{"id":35089,"title":"Retreat","description":"Visual art by Matteo Delred","content":"

Visual art by Matteo Delred<\/p>

\"b2panphofj1lujymcaf57s7hi4hfqqnlhpc5clmd5ufjcacy.jpg.jpg?w=1140&v=2\"My hair betrayed me.<\/p>

Not in a cruel way.<\/p>

It grew reckless\u2014<\/p>

crept past my ears to my shoulders<\/p>

like it learned something through my inaction.<\/p>

Like fruit left too long in the bowl\u2014<\/p>

not beautiful, not tragic, just inevitable.<\/p>

I wore it the way you wear grief:<\/p>

loose, familiar, a bit stale,<\/p>

but still hanging around.<\/p>

Like tea gone cold in the cup.<\/p>

I\u2019d pour another and forget to drink.<\/p>

Let it stain the rim.<\/p>

Let it say something about me<\/p>

I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>

I leaned into illness\u2014<\/p>

not with a dramatic plunge,<\/p>

just a slow steeping.<\/p>

Like one of my over-brewed teas:<\/p>

dark, astringent, weirdly comforting.<\/p>

And sleep was its own unreliable narrator.<\/p>

Some nights it smothered me\u2014thick, total.<\/p>

Other nights it left only a sliver,<\/p>

like a splinter under the skin\u2014<\/p>

enough to survive, but not to dream.<\/p>

Dreamless, wordless, awake-but-not-awake.<\/p>

The hours had no edges.<\/p>

Time became soup.<\/p>

Thick. Lukewarm. No salt.<\/p>

And through it all,<\/p>

my hair just kept growing.<\/p>

\"rmfuzq8pb9h0ak9uudbkx9lwp2rzqqju9lgnn0rjmhjgndld.jpg.jpg?w=1140&v=2\"The rain, always the rain,<\/p>

welcomed me back to Britain.<\/p>

I found myself retreating\u2014<\/p>

not just to an island,<\/p>

but within myself.<\/p>

I had become the very island itself,<\/p>

as my once-healthy barriers<\/p>

became my own self-imposed and impenetrable moat.<\/p>

And for a time, there were tourists who visited me.<\/p>

I was something to be explored<\/p>

with cautious fascination.<\/p>

\"c54i53t3vzbs94hqjpqifbw4dwwlkx6pwwmuqcv7qc8qsuzm.jpg.jpg?w=1140&v=2\"I became the surplus cog in the machine,<\/p>

aimless.<\/p>

I think I just spun and did nothing<\/p>

as I walked around in a circle.<\/p>

I had my camera with me,<\/p>

but for a while, I didn\u2019t take any photographs.<\/p>

Mostly, I stared at my shoes,<\/p>

trying to avoid stepping in dog shit.<\/p>

I told myself it was just that\u2014<\/p>

but maybe it was fear,<\/p>

the fear to look up,<\/p>

to engage with the past.<\/p>

I overheard fragments of conversations on the street,<\/p>

but the phrase \u201cLondon is a scam, mate\u201d<\/p>

sat with me for days afterwards.<\/p>

I had returned to London after an extended absence<\/p>

and felt the foreignness of myself<\/p>

rubbing against the city I once called home.<\/p>

It was familiar,<\/p>

yet I had changed.<\/p>

I was too slow,<\/p>

too poor,<\/p>

and, by some definitions,<\/p>

too unsuccessful to be a Londoner.<\/p>

\"d8humppax4kqg5ablyfi5orxbptpln72qysdjndtjzbryraq.jpeg.jpeg?w=1140&v=2\"There was a strange sense of freedom<\/p>

in knowing that, in a month or so,<\/p>

we would be homeless.<\/p>

Starting again\u2014<\/p>

a different country, a different town\u2014<\/p>

the fear of the unknown<\/p>

replaced the fear of the known.<\/p>

The rental market itself seemed stuck in a Victorian era,<\/p>

though maybe it had always been that way in Britain.<\/p>

We were told we were red-flag tenants:<\/p>

self-employed, unemployed, wanting a cat for company,<\/p>

and with references from another country.<\/p>

Maybe your parents could be your guardians, your protectors.<\/p>

Maybe it would be better to buy, they said\u2014<\/p>

an unspoken suggestion to elevate our class\u2014<\/p>

because otherwise, we would be thirty-somethings<\/p>

competing with students,<\/p>

where a home wasn\u2019t the smallest unit<\/p>

but a room in one for two.<\/p>","urlTitle":"retreat","url":"\/blog\/retreat\/","editListUrl":"\/my-blogs","editUrl":"\/my-blogs\/edit\/retreat\/","fullUrl":"https:\/\/lostcampitos.com\/blog\/retreat\/","featured":false,"published":true,"showOnSitemap":true,"hidden":false,"visibility":null,"createdAt":1704126005,"updatedAt":1756510161,"publishedAt":1756510161,"lastReadAt":null,"division":{"id":209850,"name":"Lost Campitos"},"tags":[{"id":2886,"code":"matteo","name":"Matteo","url":"\/blog\/tagged\/matteo\/"}],"metaImage":{"original":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/ygdiifijfhvvmmhecir2ymps8mbij3ejbsgmbwr56obc8j9t.jpeg","thumbnail":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/ygdiifijfhvvmmhecir2ymps8mbij3ejbsgmbwr56obc8j9t.jpeg.jpg?w=1140&h=855","banner":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/ygdiifijfhvvmmhecir2ymps8mbij3ejbsgmbwr56obc8j9t.jpeg.jpg?w=1920&h=1440"},"metaTitle":"Retreat","metaDescription":"","keyPhraseCampaignId":null,"series":[],"similarReads":[{"id":24851,"title":"Love","url":"\/blog\/love\/","urlTitle":"love","division":209850,"description":"Artist Matteo Delred and writer Rebecca Mar\u00eda reflect on love. Exploring different types of love, as defined by the Ancient Greeks.","published":true,"metaImage":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/umrjnxs7qyv4mmajjpiopam85mxhwjzxx4c4dkt4pztfvz5q.jpeg.jpg?w=1140&h=855","banner":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/umrjnxs7qyv4mmajjpiopam85mxhwjzxx4c4dkt4pztfvz5q.jpeg.jpg?w=1920&h=1440"},"hidden":0},{"id":24941,"title":"Catching On the Fly","url":"\/blog\/catching-on-the-fly\/","urlTitle":"catching-on-the-fly","division":209850,"description":"Writer, Rebecca W Morris, and Photographer, Matteo Delred, capture thoughts and images at the train stops from Jerez de la Frontera to Cadiz on the Cercanias trainline. For each stop, one piece of writing is written and one photo is chosen. Seeing the same things they\u2019d seen so many times, but with new eyes.","published":true,"metaImage":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/hxf4vqbdejmlykd3ffgu1m8pfwvwi6xgvo0kqtnu50cygkce.jpeg.jpg?w=1140&h=855","banner":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/hxf4vqbdejmlykd3ffgu1m8pfwvwi6xgvo0kqtnu50cygkce.jpeg.jpg?w=1920&h=1440"},"hidden":0},{"id":25084,"title":"Listening To the Birdsong From My Caged Window","url":"\/blog\/listening-to-the-birdsong-from-my-caged-window\/","urlTitle":"listening-to-the-birdsong-from-my-caged-window","division":209850,"description":"Matteo Delred and Rebecca W Morris capture the urban melancholy of being separated from the natural world through poetry and photography.","published":true,"metaImage":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/7txvyg55ntk060bcks3mlugsnxi48onvirhfqfsftpnzp0ov.jpeg.jpg?w=1140&h=855","banner":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/7txvyg55ntk060bcks3mlugsnxi48onvirhfqfsftpnzp0ov.jpeg.jpg?w=1920&h=1440"},"hidden":0}],"labels":[]}