The side effects of skipping prom

Is anxiety a byproduct of life, pending or the definition of it?

A Friday reset. Image: Nancy Groves

I’ll level with you. I’ve struggled to write the newsletter this week, thanks no thanks to a low buzz of misplaced anxiety that’s pervaded the past few days like urban hum. The kind of anxiety you can’t pin down to anything specific in your diary or to-do list, but tells you there must be something you’re forgetting. It’s the sneaking feeling that you’re either about to find out some unwelcome news or get found out yourself.

This sense of apprehension isn’t unfamiliar to me, most commonly showing up in the form of the well-documented Sunday Scaries, though I’m happy to report mine have dialled down considerably since I left full-time work to go freelance (and since I started writing a Substack – it's no coincidence I publish on a Sunday).

Instead, this recent visitation of worry feels both a byproduct of life, pending and a kind of pending in itself, though a singularly unhelpful one. Because while I grasp at what exactly in the past / present / future I’ve forgotten to deal with, the one thing I can’t let go of is the anxiety itself.

When I need to feel better, I replay a scene from one of my favourite films, Pretty In Pink, in which Andie (Molly Ringwald) is debating the merits of – what else? – prom. “It was the worst,” says mo-hawked boss Iona (Annie Potts) of her own senior prom, albeit with misty eyes. “But it’s supposed to be, you know. But you have to go, right?”

“Well you don’t have to, it’s not a requirement,” says Andie, to which Iona responds:

“I have this girlfriend who didn’t go to hers and every once in a while she gets this really terrible feeling, you know, like something is missing. She checks her purse, she checks her keys, she counts her kids, she goes crazy. And then she realises that NOTHING is missing. She decided it was side effects from skipping the prom.”

Friends, I did go to my prom (if you can call a sixth-form leavers’ ball in a marquee on the tennis court a prom), and a quick Google reveals the side effects in question are far more likely to be from the IVF meds. But Iona’s line struck me, even as I watched the film as a teenager. This was before I recognised that sense of unease she describes, one that's all too common in our adult lives of keys, kids and responsibilities.

The need to mentally scan up, down and around for what might be ‘missing’ exerts a strong pull on my psyche. But Iona’s “don’t analyse it, just go” isn’t bad life advice – and this past week has been a lesson in working through the wobble. From Monday to Thursday that meant actual work: I’m slowly building up a portfolio of projects that’s keeping me busy and engaged. But, in the spirit of recovery I wrote about last Sunday, for the most part I try to keep Fridays to myself.

Friday is now my day for writing. However, when this week’s words weren't proving forthcoming, I opted to skip town instead, setting off mid-morning with two old friends to visit a third one at her home in beautiful countryside just outside London.

There’s something about the smallholding where our friend lives that I find supremely settling. The house sits in a hedged garden, beautifully tended, beyond which lie a series of fields, variously filled with chicken, vegetables, grazing sheep, beehives, and an outcrop of ancient cobnut trees that look like dancing maidens.

These trees are said to be a symbol of fertility, so each time we visit, we make sure to dance through them ourselves, before walking down to the duck pond and up to the wildflower meadow and woods to look back at the house from the top of the hill. The last of this year’s bluebells are currently making way for a glut of wild strawberry plants and even a few rare purple orchids, more precious for growing in the wild, too.

Three hours of this bliss was all our collective schedule could afford this visit, but the round trip of about the same time was worth it. After a lunch of perfectly scrambled eggs (care of the chickens for the eggs and our host for the scrambling), we returned to London in better nick than we’d left it and I was dropped at my door with just half an hour before I needed to head out again, to Artangel’s new installation, The Waiting Room.

With a name like that, you’d think this opening would has been in my Life, Pending calendar since the start. And you’d be right. It was my aim to make it this week’s overarching theme and find lots of clever things to say about artist Sarah Sze and her notions of time and space. But you know what? My brain is simply not working that way at the moment. And it can wait.

I did manage to see Sze’s installation and, completist that I am, attended her talk afterwards with fellow time-based artist Christian Marclay, taking LOTS of notes. You should go, too, if you’re passing through Peckham Rye station this summer (it’s open till September) – to see the work but also the amazing space it sits in, a ballroom-sized waiting room turned billiards hall that’s been boarded up since 1962.

But today I found it more comforting to write about cob trees and Pretty in Pink than art. “Don’t analyse it” won’t always work on your anxiety, but sometimes it’s just what I need to tell mine.

While I wait this week

I’m listening: To 6Music’s Slow Sunday while I finish off the newsletter. It’s Mental Health Awareness Week and the theme is anxiety. Right on cue, Nancy brain! I’ll admit to feeling a bit jaded about awareness days after my recent job in lifestyle journalism – National Pizza Day is not a thing – but some of the stuff that comes out of them can be great and this programming is a case in point. Also worth checking out: Sian Eleri’s Chillest Show on Radio 1 every Sunday evening.

I’m also enjoying: Daði Freyr’s brilliant cover of Atomic Kitten’s ‘Whole Again’ after the Icelandic singer absolutely stole Eurovision’s Liverpool medley with it last week. It’s a real tonic, and gives the track a joyful third life after its unexpected Gareth Southgate era.

I’m trying: Acupuncture for the first time. It says something about my habituation to needles that I’m wilfully submitting to more. It’s early days, but I left the hour long session newly relaxed. I barely felt Alice’s needles, even the one in the top of my head, and loved the smell of the Moxa herbs that she used to heat them up.

I’m reading: This old HuffPost article about the costuming in Pretty in Pink. Let’s remember that without Iona’s prom dress, we’d have never seen Andie in hers!

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