Life is ugly

May we forgive ourselves generously.

I heard Amy Winehouse say that all the great old writers write about how ugly life is.

Amy had a beautiful kind of ugliness in her. She wasn’t hiding her mess. Another public addict, enormously talented, a creative great of her time. A woman not attached to traditional ideals.

Her life was her canvas. Life is the art.

She taught me that when you stop living your real life and you live for the “people”, you become disconnected from the gift.

I remember a teenager and walking into a family party dressed up in heels, with a big beehive and make up. It was my cousin’s engagement party. I looked like her with a big, robust nose. Everyone commented on how I’d grown into a woman and how much I looked like her. Ironically I found the photo of this night the day I started writing this piece.

I was scheduled to get a a nose job shortly after to change my face forever. I wish someone had sat me down and coached me through the implications of making such a significant change to my face.

I wish someone had told me that it would take me 10 years to accept and I wouldn’t like the result. It was a lesson in overriding my gut for cosmetics and beauty. Trying to cut away ugliness.

I’m a believer that our inner essence and character is so much more attractive than what we look like. You can be drop dead gorgeous and a total cunt.

I also believe that our own inner peace and sanity is worth so much more than the trappings of conventional beauty and fitting it.

Amy Winehouse died of alcoholic poisoning after a long period of sobriety in July 2011. I remember exactly where I was when she died. On the back of a pick-up trip on the south coast of Haiti taking a few days of vacation whilst living there for the summer with some colleagues. I was building an education non-profit and on the weekends we’d travel around the country.

Someone got cell service and my old Blackberry pinged. Amy Winehouse dead at 27 it said. I was the only brit in the group and I stayed quiet for the rest of the ride. I remember that we got a flat tyre and spent hours on the side of the road whilst local after local came to try and fix it for us. As was an almost daily experience travelling around Haiti.

Pothole + flat type = generous locals pouring on mass to help you. I could write a book about some of the stories of what happens when you’re stuck on the side of a Haitian road. Absolute chaos and mess somehow always turning into something triumphant and downright magical. Things always had a way of figuring themselves out. So that night, I couldn’t distract from my immediate grief about Amy and I thought about her deeply as I sat on the side of that road under the moonlight far, far away from the bustling lights of London.

The 27 club they call it.

Haiti, Les Cayes & Jacmel

I never thought Amy would die. She felt like an eternal one. Stronger to outlive us all. Of course I was naive to the battle she was truly facing, how deadly alcohol and drugs truly are and the pressures of the public life.

Studies vary, but it is said that 8-12% of people who come to AA achieve sobriety. Those numbers are spoken in the rooms of Al-Anon and AA often as well. We call those that make it, the lucky ones. We realise that by being in these rooms, whether that be Al-Anon or AA we are the lucky ones.

We have received the golden ticket of recovery which is the spiritual solution to the family disease of alcoholism. These rooms are full of hope and stories of profound personal commitment to end cycles of personal and collective suffering by getting extremely honest with the “self” and collaborating and gaining support by a “higher power” of your choice.

These numbers are impactful when you think about how AA is considered by many addiction specialists to having sustained remission rates 20%-60% higher than other well-established treatments. Make of that what you will. What I make of it, is that many don’t make it and AA works well for many. All it can take is one relapse and you can be dead. All it can take is one meeting and you can be on your journey to recovery.

Life is extremely ugly. There’s no beating about the bush. It is. And as a writer, I find quite solace in making sense of the ugly parts through my art. My ability to express and write. When that’s become for public consumption or upholding my readers idea of me, I’ve lost myself and my art has become contaminant.

Chasing the dollar or the recognition takes the heart out of the magic.

Privacy and protection matters. Some things are deeply sacred. We need spaces and places in our lives where we can be whole-heartedly ourselves. Maybe that’s through our art the process in which it takes us to truly create something. Perhaps that inside of our marriage and our relationship with our children.

I wrote a lot about my return to the simple, small life in the past year. A normal life. Away from the cameras, the big events and social media. Nestled inside of family, I’ve found myself inside of the beauty of a new partnership.

I’m not remotely surprised this kind of beauty found me because I know how much of my ugly I’ve been willing to traverse to prepare for this and how ready I was to give up everything that was taking me in a different direction to having this. I made a decision that I would find and commit to this journey, that I would enjoy the journey and I’d allow the journey itself to completely consume who I thought I was in order to receive it. Once again, I recognised how lucky I am to receive something of this beauty and magnitude.

Recovery has supported me deeply through this. My faith has bolstered me up. Hope and desire have been infusing my choices. Trusted loved ones have encouraged and celebrated me. And I made a lot of space and I stayed very still.

My fear of rejection, failure, projection has been thrown into the compost heap and into the crucible of relationship. I am fully all in. Finally I can rest.

Maybe one day I’ll write more about it. Maybe I won’t. Self-trust is leading and I am it’s trusted servant. May your ugly parts see the light of day and may you be loved by yourself deeply as they enter the room. You deserve it.

Thank you for reading. I love you,

Olivia