Gabrielle #8 – Give It Up

Being a good girl for Lent. Plus: a new email address where you can write to me directly.

I’m not religious, but I’m not not religious. For entirely pragmatic reasons (evil teacher at my first primary, which also kept being deliberately burnt down) I did ten years in Catholic school. My parents’ house was next door to a Welsh chapel that, throughout the 90s, hosted a group of American missionaries who basically became my babysitters every summer (more on that in another newsletter). As a kid both my grandmothers read me Bible stories to fall asleep.

All of which is to say: I’m observing Lent, kind of. I see it as a time to engage with its practices of abstinence and penance in my own ways as part of an annual routine I’m already used to; call it Dry January for people with low impulse control across the board. 

For the last few years I’ve given up delivery apps, which is a humiliating sentence, but hey, we live in humiliating times. This year I’ve thrown posting on social media (beyond work) and being an arsehole (subjective) to the mix too. Do I feel better for it? Not yet! Do I usually feel better at the end of it? Not really! Still, it's a good exercise in restraint.

Most people, myself included, spend huge chunks of their life waiting. Not knowingly, it's just the way things are in societies where extreme consumption is promoted in place of agency. Even people who materially want for nothing think in terms of: Things will be less stressful when that project is over. When I have more money I’ll… As soon as… I’ll feel happier when… I mean, the more comfortable someone is the worse that mentality tends to get, which is why the middle-classes are so uniquely passionless. But none of us are encouraged to accept the parameters of our own realities, which can cause a lot of psychic pain. I watched The Holdovers recently and there's a quote in it that goes, “For most people life is like a henhouse ladder: shitty and short.” I like it for the same reason I like Cormac McCarthy, I think. It’s a statement that could only come from a dyed-in-the-wool stoic, and I find that accepting pain and hardship as unavoidable facts of life makes it easier to get through the day. Not in a defeatist way, but as a general foundation for not going fucking insane. (This feels like a wild aside to me but sometimes people think I’m referring to Palestine or something when I talk like this, so, for the avoidance of doubt: when I talk like this I am never referring to an active war zone or other soul destroying catastrophes. I mean it in the working class sense of life is rough so hold you and yours close instead of reaching for what someone else has, not placidly watch ethnic cleansing happen on the news.)

For me, Lent is an opportunity to flip the script; move through each day more intentionally, which brings me closer to a disposition that takes to discipline or self-control more easily. I wouldn't recommend it or anything. While my intentions are good it's also a massive cope to stop me from going off the rails while I move through life sober, unmedicated, and off birth control for reasons that aren't entirely my own (society, you may have noticed, is not functioning so great). Plant your roots where you can feel the ground, I guess. Mine are currently in self-denial and an MMA gym an hour and a half away from my flat where a no-nonsense lad called John advises me that the only person anyone really fights in the ring is themselves.

No essay this week. This is just a quick check in to say hi, explain why I’ve been quiet online lately, let you know what's up… Maybe I should do this more? After barely two months there's almost a thousand of you here, which is dope. I’ve had loads of DMs from people who seem to recognise themselves in the stuff I’ve been writing about, which has been comforting but also makes me concerned for us all.

On that note, I’ve set up an email address where you can write to me directly. I love shit like this and really miss using the internet to communicate in private, more anonymous ways. So send whatever – questions, feedback, songs of praise, things you’d like to see me write about, found images, thoughts that cross your mind when you find yourself in a dimly lit bar alone after precisely one stiff drink (the optimum time to engage with someone you don't know) – to gabrielleultras@gmail.com. I’m looking forward to talking to you.

In the meantime I’ll be in New York for the next week or so… I know, what an elaborate cheat code, right? Can’t order Deliveroo if you’re busy pounding the concrete that connects 27 different pizzerias. Anyway that means I’ll be quiet until early March, when I'll be back with another short story. Upgrade to paid if you’re interested in reading that.