Musical accompaniment: Happiness: We're all in this together
Motherfucking...
I sit at my desk at a client-site and find myself enthralled in some jargon-laden text from a document I've been thrown to translate into mortal comprehensibility so that "anyone" could read it when a looming presence at the edge of my vision is gesticulating the desire to be seen. I swivel, fingers still dancing across the keys, finishing the sentence that's dribbling out of my thoughts and smile to acknowledge that he’s got my eye. With the final clatter of keys, I strip off my headset, ready to plunge into the inevitable small talk. It's the usual dance of pleasantries that comprises some arrangement of the following:
“What do you do? Who are you? I'm Peter. Hi.”
That initial exchange was brief, quickly fragmented by colleagues and the relentless routine of work. Yet, in the days that followed, our conversations meandered through shared interests and general banter. A business card, defiantly flouting WCAG standards, found its way into my hand, an artifact of our growing rapport, but secretly a way to give me his digits, drawing to a finale of "do you want to grab drinks/coffee sometime?"
3 days after that first “Hi,” and I'm spending the night outside, under a cafe table umbrella, rain drumming a chaotic symphony above. My curls fighting the straight form I fried them into whilst I try to decipher meaning from patchwork stories, heedful warnings and guarded disclaimers.
It isn't the first time someone has caught my interest, but I know how to keep walking. I'm pretty sure that's what people are supposed to do?
As the evening draws to an end, he gets half-way through charting a course for a kiss when my hand shoots out, barricading the way. An impromptu checkpoint, halting the beat of feet along the path to my lips. I couldn't let him leave whilst I stood there frozen in nervous-lockdown. Nonetheless, seconds later I’m staring at the wet bitumen in front of my feet as I walk away and don't break my stride until I reach my car.
"What the fucking fuck just happened," I think as, hands shaking, I drive home, pull in, get out, lock car and ride my autopilot-driven feet into my apprehensive- and sulking-dog-filled house, my hands empty my pockets, putting the contents into the dump-bowl. I reach the end of my newly-initiated runAway(); subroutine and I can't stop. Moving frantically to my room I get changed, hands shaking, heart pounding, seeking refuge under the covers, but my mind is in runaway mode, relentless, and sleep eludes me.
I am not OK, and few know that; I haven't been for 12 months, five years, eight years... Depending on which event becomes the reference point.
In the eyes of phantom critics, this all may seem too hasty, a story accelerating ahead before the previous had ended. But those spectral naysayers don't truly exist beyond the confines of my thoughts. Adrenaline switched my head into the defiant state of alert, a stubborn 'screw you' to the idea of rest. My arms secured over my chest, fastening in my heart, curled in the fetal position, I seek an echo of security, a fragment of comfort.
Trip Down Memory Fucking Lane welcomes you aboard flight FU23, a four and a half hour psychological, turbulent journey from the mirage of stability to the realisation of "fuck okay, that's actual trauma." We give zero shits whether you enjoy the trip, and your comfort is of no importance to our crew whatever. The in-flight entertainment will be your entire life and deepest secrets you kept even from yourself revealed to a psych who’ll provide no indication of how fucked up you really are. And Offer No Help. The meal service will commence shortly with overly salted 'healing' stew and followed by your choice of the bitterest coffee, or most traumatic tea. But until then, sit down, don't buckle up, you are in for a long trip and we don't care if you make it out safely.
I didn't make it out safely, I still am dealing with the shockwaves from that conversation.
A week ago, I woke up in the way that was more "easing into the day with colours softly blending to create a sunrise on canvas" and less "I can't believe I have to face the horror of another fucking day". In my stirring, an arm rolls over my body pulling me closely to the heartbeat of its owner.
You.
Your rough fingers touch my skin and your embrace holds me as if I'm a rare and delicate treasure, with a gentle yet firm urgency, suggesting a deep fear of my slipping away, like a cherished keepsake that might vanish at any moment. Everything was alright, when you held me through the night, and I found myself thinking "isn't it nice to be held instead of clinging onto ghosts."
Confronting my reflection, the moment of epiphany is palpable, no need for imagination. The last time I let my guard down, allowed my solitude and unreciprocated affections shift onto someone else, I paid a steep price. I had trusted and surrendered my body, only to be left with scars etched deep within my psyche. Now, as I ponder the possibility of setting aside the protective verses of the Psalm of Pete#23, there's a flicker of hope that history won't repeat itself. That this time, maybe, just maybe, I won't end up nursing fresh wounds in the seclusion of my mind.
Nothing Lasts Forever, so should this even start?
Finding oneself lost in the space between the familiar comfort of a dream once felt when last I felt truly safe, and the deep blue of my desire and love. In space no one can tread on your dreams. It's the friction of re-entry that burns, and only time will tell where my remains will fall.
Is this what I get for wanting things? This life that's happened while I was busy making other plans? For things to be other than what they are, you have to give up the infinite possibilities of the deep, and allow yourself the chance to burn bright, knowing that every shooting star will inevitably burn out. But maybe this star will burn bright and long, and land with some remains of itself still intact?
Which is the way?
To experience life is to experience changes; I moved across the country only to find myself pursuing the dreams from a life before, but I insisted on running on the hedonic treadmill. Now I have a life, so it goes...
I'm try’na wind back the clocks to before… to before I had all the things that I thought would fill up that hole, but the goal keeps receding.
Everything and everyone keeps receding, forever out of the reach of my arms.
The thing is: I've been 'with' someone until recently, but I've been doing this life, my life, by myself, alone for some time. There's something about being close to someone who, really, remained kilometres away. It haunts you, that proximity interlaced with distance.
Like the little conversations that happen when you *see* the same person; all the time spent on a patchworked background can't replace the connection missing from relaying stories through the impersonal screen of a handheld device. “Love is made more powerful by the ongoing drama of shared experience”. But without that shared journey, I'm just a temporary companion, hitching a ride in the middle of their story. I'm there neither for the beginning nor the end, our paths diverging before they even know where they are going. It's an incomplete experience, certainly one that wasn’t shared.
The casual comfort that comes with the certainty of seeing someone again soon. Outside of the occasional visits and a fading echo of love - a love that I watched drive away with a resigned ease - it's been ages since I've felt comfortable enough to let go without clinging. I don't know what it feels like to be okay with ‘goodbye’.
Comfort being the operative word; that concept which defies my brain. My narrator says that either something is wrong, or something will go wrong, regardless of engineering, logic, or design. Something was wrong; saying goodbye was a warm comfort.
The months leading up to that goodbye really rammed home how much I was already alone, living with an additional 'I' on my RACI that no longer needed to be there.
Cooking is something that never tripped me up, it was always important - and we loved cooking, creating, making something, and we had joy in sharing. But how can you share food with someone 650 kilometers away? By informing. A meal that I would have taken joy from sharing, now pasted as a .jpg on Discord to be seen, 'thumbs-up' reacted, but not shared.
So, I find myself 2 hours away from a beach, no bottle or paper in hand, laptop at my fingertips and a page full of ramblings. I ponder, what the fuck am I trying to say with all this rubbish?
I haven't decided whether to chase the shooting star or capitulate and sink into the deep blue.
Can I keep pretending to be okay when the touch of a man who is dead inside is enough to make me melt into a puddle? Can I lie to myself when I Know The Storm Is Coming, and the smallest of downpours will turn that puddle into an ocean?
Emotions dictated that you face your fears, lower your fists, and find a Bridget to get over it. You won't need to re-learn "dating”. It will just fall.
With or without help from the gods.
No comments:
Post a Comment