFL line backer. Broad shoulders, large back; ‘monkey arms’ as my mum would affectionately call them. My arms grew so fast I still to this day never quiet know where to store them. My hips were wide, my legs long, and chest increasingly large. School shirts that fitted me last month gaped over my sternum, plastic buttons holding on for dear life. Then came the stretch marks, funny, they never really bothered me? Little silvery worms lining the intricacies of my chest.

Forgetting the horror of the change, a new one lay ahead.

Getting dressed.

One thing that my teenage style icons had in common was a lack of chest. Flat, svelte. No bulges under the perfectly oversized kooky sweaters that made me look like the tiger mom at field hockey practice.

The second experience, was the shame that resulted from these changes. Having grown up Baptist in the era of the Jonas' Brothers promise rings and purity culture, the shaming of female bodies was rampant and deeply entrenched in my upbringing. Skirts that were holy on my church teenage disco co-conspirators were deemed ‘distracting’ on me. Tops that my size 6 elder sister could wear on holiday that slipped under the radar were met with chastisement resulting in being sent back to my room to cover up. Bringing shame to my father for wanting to wear a skinny strappy top.

That’s maybe where the shame started.

Strappy tops became layered over a second tank top (perfectly acceptable in 2010). and even in the height of my eating disorder at 5,10 having lost 55 kilos, I still wore a sports bra every day, layered with azetc and skull scarves, covering the genetic shame bestowed upon me. I remember the bruising from how tightly i wore the sports bra. Not that anyone would ever even see my shoulders of course. Don’t even get me started on bikini’s. Anyone unfortunate to be a tween in the 2008-2010 era will remember the bane of our lives as the only acceptable way to embrace your ‘curves’ being to buy from the Kelly Brooke Range at New Look. Because it’s only acceptable to be bigger if you let everyone know that YOU know you’re bigger by siphoning yourself off to the gulag of nautical stripes, anchors, polka dots and sweet-sugar-candy-man levels of fantasy.

It’s hard to describe what that kind of bodily shame does to a girl.

My great aunts last words to me were “awfully short skirt’.

To have big boobs is not a shame, but to act like you yourself are not repulsed by them IS shameful. It’s slutty and rude and distracting and demeaning. I mean, have some self respect??

Through my ever changing body, the pendulum swings between a 20-12 in the decade of my 20’s, one thing has remained. The deep hatred of my breasts. I look at them in the mirror ever night, i play to see what they would look like augmented, I tell my friends that the first thing I would do with a Lottery win would be a trip to turkey. “But Lucinda?” You may ask, “I thought you were body positive? All about self acceptance and loving yourself?” I am. “Then why can’t you like your boobs?” I can’t.

I remember the freedom of going to university, walking into town to meet friends, wearing a sequinned french connection sheer top that belonged to my mum in the noughties, paired with vintage Levi’s and a faux leather biker jacket from River Island.

I carried the jacket in my arms on the warm September day, excited to go to a bar that I would never have been allowed to go to before being a strict evangelical and that’s when it started. One man stared a little too long, i continued, then two men stopped talking to ogle my chest. I started to sweat. I walked past a man begging who reached for my arm and called me gorgeous. This little country mouse couldn’t shake the fact that she couldn’t just exist the way that her sisters could, that the curves and stature of her body had now banished her to a life of covering up to avoid the stares. Shortly before this event, I was grabbed by a man on holiday, brought into his leather shop and held hostage while he stroked my shoulders and told me how beautiful I was. I went home and hid in my bedroom, too scared to tell my parents what had happened. Shortly after both of these events, I was grabbed by a drunk man on the street in the middle of the day, he grabbed my arm outside a cafe, 3pm. People looked on and did nothing. He gripped my arm so hard that it bruised. Pulled me in for a hug whilst telling me how beautiful I was. I managed to fight him off with tears in my eyes and continued my walk into uni.

While none of these events were my fault, and assault, verbal or physical are never the fault of the victim; the only thread that my 20 year old self could pull was that the only connection to these incidents was my chest was present in all of them.

I longed to be twiggy like alexa chung. Tiny and petito, flat chested and ready for the day.

It wasn’t my fault. It’s never our fault. However the invisible string theory caused me to call into question my very ideas of femininity, what’s acceptable for me sexually to express or show. To my underdeveloped pre-frontal lobe mind, my figure was at odds with my safety. To show my cursed body was to put me in the firing line, to be susceptible to leering and handsy men. My solution was to reject all femininity. My boobs were never to be seen or posted online, only annually in a bikini. I took a hard pivot from the Alexa Chung, satchel bag pinafore tights and paisley print, to suits and tracksuits, New Rocks and a skin head. But please don’t pity me. I found strength and safety in suiting, in oversized mens clothing. Legs out? Fine. But no boobs. It was a complete 180 from the soft shamed baptist. It felt like a reclamation. A sense of place.

To lose showing my breasts meant reclaiming space that had been previously lost to me as a woman. While it took me years and extensive therapy to rewind the clock hands of trauma inflicted by men, I have to say that clothing has been a real comfort and sense of safety provided to me.

Whilst this is in no way me telling women to cover up, this is the story of how i conquered my arch nemesis. And it was by covering up. It as by forcing myself to take up space. Large shoulders, bold colours. You will be forced to look me in the face in spite of my 38GG’s. You will make room for me at the table. You will fear me in the bar.

It’s only been in the years preceding covid that I begin to feel healed and safe enough to even consider allowing more of a yin approach to my clothing. To feel resolved enough to wear a low cut top, to feel strong and brave. While writing this article I couldn’t find one picture that wasn’t a bikini pic that included the wearing of a top that showed off my boobs. Interesting.

Anyway. If you hate your boobs join the club. If you feel like they ruin every outfit, join the club, if you wish you could dance and jump without giving yourself a black eye, join the club. But for now, I guess I’ll practice what I preach and try and love them through gritted teeth.

Lucinda x

I’ve had the same conversation more times than I can count the past week.

“The two things in this life that make people deeply uncomfortable is death and disability.”

I confide in it to my boyfriend. I share it with other chronically ill people. I weep it to my housemate. I announce to my mother over Whatsapp. That no matter how liberal, how lefty, nor how progressive someone may have marked themselves, death and disability have automatic unwanted recoil effects. Talk of disability over the dinner table is awkward, causing family members and friends alike to push peas around their plates in silence. Talk of disability over coffee is seen as downright rude and impolite. The subject will be changed with the swiftness of a mother trying to seperate political conversations at a Christmas dinner.

And why is that?

Why does talk of weakness, chronic illness and disability cause such a cultural flinch?

I have one theory.

Disability and death are linked.

Hear me out.

To be disabled, to live with a disability is to live with a sense of death both future and present tense. You in your body in this current day, are experiencing the demise of your hopes and dreams. Of a body that can be trusted. A body that you have faith in. Trust of your own fleshes homeostasis that will see you through thick and thin. And with that death comes grief. You mourn your mobility, your fertility, your finances and prospects. You mourn the devil on your back that tells you that you will never be enough.

Some of us grew up disabled, some of us developed disability. Some of us endured horrific accidents that resulted in immediate changes to our reality. All our valid, and all experience intense grief. I think it’s the grief that makes people uncomfortable. Because grief cannot be fixed. There’s no amount of mushroom supplements, healing your gut health or gym memberships that can fight your way out of the pit of despair, the chasm left by grief.

As Irish people we are actually elite in the field of mourning. We do not shy away from the dead as many western practices do, but we stare them in the face, lying in their final resting casket in a pokey living room surrounded by ham sandwiches, tea and tray bakes. We share stories and reminisce with the body present. We drink to forget and to remember all in the one tear filled day. We are top-drawer mourners. However, I feel as though we lose this ability to understand grief when it comes to the metaphysical, when it extends beyond a body that is either here or not.

But you look fine? - I am not

You looked like you had a lovely trip - I was in pain every day

How was your summer? - Spent coming to terms with the fact that I am about to embark upon a year of treatment that could shorten my lifespan and make me infertile - how was yours?

It’s weird? Having to have conversations with your ex when you were together about whether or not to sign a waver to allow your ovaries to be cut out at 28? Navigating singleness and choosing aggressive treatment over the hope of a theoretical child. Explaining to your new partner why you can’t be on your feet all the time. what the pain feels like. The fear. How do you articulate to someone that you’ve only been dating for 3 months that the treatments and pending hysterectomies will change you in unimaginable ways and that you completely understand if he wants to leave. (He stayed.)

Disabled and chronically ill people are great in a crisis. We live in crisis mode 24-7. My zip code is survival mode and my address line is panic. If you want someone to get in the trenches with you in your grief find a disabled person.And yet, when it’s our turn to be seen and held, visible disability causes people to avert their gaze to where the sky and the ground alike become very interesting. Anything but make eye contact with the person in a chair. We are visible when we wish the ground would swallow us up, and invisible when we cry out for help.

We grieve the bodies that we were promised. The bodies that everyone else got.

The grief is so palpable having lived with both a childhood and adult disability. I was in a wheelchair as a child, in and out of hospital school for care and treatment for Perthes disease. A condition that has left lifelong scars upon my mobility and will mean I will most likely need my first hip replacement around forty. I then suffered for ten years before finally being diagnosed with Endometriosis at 28. The surgery was a huge success. But at 29 it’s back, and there is no cure. Does that make you uncomfortable? Do you pity me? I don’t.

There’s new breakthrough medication that can help, but can cause brittle bones.

Then failing that, I will start the menopause via injection or tablet alongside HRT (hormone replacement therapy.)

Failing that, I will have a partial hysterectomy, removing my ovaries. My surgeon tells me that not only will this immediately induce irreversible menopause, but will also certainly shorten my lifespan by a number of years due to a huge increase in heart failure, cardiac arrest, stroke and more.

Trust me Iv’e cried a lot.

There’s no winning here.

1-10 people with uterus’ suffer from endometriosis, and to this day there is no cure.

What we learn as disabled and chronically ill folks is a resounding and resolved theology of suffering. What it is to be human. To suffer. To understand that none of us deserve anything, we simply ride out the cards that we are dealt, and we grieve them every day. We do however, refuse to be your inspiration. Don’t pity us, look us in the eye when we speak about our pain. Believe us.

The AGM playlist was on its 2nd full lap after taking a brief intermission for the greatest hits of Celine Dion. AGM standing for All-Girls-Meeting, the playlist having spawned from the WhatsApp group chat of a bunch of my female friends looking to have an iconic weekend at All Together Now. I had just pipped my personal best having driven for only 5 hours at one time, it’s a long way from Belfast to Waterford, and our final petrol station stop to look for hair gel had ensured the new award of longest journey undertaken in my tiny blue Citroen.

The dashboard clicked 90,000 miles and myself and Annie let out an excited cheer that we caught the exact moment that I had driven 10,000 miles in my car. I couldn’t help but feel the passages of time thinking about all the journeys great and small, near death experiences and cries I had undertaken behind the wheel of my little wagon. I never named her. I disagree with naming cars unless they are vintage.

I quickly shake the waves of nostalgia by turning up Westlife 5 notches higher than before, and steel my focus on the road.

Even in the interim of dusk and darkness I could tell that this end of the country was beautiful. “It’s a shame that Irish people don’t travel enough within their own country,” I remark to Annie, she nods and passes me a rice cake. Most of my travels have seen me through Donegal, Clare, Galway Dublin and The midlands. Having even had a year living in Athlone and Donegal, but until the festival I had never had a reason to venture this way.

The roads become tighter as we hone in on the sleepy town of Portlaw, holding its breath to await the thousands of travellers who will descend upon it tomorrow morning. We felt elite in our planning to arrive the night before and settle into our glamping scenario, so kindly gifted to me by Guinness. Being gifted experiences is a crazy thing. Annie and I felt like two giggling school girls trying to pull off the heist of the year. That we were cool enough to be invited.

Luckily there were speed bumps, otherwise I fear I would have hit him too.

I instinctively reached my hand across Annie and hit the emergency break.

There’s something in the road.

My full beams rests across the country lane, highlighting the slowly flailing body of a beautiful mallard. His wings twitching, barely the strength to lift the head attached to his lengthy neck. But God knows he keeps trying. We both gasped. “Who hits a duck and doesn’t stop?” I yell. I couldn’t help but fear this was a bad omen. I put my hazards on and hurried over to the maimed creature. Open closer inspection I could tell that he wasn’t going to make it. Blood slowly dripping from inside his tiny beak. I picked him up and cradled him in my arms. Illuminated only by the blinking hazard lights of the Citroen and the orange haze of a littering of street lamps.

Walking over to the river from where I assume he came whence, I felt silly wearing glitter eye make up. This is no time for glitter i thought. I set his frail body down into the long grass and crouched beside him. His breath was laboured and his blinks were slowing. I stroked his downy body and told him it was alright. I’m not sure if ducks go to heaven. I know that dogs do. Because Don Bluth said so. But is there a Duck heaven? Duckling afterlife? The great be-pond? I snap out of my coping mechanism of puns to continue stroking his soft little body. Animals are amazing to see up close. No matter how big or small. I used to want to be Eliza Thornberry of the Wild Thornberry’s fame. I was convinced I could talk to animals however now I suspect it was just autism.

I look over to Annie, washed in an ominous orange haze, her hand over her mouth. I shake my head. The ducks body settles. Limp and eyes shut. I panicked and realised that I didn’t want a child to be further traumatised by the sight of a dead fluffy duck, so I took the liberty of trying to hide him. That resulted in me very sadly setting him into the reeds, which, because of my lack of accounting for their height- turned into me launching the mallard into the grass while I learnt my full body in a right angular fashion over the concrete wall. Very uncouth.

I get back in the car. I exclaim once again, “that feels like a bad omen.” To which Annie exclaims her tagline “don’t worry about it” pronounced, “dunwurryboutit”. We said a purgatory prayer for the duck and thanked God for his short life and continued on our quest.

Driving on and finally hitting the festival markings I didn’t feel as excited as I’d hoped. I feel depleted and anti climactic and Westlife doesn’t seem all that appropriate now. I turn off the radio to focus on the tiny road.

30 minutes pass, and the lippy was unsuccessful. I do an elegant 3 point turn on the dirt road as I’m acutely aware of the fact that I’m being watched by multiple men and I reject the idea of being pitied by them. Or having my driving disrespected for that matter. It turns out, that the gates had closed while we were tending to the funeral of the dying duck. We were not aware of any such time constraints on accessing the site. I feel like an idiot. What am I meant to do? Call my contact at Guinness and have them think '‘what in the Zoey Deschannel is this white woman talking about laying a duck to rest and missing the curfew?” I’m embarrassed and I’m tired. Doechii doesn’t seem fun anymore and I switch off the AGM playlist.I’ve been driving for almost 6 hours. The Cork man in the Toyota beckons us to follow him, and we rally around the Waterford roads, speeding around the corners. Years of playing Forza with my dad had prepared me for such a time as this. We are not alone in our plight. Carfuls of despondent young people and crew are sent with us on a wild goose chase (pardon the pun). We experience ego and confusion as none of the security know quite what to do with us. At this point I had been driving for 7 hours and was past the point of no-return. One particularly annoying security guard with piercing green eyes illuminated under the generator lights tells us to park up with the lorry’s in the back and wait till morning. Annie and I look at each other and I bite my lip. She whispers, “dunwurryboutit” it under her breath with an uneasy smile. We are ready to accept our fate, sleeping next to the truckers and genny’s under my poncho as a blanket, warmed by a rake of Tequila-Rita Buzzballs.

After exploring every possible option, we decide to embrace the embarrassment and contact the team who brought us to the festival. I hate the thought of being an inconvenience, and I reassure the team who were waiting on our arrival that we were safe and we were warm and we would make it work! I exclaim over the phone that at least it will be a funny story to tell. I’m so tired. I consider tucking into the food that we had prepped for the festival. Our contact tells us to hold off getting stuck into the Tequila Rita’s - she has an idea.

I want the ground to swallow me up. I would rather die than be an inconvenience, and calling someone at midnight makes me want to vomit. I was hit by a car once on my bike, flipped the car and hit the road with a thud at 19. It happened right outside a bar and I remember the pain of embarrassment being perceived like a little chalk man drawing on the tarmac being worse than the neck brace and possibility of broken bones.

We sit in silence, waiting on the call back. Then the giggles set in. It’s only then in real time that we do the maths and realise that if we hadn’t have stopped for the duck that we would have still made the gate and been siping our drinks under a very different environment of a private yurt. Instead of my cramped Citroen hat smells vaguely like ham and mustard sandwiches.

We get the call back, our contact is too scared to let us sleep rough as two women in the middle of nowhere, and I assure her that at this point anyone outside of the car was at more danger from us than us of them. She laughs and I still feel bad. I never get gifted big things like this, of course this would happen to me. Why did I have to stop for the duck?? She asked for 5 more minutes and we waited with baited breath, resigning to our fate of sleeping at a right angle until morning…

Fast forward 45 minutes and its 1.30am. Annie and I are driving up a long winding lane illuminated by those fancy white ground lights, headed towards what might be the swankiest hotel either of us have ever seen. We’re starving and in disbelief that this is where we’ve ended up after our 12 hour ordeal. Our contact said it was the only hotel not booked up in the area. We do a happy dance in the car park and we carry the rucksacks my mum gave us that have been sat in our garage since the late 90’s and shuffle towards the foyer. We’re met by a small, camp, glasses wearing man called Al with a warm smile. He seems appalled by the size of our bags and immediately rushes to decant them from Annie and I. It feel’s nice to be doted on by a man after being laughed at by multiple men in high vis.

He hands us our turnkey on a leather fob and asks us if he can provide any drinks - I nearly blurt out that I have 5 buzzballs in my bag but I feared that would secure my fate in lowering the tone of the establishment. Or neon pink and green rucksacks are trundled behind us down the carpeted halls by Al the spritely man as we try to act like we totally frequent hotels like this all the time. (We do not.)

We turn the key to our room and immediately use our free will to jump on the beds and steal all the free soap. I put on the Kelly Clarkson show and Annie opens the chips and dip. We bag the free slippers too. I feel like my spine has made a great escape from sleeping in my hatchback to on one of those hotel beds that are so plump and high that you have to jump to get into. We make plans to hit the sauna and jet pool after breakfast.

I can’t help but feel like the duck had something to do with this.

Never ever pass a dying duck.

I'm having nightmares again.

A lot. I mean, I always have experienced night terrors - and nightmares are pretty commonplace for me. Whether it be the several years of sertraline, the ADHD or my overactive imagination, sleep can often be a place where rest is evaded, and a bewildering labyrinth unfolds so confusing that it haunts my waking hours the next day. It's like a black slime, an obsidian goo that sticks to you as you try and pour your morning coffee.

The worst part about it is that none of my dreams are something silly and trivial. The, ‘Oh NOOOOOO I’m being chased by a Killer Clown with a Knife.’ type dream. Mine are deeply twisted. They are A24, Lars Von Triers’ emotional thrillers/horrors where the threat isn’t immediately perceived but deeply felt. One such dream was about being stuck on a train with all my closest friends who were backpacking in some eastern european country, they suddenly turned their backs on me and wouldn't utter a word. I spent the remainder of my dream trying frantically to find a solution for whatever it was that I had done, the great offence caused. I then ran out of money so had to get off the train and start a new life making Baskets in what can only be described as a hybrid of Czechoslovakia and Greenland.

I’ve been an insomniac too. Maybe twice a year if not more I’ll experience a month of prolonged sleep deprivation, for no reason at all other than my body is such a tightly wound ball of elastic banded mania that the option of sleep goes off the table.

Nightmares and insomnia make sense for the year I’ve had. A deeply traumatic breakup, surgery, a litany of diagnoses, family drama, leaving the church and moving house and job twice. If you’d throw in a casual substance addiction and I’d be every director's idea of a woman at rock bottom. I sip my coffee and pause, should I be sharing this? Is it self flagilating? Selfish? Or self centered? I press on typing while my small dog takes a big sigh and shifts in his basket. I don’t know what he’s sighing about, it’s not like he pays rent.

The funny thing that I observe about my nightmares is that they often tap into something deeper, and have nothing to do with the nightmare I have live through these past 12 months. Being forced to leave London and move home due to a debilitating illness, losing my career and having to live with my parents again in rural Ireland. I got a job in retail again. And while retail is fine, and as creatives we always need to make it work, it felt like a crushing blow to a costume designer who was co-leading a team of 6 seamstresses making custom looks for the Brit Awards 3 months prior.

Nightmare.

Shortly after moving home I was diagnosed with ADHD at the wisened old age of 28 whilst being told simultaneously that there is no treatment or even any medication available to you as you have (direct quote) - ‘lost the postcode lottery’.

Nightmare.

I even wrote to my local MP for help, to no avail. Then, navigating the hellscape that is the NHS to fight for life changing laparoscopy surgery. The very reason that I moved home. Have you ever experienced pain that has made you assess whether you could end it all by jumping out of your third story bedroom window? I have unfortunately. 1 in 10 people with uterus’s do and will go on ignored and writhing in pain.

Nightmare.

Having said surgery and whilst being a raving success, taking me 2 months to get back on my feet again, losing any financial stability that I had regained after working retail again.

Financial Nightmare.

Shortly after this, after a month of agonising conversations I ended my relationship with my partner of 6 years, just one week shy of what would have been our 6 year anniversary. It was the most gut wrenching experience of my life. Being forced to pull the plug on the person who held all of your hopes and dreams for the most formative parts of your life. Where do you go from there? I remember crying like a banshee, my fingers tracing my fresh surgery scars, thinking that I would do the surgery 6 times over if it meant I would never have to feel this heartbreak ever again.

Love is a funny thing, because it doesn’t end, so where does it go?

Nightmare.

A breakup is like when a toddler mixes all their playdough colours together and then cries when the colour comes up yucky. Begging you to separate the pieces to restore order. But you can’t. It's a bluey, beigey brown mess. You and the toddler in you both sob. Sometimes there is no solving the lumpy chaos.

I lost a lot of weight. FAST. A breakup and a major surgery will do that to a woman. The weight was coming off my boobs (a win for the parish) faster than I could buy new bra’s to fit them (financial loss for the parish, have you looked at how much bras cost???) My drawers are now filled with the ghostly never worns of the Rosie Huntington Whitely’s of M&S past. The shock of losing weight was tough, not because of the weight loss in and of itself but a lifetime of body dysmorphia tipped over into its more sinister older sister, depersonalisation.

I would spend hours in the bath looking at my hands and wondering whose they were, because I couldn’t feel them so they couldn’t possibly be mine. I would be sat with friends having coffee or pints, having fun when I would suddenly feel myself viewing myself. As if my spirit was trapped like spider man on the ceiling of the bar or cafe we were sat in, peering down on me. It’s an odd experience that makes you feel completely weightless, like a funeral balloon that got set free in memory of what once was.

Nightmare.

I then, in short swift and resolved succession, went low contact with my parents, moved out (a financial win) and left the church. While I'm not as resolved on the fallout, my nightmares, with time, turned into forgiveness. While I did struggle to eat for a while, and suffered from some of the worst chronic stress eczema that my poor soft body has ever seen. I was exiled to a summer of wearing sunglasses to hide my crusty eyelid based shame. Having stress flare ups is so embarrassing. ‘Oh PoOr BaBy CaN’t ConTroL hEr CorTiSol So Now SheS StuCk iN a PerPetUaL stATe oF fIghT oR fLigHt?’ Exasperating.

The chronic stress makes sense, for the time; but then you watch the videos of the swollen bellies of multitudes in Gaza and you think come on Luce, suck it up.

Gaza lives in a Nightmare.

While my relationship with family is healing, and forgiveness is a beautiful thing, one thing that I have learnt through living and breathing nightmares, is not to run. Running creates distance between you and the problem, but what does that distance achieve? Where are you running to?

Don’t you dare run.

My favourite joke is that all people obsessed with running are simply evading therapy and I stand by that. Face the terror. Turn and look him in the eye. The only way through is through, and developing a theology of suffering is one of the only things that will save you and endear yourself to others around you. To bring the close people close. To not use the bottle or the bed, but to turn and face the horror, and see what he can teach you about yourself. To not be scared of the darkness. Darkness will always be there, it’s been there longer than the presence of light so save your energy and stop running. I’ve spent most of my 20’s running, even sprinting away from the dark parts of myself, my fears and my failures. (For which there are plenty I assure you.) But in fact, leaning into that darkness, staring him dead in the eyes, has allowed me to achieve more than I ever could have dreamed.

There’s a group of men fishing and I think how sweet it is until I unmistakably hear one of them comment about the size of my tits over my ambient playlist. Big boobs are quite motherly I suppose. I lost a lot of weight recently, but my boobs didn’t get the memo. So for now, the keys are hidden between the double EE’s as I speed away from the seedy fisherman.

There’s so many dogs out here. I miss my dog. I meet a man with the tiniest chihuahua I’ve ever seen called poco, who tells me how excited he is to get home for a joint. I laugh and say me too.

Another dog comes dawdling down the path after his owner, and I think to myself how odd that the dog should have more of a recognisable face than his non discript white owner. The dog has a grey furry face and reminds me of the drunk priest from father ted . It isn’t until he plods past that I notice that this dog has the biggest balls I’ve ever seen. I almost stop to take it in. Two tennis balls knocking about, I look up to see a couple in their thirties recording the dogs balls. I snigger and keep walking. Maybe that’s why the owners so non-descriptive, because he’ll be known at the pub as your one with the dog with the bollocks.

I haven’t been to this park before. I need to pee. I’ve been on my laptop and phone so much today that I feel carsick, and the fresh air alleviates the stress but accentuates the hay fever. Still I press on.

I pass an impressively large swan, posturing beside a flower bed emblazoned with the graffiti RIP POPE FRANCIS. And I think that’s there’s something quite poetic about it all, although I’m not sure what. Last months dating app match likes my Instagram story of the catholic swan, he promised he would take me to this park. I wonder will I ever be a mother.

I sit down facing the sun, and feel a tickle on my arm only to notice a tiny green spider. It’s funny how they’re so cute when they’re small. A large woman despairs as an even larger dog does a massive shite. She hurry’s past me with the black shitty baggy held as far from her as possible. I don’t know if I could have my own dog because picking up shite is not something I want to spend my time doing. You’re basically in servitude to a beast that you bought of your own free will. Does this mean that I’ll be a bad mother?

Three boys play on the dock. The two bigger boys have the smaller one by the arms and legs and threaten to throw him in and feed him to the catholic swan. It’s so funny when boys play and swear but they’re still too small to have deep voices. They play surrounded by pigeons and geese. Would I be better as a boy mum or a girl mum I wonder.

So many people out running. It makes my blood boil. I feel about running the same way conservatives feel about the gays. Do it on your own time and don’t rub your lifestyle in my face. I couldn’t care less about a man’s strava time. I spent so much of my time being biblically busy and hurtling towards the unknown, and now at 29 I just want the world to stop, and stay still for a while. Does that mean that I’m inherently selfish? Too selfish to ever be a mother I suppose.

I don’t even know if I can have children, and while the feminist inside me rages to live my life on her own terms, I wonder would I be a good mother. The bridge reads in electric blue graffiti FREE GAZA. Women in Belfast really love the bob and blunt fringe combo don’t they? I’m interrupted as a bobbed woman stops me to tell me she likes my tattoos. Her brother has a memorial leg of Princess Diana that I would love. I shift awkwardly and tuck away my grey pants that I can feel peeking out over the top of my shorts. I like being called love. I call most other people hunny or gorgeous. You don’t realise how much you miss bird song when you live in flats.

I wonder will there be time for me to have children? There’s so much I want to do - Want to achieve and fix and figure out? How will I have time to do all that before my biological clock runs out? More bobbed women pass. I start to feel cold.

I was a deeply uncool child. Not uncool in a way that slowly unfurls into manic pixie that blossoms into the lead singer of a new wave vegan punk band kind of acceptable uncool. I was DEEPLY uncool. It started with my mums commitment to all of us having utilitarian bob’s for haircuts. Which on a more svelte child could have read quite Parisienne. On me however? It read Dawn French as the Vicar of Dibley. (Whilst wearing the official checkered wristbands from Avril Lavigne at Claire’s may I add.)

I was disabled, overweight, riddled with undiagnosed ADHD and had a penchant for animal figurines, chocolate buttons and puppets. Deeply uncool.

However, that being said, a lot of my frontal lobe development in the latter half of my twenties has made me realise that stylistically, I always knew who I was. I think that we know exactly who we are and what we like, until we gain social consciousness and blend into some horrendous amorphous soup of Abercrombie and fitch wearing swoop fringe teens. (I survived the 2010’s by the skin of my teeth.)

So without further ado, here’s a list of items that I’ve been bringing back into my personal style repertoire - that would make Lucinda circa Dawn French smile.

Sparkly Sequinned Scarves

Scarves were something that all fat kids loved. Fat kids in general learn how to accessorise fast, since hardly any clothes fit us. I was always a magpie, always stealing broaches necklaces and purses from the bottom of my grandparents dusty wardrobes. But a sequinned scarf? MAGIC. I had one exactly like this as a child, purchased on a trip to Claire’s accessories (second shout out) after watching the Hilary Duff movie where she goes to Rome and becomes and accidentally pop star.

Fat kids in general learn how to accessorise fast, since hardly any clothes fit us.

It’s camp, it’s fun, completely unnecessary and communicates a certain level of whimsy needed in such dark times.

Wooden Jewellery

see vintage wooden necklace thrifted in Dublin this weekend**

I was always attracted to natural jewellery. Wooden bangles, faux bone, shells and turquoise. But that was deeply uncool for a child growing up in the mcbling era, which was closely followed by recession core, to be followed by the punchy colours of Katy Perry’s brave new world. Wooden jewellery didn’t exactly scream cool. I don’t know what sort of ‘world traveller’ vibe I was trying to communicate, but I remember a deeply distinctive attraction to these objects, but felt that it would further ostracise me to wear something loud and clunky that wasn’t chic or fun and cute in the acidic pink tones that the other girls were wearing. Enter late 20’s Lucinda with an extensive bangle collection, a rainbow of colours, metals and wooden necklaces. My boyfriend bought me this black one at a market this weekend in Dublin, and I couldn’t help but think that wee Luce would have thought that it was so cool too.

Turquoise Jewellery, Bandannas and Camo.

That’s it. That’s the tweet.

Ponchos

One of the main reasons I wanted to enter the industry was because of Ugly Betty. She was cool, kind, (supposedly fat but on a recent rewatch she would have only clocked a U.K. size 12 with padding so like, really?) But one of Betty’s defining and enduring style moments is her Guadalajara poncho. A poncho is the exact opposite of the internet zeitgeist. A poncho is friendly. Cosy. Owns a collection of herbal teas and gives good advice. Not skinny and angular and Gabriette mac lip combo-vogue cigarettes-tequila soda. A poncho takes up space. It announces itself with a gentle flounce and floury of someone familiar with both the enduring legacy of Stevie Nicks and CBeebies. But isn’t that the whole point? That clothes get to be fun? This look made me feel like the plus size version of a smelted down Vanessa Hudgens and Kesha circa 2012.

This look made me feel like the plus size version of a smelted down Vanessa Hudgens and Kesha circa 2012.

The poncho is deeply uncool. However, she is DEEPLY fun. So much of my childhood was undiagnosed sensory play, and where sensory issues affect other nuerodivergent people in a vast array of different ways, for me, I need touch and texture and stimulation in my clothing otherwise I feel panicked and too ‘clean’. Basically, back up, this girl needs a twirl.

Love Luce x

I think that there is something strange afoot in an age and economy where it’s easier to achieve a six pack than a semi detached home. The consequential servitude to self improvement. Yes, you may not be a home owner, but you can have a ski slope nose and Invisalign. You couldn’t dream of a down payment, but a 10-step skincare routine? Now that’s just about doable. I don’t think we are slaves to beauty itself, but to the pursuit of beauty.

To chase beauty is viewed as admirable. Brave even. To change your destiny, to better yourself from dowdy mother of three to HOT MOM !!! The applause !! The adoration !! How they will talk of you !! It’s addictive. However, the problem with beauty is that it is indeed a never ending maze with no way out. One step closer and you have already set yourself four steps back. You may have achieved clear skin, but your hair is still thin and dull. Your teeth are now straight, but they could be whiter. You lost the weight, but now your skin sags in unforgiving places.

I think back to the childhood story of the puppet Punchinello, who lives in a world where puppets award each other stars or spots that stick to the skin. Stars come first being brilliant talented and beautiful, spots for being ugly, strange, or lacking talent or beauty. Punchinello only has spots - not for a lack of trying, and as a result doesn’t fit into the way of life amongst the other villagers. That is until he meets Lucy (I didn’t make this up lol that’s her name in the book) , and she’s beautiful, but has neither spots nor stars. Anytime the villagers try to label her brilliant for having no spots, or a loser for having no stars, they simply fall away.

She explains to Punchinello that once you understand more about the carpenter who made you, with purpose and intention, then you stop caring about the thoughts and opinions of others. The grading system set up to measure and weigh your worth simply becomes irrelevant. This story meant a lot to me as a child and it’s funny that it comes to mind now in my late twenties.

For us to escape the maze of beauty, we need to realise and assess why being ‘beautiful’ matters. And of course it matters, beauty is undeniably one of the foremost important cultural currencies. To be svelte, vixen like, bunny pretty or deer pretty, stylish but not tacky. To be present yet mysterious across the scree, isolated for all to love and adore.

And that’s the dream right? That’s the goal? To be adored in some way or another?

And THAT - is the very thing with beauty. It aims to isolate us and remove us from human connection. Beauty can only be achieved from a place of isolation and restriction; From food, from engagement, and from experience. Our western society so is set towards lone-wolf-worship. The 1980’s renegade cop that goes it alone. The secluded artist. To achieve alone and “without help” is still on the pedestal of ultimate achievement.

We still haven’t copped on that rarely does something built alone stay standing.

One way or another, ‘ugliness’ will find you. So stop running. I look in the mirror as I hurtle toward 30, and see the deepening of my father’s worry lines across my forehead. My mother’s dimples become deeper set in my cheeks and her laughter lines caress my eyes, their traces still present even without a smile. Grey hairs begin to push through my unruly hair. I’m not happy about it, but I am grateful to be alive. To have survived the 27 club long enough to show signs of ageing.

I don’t always feel this way of course - with the tiktok girlie pops breathing down my neck with another 2-for-1 offer. The discourse surrounding the perfect time to start getting filler. The full facelift at 40. Which weight loss injectable is the most cost effective? Hyaluronic acid vs Squalene. The never ending reminder to empty my purse so I can gaze at lady beauty and hope that her gaze will land on me.

There will always be another way to be beautiful, another way to be loved. My advice? Tap out early and enjoy your life. Enjoy the deep ugliness that is to be human and to be present in your ever human decay. Escapism only works for a time.

Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece ALIEN has had a special place in my heart ever since my dad sat me down to watch it. I was probably too young, (and definitely more scared than I ever told my dad,) but little did I know that something lurking in the cold dark damp of the Nostromo would become a perfect metaphor for living with chronic pain.

After the first viewing of Alien I became obsessed with H R Giger, the Swiss artist whose early work inspired the screenplay written by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett. O'Bannon was introduced to Gigers work in 1975 after stumbling across his paintings during research for visual design concepts of an early French iteration of DUNE. Obannon was captivated by the grotesque nature of Gigers work, and knew that it would translate to the big screen as something monstrous.

Gigers’ airbrushed work to look at is deeply uncomfortable, cold, steely and brutalist; like a car crash that you can’t look away from. The concept for Ridley Scott’s 1979 alien derived from Gigers’ “Necronom’ 1976. The alien itself grows inside the stomach of an unsuspecting crew member Kane, after he recovers from being attacked by a parasitic creature nesting in the hull of an abandoned spaceship, (I definitely peed myself a little the first time I watched the creature latch onto his face ngl) - the leech like being known aptly as the face-hugger, sucks all the nutrients from the body of the host, only to impregnate it with a smaller Xenomorph alien. Which then bursts forth from the host Kane’s chest - during dinner no less.

Obannon and Shussett’s objective was very clear from the early drafts of Alien (which were rejected by Fox who later came to finance and create the movie) that the violence was only more terrifying and potent if it happened to men. If the male characters aboard the Nostromo ship were to be picked off one by one. Obannon was aware that women experience horror every day of their lives, that to be alive and existing in female form was to live with the threat and or experience sexual violence and lack of bodily autonomy It makes sense why Ellen Ripley was the sole survivor of the Nostromo.

Obannon was even quoted that he wanted men to have to urge to shrink down in thier chairs and cross thier legs during the movie.

I spent most of this summer feeling like melting ice cream being aggressively scooped out of my container after being blasted in the microwave. Waiting on a diagnosis whilst experiencing debilitating pain. Your whole soul goes runny and unstable but you still need to deliver on a platter. To be a woman is to perform, but how can I perform when I have no clear answers or help yet? I identify strongly with the feeling of dread that the crew of the Nostromo feel through the duration of the movie. There’s this THING that’s out to get them… they know nothing about it, how it works or why it works, only that it wants to destroy them.

Living with a chronic illness is much the same. You’re hesitant to put labels onto it because you’re waiting on an official diagnosis, so you can’t claim to be sick, because you can’t claim to know what’s going on. But the threat is still there.

The threat that around every corner will be some awful experience, pain or great leveller to will remind you of your fallibility, your helplessness and your humanity. A never ending sense of threat that comes from both the parasitic condition that has chosen to attach itself to your life form, and the sense of threat from a once homely body turning hostile in a matter of months.

The body is no longer a home but an intimidating ecosystem full of dread and panic. Places that once filled you with joy like dance floors and day trips and hikes feel aggressively against you. I swell up so badly during flare ups that it hurts to be vertical. All roads lead my back to bed and to free-form non fitted clothing. Because any seam touching my body hurts and I’m deeply aware of it. The toll that that adaptation to the rhythm of life has truly astounded me. The very shoes and clothes I wear in the past year have changed drastically due to this alien illness inside of me. Being mistaken for 5 months pregnant is never the move. Especially when you’re unsure what state your fertility will be in if and when you recieve the adequate treatment.

There’s a poem by Maya Angelou called Life Doesn’t Frighten Me. And the opening line chokes me up every time I read it.

‘Shadows on the wall

Noises down the hall

Life doesn’t frighten me at all.’

To live with chronic pain is to want to bury your head in the sand. To worry, to panic and to live under a constant state of threat and high cortisol.

Life doesn’t frighten me at all.