Hello Strength,
You might not recognise me. I know you, but only by accident. I’ve stumbled into you a few times in the past but I’m usually in a terrible state when I find you. I used to spend a lot of time with Fear but we’ve had a dialogue and Fear and I have decided to cool it a bit.
So, I’m here now. You should probably slide along and let me sit with you. I’m going wherever you are. I choose you. I choose you because I want to know love. And I cannot possibly know love without you.
People think love is kind of flimsy, or wishy washy. Like a live, love, laugh and light sort of thing. But love is hard. You have to return to it again and again. You have to fight for a glimpse of it, you have to claw your way towards love’s castle. You have to dive into yourself and see all the terrible things about yourself and then you have to dive into the world and see all the shitty things about this place and you still have to straighten up and say I love you world. I love you world.
It is the only possible answer.
A lot of people can’t be bothered to know love because it turns out that loving your own life is quite boring. Knowing love, no, being love is basically repeatedly throwing out 99% of your odd and selfish thoughts and then returning to the vast emptiness within yourself about 200 times a day. (Then again at night if you can’t sleep because Fear has wormed her way into bed with you again.)
Sometimes loving myself means heaving myself up from a ball on the floor when I’m too tired to go on, crawling down to the pizza shop, coming home to climb into bed, clipping up my horrendously greasy hair and writing this damn email which I AM going to send to you, Strength.
It’s not the best I can do. I should have cooked at home. I should be sitting up straight. It’s not my best writing, it’s not Shakespeare or Dante or Sappho (imagine if Sappho had a Substack!). But it’s the best I can do right now. I’m doing great.
Sometimes I get it wrong, Strength. I do. But the difference is that now I stand up again quickly, I eat pizza, I brush myself off and I tell whoever will listen: I am doing this. I am all in on life. I am all in on art. I am all in on love.
I don’t want to be strong. I AM strong. I am strength. I am you.
I have everything I need inside me.
I’ll be seeing you,
Eleanor Flowers
xxx
Ps. Dear loved ones.
As you know the premiere of LOVE STORY at Sommerro in Oslo is now sold out! Thankfully we have added another date on October 15th so you can get your tickets and come see our two-woman musical cabaret. We wrote you a LOVE STORY Oslo!
Tickets here:
Love this. Some days strength is doing anything, however small and whimsical.