not happier but doing something

Today is just the same as yesterday in terms of mood, but something happened last night.

I know it is a tired fact that I start a new novel every week, but this one isn’t new.

This one has taken shape in my mind over the last three years. This one I have lived.

So everyone who has known me over the last three years, you might feature in my new novel.

I’ll not be posting anything up. It is far too sordid to do in anything but a clean surgical incision.

Publication is the aim. I have written the outline already (I usually never have a plan).

The first line is a gem. It isn’t making me happier to write it, but it is at least something to do.

Filed under: Depression, Lonely, Reality, about me, nightmare, prose, published, the novel, undervalued, writing, writing the novel , desire for change, escape, idea, prose, writing

on reviewing the recent and the far-reaching

“I am disheartened again. It’s busted I think. My heart, that small seed was the start of my unhappiness. It is my heart’s doing. It sulks. It languishes in the pit of my chest. Fallen from a branch of bone. I ache for comfort, for encircling arms to close around me, to hold me. I want to be secure with a warm someone. A hug. An embrace. To hold on for dear life. For how dear that person is to me. For not wanting to let go. For wanting everything to melt into the atoms they consist of and leave us, untouched, as we are. For wanting alone. For the wanting. The passion. Lust. I want for everything that comes of wanting deeply. Of wanting so deeply that there seems to be no part left of me that does not exist for that other body. That there is no stitch, no essence, no section that is not saturated with the flavor of them.

Taste is something I think I am currently obsessed with. I’ve learnt the value of herbs and spices. I’ve started to take care of myself again. So by that, I mean I’m eating but doing nothing more to prolong myself. Sorry if you thought this was me turning around and grabbing hold of life or something equally benign. But have no fear, I’ll not starve. You all understand why I neglected myself; too many other people to save and “When you over analyze, you tend to neglect your own well-being? as I have said. So really, it was spending time and money on people, rather than on food; and doing so because people are more interesting to write about than pasta.

Due to my months of eating next to nothing, I am now down to nine and a half stone, which I am secretly proud of, because it was that weight I was before I got with The Smile Reverser when I was fifteen-years-old. The first reason I became The Raining Man. I can do the same trick with a scarf; wrap it around my waist to show how skinny I am. To show how clothing alludes to me being in them and really I am only half there.

Bad points? I am starting to see signs of muscle wastage. My sheer skinniness puts me at a disadvantage when confronted by anyone on nights out. I have very little strength at all, to the point where I have to move chairs one at a time, rather the trademark, grab two and go. When I went to buy food this week I could hardly lift the bags.

Good? I do have more of a regard for the workings of the human body. It seems that bone and muscle does indeed move us, as I am now lifting and flexing my arm to see the motion actualised.

So yes, taste does tie in quite well with the need for someone. The fact that, that someone would have the grace to look after me. To feed me, or at least make sure I feed myself. It isn’t that I can’t do it, rather that I will not, I’ll neglect to, it’ll slip my mind while I am writing about how sun warms the stems of dry grass, how the wind makes music from them. Or something equally picturesque.”

I wrote this some 3 years ago – I wrote that I was depressed and wanted someone to love and look after me. It happened and it didn’t save me to have it happen. I still had the same cycles, I just had someone there with ‘the grace to look after me.’ At least, for a short time.

I maintain, and always will, that I don’t need someone who will be a carer for me – just someone to care. I’m worth keeping around, I shouldn’t wonder. If only for the amusing tales I can tell about the time this girl did this, that girl did that, or another girl almost didn’t but did.

Life has gone back to a worrying simplicity. I wake up, I read, I write, I go for a walk, I flirt, I drink, I come home, I flirt via text/IM, I sleep. Scatter in some screnzy madness in there and that is existence and I’m pretty bored of it. The sex is good, but its not really making me want to stay alive and active. I guess only apathy is the force that is keeping me breathing now.

Filed under: Amy, Coffee, Day-to-day, Depression, Drinking, Existence, Food, Friends, Future, Girls, Happy, Reality, Sad, about me, books, burslem, hopes, nightmare , cult characters, desire for change, escape, fiction novella story writing author guardian article J, meal, men, minx, polartropic, sustenance

a water-balloon meets a bee

So, knowing – as you do – that my girlfriend and I broke up on the 26th of last month. Well… where to from there?

I came home and took up the task of mending myself. I’ve something, which I suspect can best be described as manic depression, though i wont jump the gun too much until the fact is settled.

I was having a depressive episode about a week before my relationship collapsed. In fact, I think it was a major element that swung my ex-girlfriend’s mind in favor of separation.

20th of Jan and I’m flat-lining on one of the worst depressions in my most recent history and so I ask her to stay around for me (in the sense that she stick in the house to keep my spirits up) – she goes out, which is fine (i figure she’ll be back) – she’s gone for pretty much the entire week – under the banner of band rehearsals. Which I guess was just her way of saying ‘i’m not really feeling the whole caring thing right now!’.

I’m not saying that I’m that sick I need a carer, but I was pretty sick and I just needed someone to watch dumb movies with and eat junk to keep me high on sugar. The Great Distracto!

I’m a sad little muffin – such a pathetic creature – regardless I held it together like a water balloon meeting a bee for the first time.

I hit rock bottom and she had a talk with me – I figured there was no point fighting it (i was beyond the capacity to want to save myself or any part of my life) – so I let her go and GOD do I feel better for that.

I do. No word of a lie, its done me good. I’m certain that the feelings I had for her wasn’t real love – just a deep caring and I know that that will change shape shortly. It’ll go the way of so many past loves, there are stages that I wont go into detail about.

So a few calls later and I’m back in Liverpool (the Wirral to be exact, i have no scouse accent [in fact none at all]). I’m pretty even right now – level as a spirit, you could say. Or maybe not.

I still get these ups and downs that last maybe an hour tops – just little blips before I lose the thread of them and wander off to distract myself with something new and shiny.

For the most part the pills are working and I should be referred over to see someone more specialistic soon.

Until then, I’ve written quite a bit of stuff that I’m going to post up here. That line between genius and madness is pretty thin after all.

p.s. I ask ya, who wants normal anywho – I’m so much more fun nuts than i am on these bloody pills – *yawn!*

Filed under: Cup, Depression, Girls, Happy, Love, Reality, Sad, about me, anxiety, cracks, much, nightmare, solitary, work

Blather like you mean to say what you’re saying…

 

Not long ago – days ago even – my imagination had me many leagues below an ancient ocean.

 

I dreamt I had returned to my long estranged hometown and, to recover long ignored memories, had ventured onto the sandstone hill I had played on as a child. I knew, as I had not then, that I was walking on stone that had once been a seabed. So, walking this same stone – this one-time seabed now turned sun-heated baking tray for every unlucky mollusc that lost its way. So walking this same stone that trilobites would have scuttled over – and now lie buried within – I wished wholeheartedly to take my time and engage with this feeling and the easy sustenance I found from it. This effortless meal of fantasy and immensity stretching out before me, that made me at once feel small and insignificant and then, in the same moment, made me feel integral to the world.

 

All this felt as if I were bringing all this life back, what had once been teeming and had laid for so long, that it might perhaps crawl up and out of the rock and start again the toil of existing.

 

Whilst standing there it became clear that, though I longed to join in with this aqua sutra – though I wanted to move back in time and occupy the same space as now, feel the cool water around me. Though I wanted a fantasy, for the pressure would have crushed me and I could not bring myself to accept that. Though I wanted so desperately to be a part of that world I know that if I were transported back I would not join, as a drop of water would, that ocean. Instead I would join it as a slick of oil.

 

Always wholly separate, that is how I am. That I would not fit in with prehistoric creatures is little surprise, that I could never fit in back in my hometown had the same ring of sadness to it – even now.

 

It is at this point that I find myself outside my childhood home, a shed on that same hill. The rusting roof, the doormat, the seats and that table made from a tire and a stop sign. I walk in and everything is upended. I walk out and find my old tools, a spade and some sheers, broken and rusting.

 

The day carried on, the sun pressed down on my skin, filling each pore with a rock pool of its own and glittering on the stone as its rays met the occasional polished grain – just as it glistened when the rays hit my moist skin. It had been like this all day, hardly a breeze to stir the stale air. Up in the endlessly blue sky unknown birds circled; too small to be vultures, not to mention unlikely for England, but still my imagination ran away with itself and I prayed swift deliverance from their greedy gaze. The song of crickets in the dry grasses sounded like the sizzling of eggs in a frying pan. The only other noise was the far off sound of engines on the duel carriageway, about two miles off in the distance, their survival ensured by our reliance on them.

 

Coming back to my hometown is like looking at fossils. There is no way to resurrect those old memories, or travel back to meet them. I must clarify that I wish to rewrite, rather than repeat those memories. They are now just fossilized, unearthed with careful thought. I can remember quite a bit about that old world I used to be a part of. Can see myself, undeveloped, like our ancient ancestors that would then have simply been curious looking fish.

 

Purpose seems to be the theme of these thoughts. That I have no purpose is an ever-present concern. My tools, rusting, are no longer able to do what they were meant. I have my wishes, aspirations, and targets. The trouble is that there is no impression in the stone for these things. I cannot trace the outline of a body. Cannot work out how they will move and come about. The ancestor cannot trace the family tree forward.

 

Realising that I have been standing on this almost lifeless mound for the last few hours breaks the spell. I walk down, first through brush – shoulder high and thorny – then down through greener ferns. Eventually I reach pavement as I leave the hillside and venture down through the winding streets and some time after that I arrive at the train station to board a train for my home, some 300 miles from this world.

 

As I look out of the carriage window there is a great rumbling – straining to see further down along the train – my face is pressed flat against the glass as I see uncountable tons of seawater fall onto that hill and rush down to greet me.

Filed under: Reality, childhood, hopes, mount, nightmare, sleep , rumbling, carriage, greet, glass, miles, hill, spade, sheers, station, escape, trilobites, sustenance, meal, fantasy, scuttled, baking, tray, heated, seabed

perhaps not irreparably so

 

Even when she’s caught out I am still short of beckoning any remorse from her. She doesn’t feel it and it hardens me. I move on in mind and heart. Now I no longer sense her pulse in my future, no longer allow myself the comfort I have grown to take for granted.

 

 

She’s done wrong and she doesn’t beg forgiveness or plea for sympathy at her apparent weakness. There comes no, ‘I’m sorry I was drunk’ – no, ‘I’m sorry to have worried you.’ – In fact, all she’d said on the matter was, ‘I don’t want to argue.’

 

 

Who was? I was going to let her speak her tongue numb. My question was simple; why didn’t you tell me?

 

 

And with that comes the thought of high windows, sun comprehending glass; et cetera, et cetera… ad nauseam.

 

 

I never had a Father who taught through explanation, mine was a Father who I learnt from by example. It was pos-neg right from the fire up. He was someone who taught me to be good, honest and courageous; and thought I didn’t pick up any of those traits, I do feel that I, at least, know what they are. He was someone who showed me what it was to give up on a dream; he was the victim of consequence and apathy.

 

 

So I had to pick up on, more conversational, lead by example sorts that were closer to my own heart.

 

So enter Larkin, my Papa Phil, the father who taught me real, candid and gritty lessons. ‘Collected Poems’, is my New Testament, ‘Juvenilia’, my Old. Papa Phil is a brutally honest father, with a clear motive of deft truthfulness.

 

 

So… should I take my own advice, from previous posts? Should I call time on a forgone conclusion?

 

 

I’ll have to consult with old Papa Phil, to answer that one. As I said, not long ago, and learnt it well! – I trust in luck, not other people’s integrity.

 

 

Last night I was sorely disappointed but perhaps not irreparably so.

 

 

Filed under: Love, Philip Larkin, Sad, about me, accusation, anxiety, news, nightmare, poet, undervalued

Office Warfare

Held in the middle of a trench-like avenue of office desks; the air all around heavy with the purr of perfunctory phone calls ringing out a dull-Somme chorus, I am struck by the speed of my heartbeat. For a moment I can feel it beating against my ribcage, but what shocks me more is that this isn’t any different to any other day. The stress I am under now is sizable, but then there are days like this quite often. It seems that right now, in this instant, I’ve had all I can take.

 

 

 

And then stillness…

 

 

My breathing slows; pulse thickening to a glutinous slick through the tubes in my wrists and through all the mapped networks below the skin of my entire body and I am still again. No fear. No sweating. No deafening din. This isn’t a moment of insanity. Not a moment where the protagonist ebbs out of reality and into a world of their own. The phones have simply stopped their onslaught briefly and I have been able to catch up with myself again.

 

 

60 calls hitting me each day. I’m ready for another round. Fire at Jensen.

 

Filed under: about me, nightmare