Today I’m in trouble, because I feel like going insane — not insane in a bad way but just losing myself, being wild, standing on the edge of something that scares me. As Lord Byron said, I’m standing on the edge of a precipice, and it’s a wonderful feeling because today I want that feeling.
I want to look into infinity and never know whether I’m going to come back. I feel like this because I spent the last nine days in bed with Covid — I didn’t read, I didn’t watch TV, I did a bit of Instagramming, I wrote a few love letters to the world but not enough to stop my mind from getting cabin fever. My brain feels like it’s been squashed into an inexpensive slab of pate.
I’ve hated being ill, it’s made me feel very weak in every way, physically, mentally and emotionally, but I promised myself that I mustn’t talk about being ill. Talking about being ill makes you feel ill, and on top of that it’s really f***ing boring.
I have some massive regrets for the mistakes I made when I was drinking. Some were deeply serious.
In the old days I’d just drink a couple of bottles of wine and paint like a lunatic, then I’d have gone to some event and knocked back three or four glasses of champagne. The night would have carried on and no doubt I would have got into some kind of trouble and the next day I would have woken up with a force 10 hangover.
When I had cancer — and I must have had cancer a long time before I knew I had cancer — I’d take one sip of wine and it would taste like sulphuric acid running down my insides. Often I’d bleed from various orifices and on many occasions I’d wake up and feel like death.
People would often say to me “serves you right, it’s a hangover”. After two glasses of wine my whole body would be burning, my eyes would feel like they were going to pop, my face and body would be swollen to a point of non-recognition. I would be vomiting balls of foam like there was no tomorrow. Lumps of black blood would be coming out, and you know what people would say? “Tracey, it’s a hangover”. I would say “I know what a hangover feels like, this is not a f***ing hangover” and I was right — this was the death of my bladder drowning in vast amounts of liquid carbon monoxide from smoking since I was 13, building up to a crescendo of 50 cigarettes a day.
But that was no excuse for me being mentally deranged when I was drunk and behaving like a complete t**t. I have rarely made a serious mistake when I’ve been sober, nearly everything I felt like I’ve done wrong has been alcohol-induced or with a hangover. I’ve been sober now for three years, I didn’t do AA or any other kind of therapy — I just decided I wanted to live.
I have some massive regrets for the mistakes I made when I was drinking. Some were deeply serious.
Alcoholism is an illness, but I would say I wasn’t an alcoholic — I would say I was very lonely and very afraid.
The most brilliant thing that has happened in the last few years is I don’t have that fear anymore. I don’t need Dutch courage, I don’t need the banter and I certainly do not need to be the life and soul of the party.
Today I have gone crazy, I have gone wild, I’ve made paintings that I never dreamt that I could make on a grey afternoon drinking tea.
P.S. I always know when I have done something wrong and I always apologise but sometimes you don’t have the opportunity to. So here’s my chance — I’d like to deeply apologise to Brian May and his wife Anita Dobson and all the cast in the West End production of Calendar Girls for meowing very loudly for the first half of the first night.
