Before I start, I'd like to offer my sincere thanks to Annabegins, noyoudont and Emma for their assistance in customising this layout -- and thanks, too, for anyone who offered to help or sent me instructions on how to work with it myself. As you can see, I have scrapped the e.e. cummings quotes, and have decided so far not to replace them with anything else.
If it wasn't for the fact this is a brand-new layout I wouldn't be using it today, instead I would be using my old, grey comatised design I bring out and dust off for occasions -- like today -- when I just really want to take a razorblade and slash my arms up. It's kind of funny, I can almost visualise the cuts on my skin. And I don't feel the least bit bad about it, either.
I know that it's bad to think about it, since it will in turn make such things easier to think and from there it's hardly a step at all to acting them out. Perhaps it is fortunate that it's summer and such acts of self harm would not go unnoticed, and dammit, I'm not meant to do that shit any more. Seems my medication takes the edge of my depression just enough to get by, but not enough for me to feel like living from one day to the next. Neat, huh?
I wish I hadn't come back yet, but I have an interview tomorrow and I'm broke, and was hungry. But I don't have the peace I need here, I'm persistently being bugged to work, to get a job, to look for a journalist position, learn to drive, and I'm finding it all hard to take. Which is probably why self harm, or worse, seems so attractive to me. It's almost perverse.
And as for last entry's promise of a prize for the most right answers, it is hardly worth mentioning since only three people appear to even read the entry. Makes me wonder just who is reading this, and if anyone is why they often choose to remain silent.
Wednesday, 30 June 2004
Monday, 28 June 2004
Stolen
Instructions: On your current playlist, hit shuffle and pick the first twenty songs on the list (no matter how cheesy or embarrassing), and write down your favourite line of the song. Try to avoid putting the song title in the line. Then, have your friends comment and see if they know the songs. (yeah, I know it's so very LJ, but I am still seeing how the template looks without updating properly. whoever gets the most right gets a prize -- I can guarantee nobody will get all of them)
1. Get out of my head, get off of my bed -- yeah that's what I said
2. When your heart’s that cold a little gunfire warms the soul
3. It makes me feel like I’m a man when I put a spike into my vein
4. I’m falling in love too fast, with you – or the songs you chose
5. They know who is righteous what is bold, so I’m told
6. If you can judge a wise man from the colour of his skin then, mister, you’re a better man than I
7. We’re sick of being jerked around
8. He's just a drunken, gambling man, dealing with the hands of desire's game
9. You left a stain on every one of my good days, but I am stronger than you know
10. Am I scaring you, too? I'm just scared of losing you.
11. You can tell a woman that you love her face to face, or you can do it from a phone call that can’t be traced
12. When you’re alone and you got the shakes so am I, baby, and I got what it takes
13. I heard a voice from on high, clear like a light in the sky, it said: “Quit blowing each other up”
14. She never loved me, why should anyone?
15. Look into my tired eyes, you’ll see someone you won’t recognise
16. Every time she sneezes I believe it’s love
17. Well me, yeah, I got hitched and, yeah, we’re still friends – I don’t see her often, still I get the kids at weekends
18. The ignorant people sleep on their backs like the doped white mice in the college lab
19. We were brought up on the space race, now they expect you to clean toilets – when you’ve seen how big the world is, how can you make do with this?
20. If you were smart you’d send her home on BART before the real trouble starts – cos who’s she gonna slap when she sees me in your lap and you say you’ve had a change of heart?
1. Get out of my head, get off of my bed -- yeah that's what I said
2. When your heart’s that cold a little gunfire warms the soul
3. It makes me feel like I’m a man when I put a spike into my vein
4. I’m falling in love too fast, with you – or the songs you chose
5. They know who is righteous what is bold, so I’m told
6. If you can judge a wise man from the colour of his skin then, mister, you’re a better man than I
7. We’re sick of being jerked around
8. He's just a drunken, gambling man, dealing with the hands of desire's game
9. You left a stain on every one of my good days, but I am stronger than you know
10. Am I scaring you, too? I'm just scared of losing you.
11. You can tell a woman that you love her face to face, or you can do it from a phone call that can’t be traced
12. When you’re alone and you got the shakes so am I, baby, and I got what it takes
13. I heard a voice from on high, clear like a light in the sky, it said: “Quit blowing each other up”
14. She never loved me, why should anyone?
15. Look into my tired eyes, you’ll see someone you won’t recognise
16. Every time she sneezes I believe it’s love
17. Well me, yeah, I got hitched and, yeah, we’re still friends – I don’t see her often, still I get the kids at weekends
18. The ignorant people sleep on their backs like the doped white mice in the college lab
19. We were brought up on the space race, now they expect you to clean toilets – when you’ve seen how big the world is, how can you make do with this?
20. If you were smart you’d send her home on BART before the real trouble starts – cos who’s she gonna slap when she sees me in your lap and you say you’ve had a change of heart?
Thursday, 24 June 2004
Sometimes I don’t want to understand her
Today I walked out of the pouring rain into the post office where the song Summer Holiday was playing. At first it made me smile, in spite of myself – “we’re going where the sun shines brightly”, since in this city it hardly seems to ever stop raining. But as I stood in that queue while the guy in front of me debated football with the clerks behind the counter and took his sweet time doing whatever the hell it was he had to do I realised something. It wasn’t the radio I was hearing, instead the song was on a damned loop. The same song was playing over and over and over. How the three members of staff in the post office didn’t go insane I don’t know. They probably already had, and that’s why a Cliff Richard song was playing endlessly.
For some reason, I can smell the coast today. This city is miles from anywhere, let alone miles from the coast, but the torrential downpours all day must have come from the ocean. I would not have been altogether surprised to have seen the occasional fish or frog in the puddles – why the city council can’t fit drains that can cope with the constant fucking rain I don’t know. It was probably cheaper to put in small drains and some man with a big cigar and a pot belly gives himself another payrise. The whole world’s coming to an end, I swear.
If Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday wasn’t bad enough, the person who lives next door to me and whose bedroom wall apparently shares mine was also playing the same song on repeat – I don’t know the artist or the title, but I know that it involved repeating the words fuck you endlessly. I stood against the wall and called myself using my mobile. It made me smile as I heard his stereo’s high-pitched whine from the interference block out the music.
And here we are, another day. It rains, it floods, another ambulance screams past on its way to somewhere or another. Someone tonight will probably get stabbed to death in an argument about who is the best football player on the same team. I can’t say I feel all that terrible about the idea.
For some reason, I can smell the coast today. This city is miles from anywhere, let alone miles from the coast, but the torrential downpours all day must have come from the ocean. I would not have been altogether surprised to have seen the occasional fish or frog in the puddles – why the city council can’t fit drains that can cope with the constant fucking rain I don’t know. It was probably cheaper to put in small drains and some man with a big cigar and a pot belly gives himself another payrise. The whole world’s coming to an end, I swear.
If Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday wasn’t bad enough, the person who lives next door to me and whose bedroom wall apparently shares mine was also playing the same song on repeat – I don’t know the artist or the title, but I know that it involved repeating the words fuck you endlessly. I stood against the wall and called myself using my mobile. It made me smile as I heard his stereo’s high-pitched whine from the interference block out the music.
And here we are, another day. It rains, it floods, another ambulance screams past on its way to somewhere or another. Someone tonight will probably get stabbed to death in an argument about who is the best football player on the same team. I can’t say I feel all that terrible about the idea.
Saturday, 19 June 2004
Warning: badly punctuated and very rambling
I’d start by saying it’s late. But it’s not that late, not really. It’s a little after 11 on a Friday night. I couldn’t be bothered to cook any of the few bits of food I have – which is not a lot, unless you want soup or beans – so I sent out for pizza and charged it to my credit card. I’ve got compensation coming in and will clear the debt soon enough, so a pizza is no big deal. I feel anxious or wound up. It could be a side effect of restarting the medication after half-stopping it. I’m alone in my flat, which isn’t so surprising when you consider that I live on my own. I have been through the address book on my phone repeatedly, hoping that out of nowhere I will hit upon someone to call. But even with the compensation coming in, I can’t afford international phone calls and however great the internet may be for having friends all over the globe, when you really want to talk to someone you realise just how far away everyone else is. Even San, just in London, seems a world away. I could call friends back home – but however much some of them might say that they’re there to talk to, they aren’t. Not really. Not in a way that I could call them on a Friday night a talk about any of this. I met [Charley] for a few drinks earlier and it was good. We’d never met before, and didn’t know all that much about one another, but it was good company – she was good company. Even though I had originally wondered what she might mean when she asked if I wanted to meet her for coffee, it was completely platonic – which is fucking great when I so often feel I fall in love too easily, or at the very least develop wild inappropriate crushes. But just the same, the only light in the room is my desk lamp and the glow of the monitor. My heart feels like it’s beating too fast – although I pause and put my hand against my chest (did you know, you can see my heartbeat even through the two shirts I am wearing? It surprised many doctors, until they concluded in all their great experience and wisdom that it just must be unusually near the surface, or some thing) and I can’t tell. It doesn’t feel to my hand like it’s beating too fast, but I feel a little short of breath and my hands are restless. It’s not panic, or even anxiety exactly – I wouldn’t say I’m worried, so much as troubled – but at the same time. At the same time, I don’t know. My head reels off the various inappropriate crushes I have and then I return to thinking of San and wondering – worrying maybe – what is in store for us, when I might see her next or whatever. I really am a mess. What do I want from life? What exactly has kept me alive – other than a fear of the unknown? I want to travel, I want to see how big the world is. Sadly I can’t focus on the day to day – although there’s movies I want to catch, bands I want to see, records I want to hear and books to read, they aren’t enough. A desire to see more and do more does interest me. Also a desire to find more from my own life, maybe it’s a symptom of my illness – the eternal underlying mania that every now and then comes out like this week and that gives me that immature thought that I am special. A kind of messiah complex. A thought that I could find my way to becoming pure energy, a kind of Buddhist enlightenment means lawnmower man or something. I want to be the clouds dropping rain. But what do I want, really? A job I enjoy, and do well. Security – not having to worry about what is coming next. The usual, peace on earth but I don’t think I’m holding out much hope on that one. I want to meditate in the desert again. I want to live in a monastery and live a purely simple life of a bed and plain white walls. I want to be a fire lookout in a national forest, even if the job is so reportedly amazingly dull and lonesome it induces breakdowns. And now I stop. The words or thoughts aren’t coming, except it still feels too damn light in here – even with just the glow of the monitor. I’ve stopped. Nothing feels resolved or any different, except my heart has returned to a normal pace. I found an old address book when looking for a mislaid address. It’s full of numbers for people I don’t talk to, or incorrect numbers and addresses for people I still know. I found my grandmother’s old address and phone number. I had stopped using this address book by the time she died, the summer before from the look of it. I wonder to myself now, in that stupid dreamer sort of way, that if I call this number I have for her if there might be some chance that she will answer. The area codes for London have since changed so that number wouldn’t even work – which encourages me to try calling it all the same. I wouldn’t be calling anyone any more, so in some made-for-tv-movie sort of way could it happen that I’d get to talk to her, one last time? Maybe get to say goodbye this time.
Wednesday, 16 June 2004
This life has taken its toll on me
Much of the last entry can be disregarded.
Uber-Jay was so shortlived that had I not mentioned the feeling in my last entry it would have gone unremarked. Instead the feeling that I could take on the world has been quickly replaced by a feeling like the world has largely forgotten I exist and how it would be just so much easier to step in front of a train.
I stood in the shower this morning and as the too-warm water fell on my face I wished I was dead. It's not an uncommon feeling. I have had enough, this life has taken its toll and I don't much feel like carrying on.
I had a job interview, and it didn't go badly -- but I think the fact I can't drive and haven't passed a single fucking one of my exams yet might stop me being offered one of the two vacancies they have. I didn't mention that last part to them, by the way, I more coyly suggested I am not the most academically brilliant person and had some resits to take, but was expecting to pass them without a problem. The truth is I have no more idea if I will pass my exams next week, or if I will find them any easier than the original ones.
As I stood at the station, waiting for my train back I observed casually how many high-speed trains just fly through the station, and how it would be all-too-easy to 'accidentally' get that little bit too close to the edge.
I have since seen my doctor, who says that last week's pains in my stomach and side are nothing to worry about if they have gone away, she also could find nothing untoward in that place guys dread to check for lumps. But most of all she was not the slightest bit happy that I wasn't taking my medication. She didn't seem as interested that on Monday I was Uber-Jay and nothing could stop me, so much as that now I am incredibly unhappy. She says this is not the time to stop the medication.
I wonder what she would have said, had I told her the thoughts I am writing about today.
Last night I lay on my bed, screaming out in my mind for someone to hear me, for someone to help me. Someone to just come and take me away, because I don't want this any more. Needless to say, nobody heard me.
So at the end of this we find me now back on the medication, realising that I am actually not a fictional, half-robotic and undead serial killer (and probably should not compare myself to such things), and -- yes -- I do realise that if I want anyone to hear me I should try screaming outside of my own head next time and maybe try calling someone instead.
Uber-Jay was so shortlived that had I not mentioned the feeling in my last entry it would have gone unremarked. Instead the feeling that I could take on the world has been quickly replaced by a feeling like the world has largely forgotten I exist and how it would be just so much easier to step in front of a train.
I stood in the shower this morning and as the too-warm water fell on my face I wished I was dead. It's not an uncommon feeling. I have had enough, this life has taken its toll and I don't much feel like carrying on.
I had a job interview, and it didn't go badly -- but I think the fact I can't drive and haven't passed a single fucking one of my exams yet might stop me being offered one of the two vacancies they have. I didn't mention that last part to them, by the way, I more coyly suggested I am not the most academically brilliant person and had some resits to take, but was expecting to pass them without a problem. The truth is I have no more idea if I will pass my exams next week, or if I will find them any easier than the original ones.
As I stood at the station, waiting for my train back I observed casually how many high-speed trains just fly through the station, and how it would be all-too-easy to 'accidentally' get that little bit too close to the edge.
I have since seen my doctor, who says that last week's pains in my stomach and side are nothing to worry about if they have gone away, she also could find nothing untoward in that place guys dread to check for lumps. But most of all she was not the slightest bit happy that I wasn't taking my medication. She didn't seem as interested that on Monday I was Uber-Jay and nothing could stop me, so much as that now I am incredibly unhappy. She says this is not the time to stop the medication.
I wonder what she would have said, had I told her the thoughts I am writing about today.
Last night I lay on my bed, screaming out in my mind for someone to hear me, for someone to help me. Someone to just come and take me away, because I don't want this any more. Needless to say, nobody heard me.
So at the end of this we find me now back on the medication, realising that I am actually not a fictional, half-robotic and undead serial killer (and probably should not compare myself to such things), and -- yes -- I do realise that if I want anyone to hear me I should try screaming outside of my own head next time and maybe try calling someone instead.
Monday, 14 June 2004
Sunshine in the morning
It's Monday morning, and Tom has now left again. He actually left about this time yesterday -- give or take -- but I can't get online on a Sunday here. I really didn't get the impression he was any better off for having stayed with me. I hope that he doesn't think unfavourably of me, I try to be a good friend but I have issues of my own, no experience in psychiatric counselling or the like and at the end of the day I'm only human. He goes to Japan in about a month, to teach English. Says he will probably stay in Asia for a few years, dig stuff.
As for me, I've actually stopped taking my medication. I didn't mean to, I've just lost them and since I'm seeing my doctor this week anyway I think I will say that I want to give them up for a while. She will probably disagree, like she did last time I said it, but it's my decision. Aside from a slightly dizzy feeling today that is probably why the advice leaflet says not to just stop taking them, I'm doing fairly well. Yesterday I anticipated a return to my uber-Jay state, which is the feeling I got a few years ago when I stopped taking my medication. Actually, it was the feeling I got when I just about scraped through some of the most intense and debilitating bad moods that came first after stopping the medication. Uber-Jay was a reference to Jason Voorhees in Jason-x, but I felt like I was stronger and better than before.
I've sworn off beer...for the time being. Not for any good reason, but because I want a flat stomach and without being able to afford gym membership this is a good start. Cutting out the booze should also help with the moods. I'm also not drinking soft drinks, instead subsisting on water. I shall also endeavour not to snack between meals, and possibly even undertake some kind of fitness regime in my bedroom. See? Uber-Jay. Stronger, happier, more productive.
Or I would be more productive if I stopped writing this and went back to my flat to revise for next weeks exams.
As for me, I've actually stopped taking my medication. I didn't mean to, I've just lost them and since I'm seeing my doctor this week anyway I think I will say that I want to give them up for a while. She will probably disagree, like she did last time I said it, but it's my decision. Aside from a slightly dizzy feeling today that is probably why the advice leaflet says not to just stop taking them, I'm doing fairly well. Yesterday I anticipated a return to my uber-Jay state, which is the feeling I got a few years ago when I stopped taking my medication. Actually, it was the feeling I got when I just about scraped through some of the most intense and debilitating bad moods that came first after stopping the medication. Uber-Jay was a reference to Jason Voorhees in Jason-x, but I felt like I was stronger and better than before.
I've sworn off beer...for the time being. Not for any good reason, but because I want a flat stomach and without being able to afford gym membership this is a good start. Cutting out the booze should also help with the moods. I'm also not drinking soft drinks, instead subsisting on water. I shall also endeavour not to snack between meals, and possibly even undertake some kind of fitness regime in my bedroom. See? Uber-Jay. Stronger, happier, more productive.
Or I would be more productive if I stopped writing this and went back to my flat to revise for next weeks exams.
Friday, 11 June 2004
Company, good or otherwise
Tom has come to stay, once more. It all started with a text message the other night. He asked me how the exams were going, I replied, and asked him how work was for him. He said he hadn't been in recently, since he's spent the last 10 days in bed, depressed. I tried to offer advice, encourage him to leave his bed and do something, but I'm not sure he was listening.
So I called him the next night, to see how he was. Conversation is suddenly incredibly difficult, he has withdrawn almost completely into himself. Voice low and apathetic, nothing to offer, no interest in conversation. I'm hardly the most stable of people, yet suddenly I find that I'm trying to be talkative and interest and encouraging while sympathetic. In the end, I invited him to come stay. I stold him I don't have anything much interetsing to do, since I have to revise, but he's welcome.
In person it's almost more unbareable than on the phone. Don't get me wrong, I love the guy -- we've been friends since the first year in Derby, and although we've had some minor disagreements over the years we've remained friends. Just the same, I'm finding his intense depression very hard to deal with. I couldn't very well leave him in Hull to sulk and stay in bed, and I figure at least here I can keep an eye on him -- make sure he eats, make sure we leave the house, even entertain him here or there.
He apologised last night as we sat in the pub, in silence, for not being very good company. I told him I didn't invite him here to entertain me. I invited him here because I care, and want to do anything I can for my friend. It just doesn't seem to me that there is a lot that I can do.
He keeps disappearing for lengths of time. This morning he went to brush his teeth in my flat, and was gone long enough for him to have scrubbed his entire body clean with a toothbrush. He has now left the computer lab here at the university to use the bathroom, and even given that he didn't know where it was and he had to find it, it isn't far. It's not as far that it should be taking him this long. I feel the need to check up on him, see what he's doing.
I have no idea how long he plans to stay for, but he is welcome with me for as long as he wants to be here. I just don't know how to help him, and not being outgoing myself it can be very awkward.
The way I see it, though, is that this can't be any worse for him than staying in bed and not eating. That's what I hope, anyway.
So I called him the next night, to see how he was. Conversation is suddenly incredibly difficult, he has withdrawn almost completely into himself. Voice low and apathetic, nothing to offer, no interest in conversation. I'm hardly the most stable of people, yet suddenly I find that I'm trying to be talkative and interest and encouraging while sympathetic. In the end, I invited him to come stay. I stold him I don't have anything much interetsing to do, since I have to revise, but he's welcome.
In person it's almost more unbareable than on the phone. Don't get me wrong, I love the guy -- we've been friends since the first year in Derby, and although we've had some minor disagreements over the years we've remained friends. Just the same, I'm finding his intense depression very hard to deal with. I couldn't very well leave him in Hull to sulk and stay in bed, and I figure at least here I can keep an eye on him -- make sure he eats, make sure we leave the house, even entertain him here or there.
He apologised last night as we sat in the pub, in silence, for not being very good company. I told him I didn't invite him here to entertain me. I invited him here because I care, and want to do anything I can for my friend. It just doesn't seem to me that there is a lot that I can do.
He keeps disappearing for lengths of time. This morning he went to brush his teeth in my flat, and was gone long enough for him to have scrubbed his entire body clean with a toothbrush. He has now left the computer lab here at the university to use the bathroom, and even given that he didn't know where it was and he had to find it, it isn't far. It's not as far that it should be taking him this long. I feel the need to check up on him, see what he's doing.
I have no idea how long he plans to stay for, but he is welcome with me for as long as he wants to be here. I just don't know how to help him, and not being outgoing myself it can be very awkward.
The way I see it, though, is that this can't be any worse for him than staying in bed and not eating. That's what I hope, anyway.
Monday, 7 June 2004
A return
It felt like old times when I got off the bus in north London to go see San. I used to always take the underground in London, it was faster and simpler than the buses -- but it's also very temperamental, and so one day when the engineering works made it difficult to go straight to San's I started taking the bus. Since then I have become a bus-convert -- I like to sit on the top deck and stare out fo the window at the city. Sure, it takes longer but you don't get the feeling you could be trapped in a tunnel and it's more interesting.
I got to San's and although it had been less than a week since we last saw each other, things were different. There was a renewed passion between us, a rediscovered desire to just sit on the couch and make out that I can't remember us doing in Leicester.
Our plans for the day were simple. The Tate gallery of Modern Art were hosting an Edward Hopper exhibition, and being a big fan of his work it went without saying that we would go. When I called the gallery, however, I discovered that booking in advance was "strongly recommended". We went anyway, and although it couldn't have been very late in the afternoon we were told (after standing in line forever) that the earliest we could be admitted was 17.30. We booked tickets for 19.00 instead -- so we could take our time with the rest of the day.
It was one of those days where you can forget everything else. I could forget about exams in Law and Public Affairs, and my search for a job. I could even forget the uncertainty of what might happen between us.
The exhibition was more or less all I could have hoped for. Hopper's canvases were often bigger and more dramatic than I had expected, and I was only slightly disappointed that the exhibition hadn't included New York Movie.
It was late when we got out of the gallery -- having been side-tracked on our way out because I wanted to see something by Damien Hirst -- and we decided to walk a different way to the way we'd come in. Instead, we crossed the Thames on the Millennium Bridge, taking our time to look at the lights of the city and to stop and stare down-river and the lights of Tower Bridge. There was some confusion over where to catch a bus from -- San has no sense of direction -- but we were in no real hurry to get home.
The first time I ever met San we went to the Tate Modern gallery, and she tells me now she thought I hated her because I was so quiet. I tell that I loved her even then, and had always tried to be sure I knew where she was the whole day -- but didn't think it necessary for us to be at each other's side the whole time. I uphold that Saturday wasn't meant to have any significance, I would have wanted to see the exhibition wherever it was being held. It was just coincidence we'd spent the day together there once before.
The questions still remaining are: Is San right, and were we complacent seeing each other all the time? Will it be better to have a chance to miss one another now? Will our relationship stand up to this change of pace? And of course, what the sam hell am I doing with my life?
Tune in next time for all this and more...
I got to San's and although it had been less than a week since we last saw each other, things were different. There was a renewed passion between us, a rediscovered desire to just sit on the couch and make out that I can't remember us doing in Leicester.
Our plans for the day were simple. The Tate gallery of Modern Art were hosting an Edward Hopper exhibition, and being a big fan of his work it went without saying that we would go. When I called the gallery, however, I discovered that booking in advance was "strongly recommended". We went anyway, and although it couldn't have been very late in the afternoon we were told (after standing in line forever) that the earliest we could be admitted was 17.30. We booked tickets for 19.00 instead -- so we could take our time with the rest of the day.
It was one of those days where you can forget everything else. I could forget about exams in Law and Public Affairs, and my search for a job. I could even forget the uncertainty of what might happen between us.
The exhibition was more or less all I could have hoped for. Hopper's canvases were often bigger and more dramatic than I had expected, and I was only slightly disappointed that the exhibition hadn't included New York Movie.
It was late when we got out of the gallery -- having been side-tracked on our way out because I wanted to see something by Damien Hirst -- and we decided to walk a different way to the way we'd come in. Instead, we crossed the Thames on the Millennium Bridge, taking our time to look at the lights of the city and to stop and stare down-river and the lights of Tower Bridge. There was some confusion over where to catch a bus from -- San has no sense of direction -- but we were in no real hurry to get home.
The first time I ever met San we went to the Tate Modern gallery, and she tells me now she thought I hated her because I was so quiet. I tell that I loved her even then, and had always tried to be sure I knew where she was the whole day -- but didn't think it necessary for us to be at each other's side the whole time. I uphold that Saturday wasn't meant to have any significance, I would have wanted to see the exhibition wherever it was being held. It was just coincidence we'd spent the day together there once before.
The questions still remaining are: Is San right, and were we complacent seeing each other all the time? Will it be better to have a chance to miss one another now? Will our relationship stand up to this change of pace? And of course, what the sam hell am I doing with my life?
Tune in next time for all this and more...
Wednesday, 2 June 2004
Farewells
Sometimes it feels like my life is punctuated with goodbyes. Over the past few years I have given up thinking of anywhere as home for any length of time, given up thinking of anything as permanent. Anything, that is, except for goodbyes. It might sound over dramatic, but saying goodbye, so long, see you later –- these seem to become permanent farewells.
I stood in the car park of San’s flat and watched her leave. I’ve never been properly introduced to her Dad, and have no idea if he knows who I am or if San even has a boyfriend. Just the same, without caring if he would see and ask her questions I held her hand, wiped away her tears, and kissed her goodbye. I then just stood and watched the car pull out, and drive away. I lingered a little to watch her flatmates leave too. Then I sat down on the curb and wondered what to do next.
I remember years ago, Fiona and I spent New Year together and at that time I had held her in my arms and thought how I could spend my life with that girl, if only given the chance. Just a few days later, I stood in a bus station in London and watched her crying, as her bus drove away. We said it would only be temporary, we’d pick up where we left off when I got back from Utah – we’d be a little older and a little wiser and it would be good. But of course that didn’t happen. She moved on, or I moved on, and what we intended to be a brief farewell really did turn into goodbye. The couple of times we have met in the years since then haven’t changed that.
I have moved from city to city, moved back home, left again, and then now face the prospect of moving back once more with little to show for it. I don’t feel at home anywhere, and I have so many nights that feel like my last night in town.
San knows I’m scared this is it, and I think she feels the same. It will be at least a month before I see her again – after we are used to seeing each other almost every single day. Even then I don’t know what I’ll be doing, or how long for – but San will return to Leicester this September, and possibly on to Maryland in January. I don’t know if we will make it.
I want somewhere that feels like home. Not somewhere where I feel I’ve been forgotten that I’m here, or somewhere that I only get to call home for only a few months or a year. I want to see the world, but I want somewhere to return to. And as sappy as it sounds, I want a love.
I stood in the car park of San’s flat and watched her leave. I’ve never been properly introduced to her Dad, and have no idea if he knows who I am or if San even has a boyfriend. Just the same, without caring if he would see and ask her questions I held her hand, wiped away her tears, and kissed her goodbye. I then just stood and watched the car pull out, and drive away. I lingered a little to watch her flatmates leave too. Then I sat down on the curb and wondered what to do next.
I remember years ago, Fiona and I spent New Year together and at that time I had held her in my arms and thought how I could spend my life with that girl, if only given the chance. Just a few days later, I stood in a bus station in London and watched her crying, as her bus drove away. We said it would only be temporary, we’d pick up where we left off when I got back from Utah – we’d be a little older and a little wiser and it would be good. But of course that didn’t happen. She moved on, or I moved on, and what we intended to be a brief farewell really did turn into goodbye. The couple of times we have met in the years since then haven’t changed that.
I have moved from city to city, moved back home, left again, and then now face the prospect of moving back once more with little to show for it. I don’t feel at home anywhere, and I have so many nights that feel like my last night in town.
San knows I’m scared this is it, and I think she feels the same. It will be at least a month before I see her again – after we are used to seeing each other almost every single day. Even then I don’t know what I’ll be doing, or how long for – but San will return to Leicester this September, and possibly on to Maryland in January. I don’t know if we will make it.
I want somewhere that feels like home. Not somewhere where I feel I’ve been forgotten that I’m here, or somewhere that I only get to call home for only a few months or a year. I want to see the world, but I want somewhere to return to. And as sappy as it sounds, I want a love.
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