Hungry

You get used to long, lean stretches when you freelance. Everyone tells you that you should put away savings for these times, but it never seems to happen like that. Money takes months to come through, so by the time it does, it's already spent, and the bills are pressing up against your door, squeezing in through the cracks, and you gotta let them in. Sometimes I think it undoubtedly helps: that sense of urgency, that hunger. But most times it just gets you to a point of blinding, suffocating panic. I had my first ever panic attack in 2008, over money, and I had my last one this afternoon, over money. I'm sure they'll be a few more. It's funny but you don't ever get used to it: the fear. Even though you know you've gotten through it before, and so rationally speaking, you can do it again, it still hacks away bits of your flesh every time. You wonder if one day it'll lob away something vital, and then you'll be fucked.

Christmas always gets me down. I'm from a big family (five kids) and we all used to live in a huge, rambling old vicarage in a tiny Welsh village called Cilcain. My siblings are all older than me, so we were spoiled - the last ones to get the benefits of a Christmas which was entirely centered around us, or so it felt. I honestly believe Christmas is so much better when kids are around. We were those kids for a really long time, and my enormous family would spend the entire holiday drinking, laughing and partying. And then one day the family kind of fell out, and since then Christmas hasn't ever been spent with anyone in the same room. Things changed. My sister had kids. My brother had kids. My other brother moved abroad. My parents squabbled with one or other of us, and disappeared to Spain for ten years. My twin and I suddenly were no longer the babies, and Christmas became just another holiday to endure. Every Christmas I check in, see what's different. Boyfriend? Nope. Nice home? Nope. Financial stability? Definitely not. My neighbor downstairs made us gingerbread cookies today. When I make gingerbread cookies in my own oven and hand them out to people I love, that's when it'll be OK. I'm not sure why that's a marker but it is.

I know that I have to make it on my own. I can't expect someone else to pay my rent if I can't make it, buy me food if I can't afford groceries, give me a Christmas if I can't give myself one. But sometimes I look at people and wonder how they do it. How they manage to help each other and it's just normal. Like my friend who moved to LA with no money, no visa, only a very kind boyfriend who put her up, fed her, scrounged her a visa, and helped her get work. Another good friend Jenny had her car repo-ed and lost her apartment, and moved in with this lovely guy who helped her out, until she got her book deal last week. I can't imagine having someone lay out the mattress to cushion my fall. Sometimes I dream about it, and most times I just figure it's not meant to be like that, so there's no point thinking about it. I don't know if I want it or I don't. Maybe it's one of those things I secretly covet but never want to admit to. It's a dirty secret, like reading Us Weekly, or yearning for a big, white wedding. I've always hated big white weddings. But they kind of linger in my head quite a lot, a bit like the faceless person who'll catch me when I fall. There's no one person, but many people with deep pockets of kindness. Chicken soup left over from Billy's dinner, warm gingerbread cookies from Annie's oven, a packet of cigarettes paid for by a stranger in line at CVS when my card gets refused.

I'm working on a job and I can't do it right. They keep asking me to treatment a script. Firstly, they haven't paid me, and I've been working for three months now. Secondly, they got the money for development from two years of work I did for them for free. I'm tired and I'm hungry and my brain won't work. I'm resentful. My friend sent me this new age psychobabble about positive attitudes and a bad workman blaming his tools, and blah de blah, and I think, yeah, she's got a point. I have no frigging idea what these people want from me, and obviously I'm pissing them off because I'm not giving it. But I also think they're giving me contradictory orders and sending me off on wild goose chases down a route of eternal treatment. I just need to get paid, sign off on a basic plot, and write the damn script.

I'm so sad today. I'm so anxious. I spoke to someone once about breakdowns - like when d'you know when you're having one? and we agreed you don't know. There's a frantic, scrabbling sense of clinging desperately onto something, and the painful relief that you can glimpse a bottom, but you're not there yet. But if you're being honest, you're pretty damn close. I'm like that now. I want to come home so bad. I want my bills to be paid off. I want my own apartment, with a TV and a sofa and a teapot and no leaks. I want the ability to shove my own mattress outside the window in case I choose to leap off, or get pushed. But you know, I've wanted this for a while now. And even though things are so much better this year, sometimes, especially at Christmas time, when you're being yelled at and you can't get anything right and you're hungry and the bills are clambering into your throat and making you gag - it's really hard to see that this time a year ago, things were a hell of a lot worse.

I want to go home to England. I want to go home.