Metaphorically speaking, "I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell."

I’d like to marry my shoes. We’d honeymoon with my bicycle in the Swiss Alps. We’d have an apartment in the city, with a veggie garden and a good sound system. One day they would fall apart, and I’d move on to a new pair, just like that. Inanimate objects are so much easier to understand. And talk to. You only have a problem if they’re answering back, but that’s nothing a little discipline can’t fix. With inanimate objects, I am in control, I have the power. Generally.

If I was an object I’d be a human sized tennis racquet. I’m strong and athletic, but a little round. Everything that comes at me I hit away, sometimes it comes flying back in my face, but generally everything is deflected.

And yet occasionally the ball comes flying at me at such a pace that I am knocked over. Strange scents grasp moments in my memory and thrust them into the light, bringing both fond memories and waves of nausea. Feelings surge within me so violently that I have to shut my eyes and walk away. I spin in a disorientating circle, burning from the basic and yet unfamiliar whirlpool of anxieties within me.

Desire is a dangerous and scary force. Its urgency is practically primal; it conspires against you, drawing you away from centuries of level-headedness, to seconds of whimsical spontaneity. It threatens to destroy the control we like to believe we have. In a manifold of ways we exert control over our environments, despite being at the mercy of the world. One day you are walking along the street, and then all off a sudden you’re lying on the street in a pool of your own blood and you realise you weren’t in control after all. In the same way we exert control over our inner being, despite there being a force almost entirely unconquerable that lives within us. If I was a brave person I could surrender to the movements of the universe. Grab the moment by the hand and spin it around and around. I guess I’m not brave. I control my emotions and when I fail, I panic. Like an actor who can only repeat her lines, I disintegrate in the face of impromptu theatre.

I am fast learning that control is overrated, which is why I can’t marry my shoes, metaphorically speaking.