clinging to the wreckage

Christmas Day is always an interesting one. It’s a day upon which we often scramble to our friends and family facing chaos of weather and mind only to avoid that which society deems unacceptable; to be alone on Christmas day. As an atheist I do find the concept fascinating. In spite of my atheism, I have always been fond of Christmas... simply because it is a time that most people on the planet are not at work and because it is the one day of the year that people generally find it acceptable to consume alcohol to a point of intoxication. I have spent a number of Christmases in various places and with different and sometimes strange people. In 1999 I spent Christmas day in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, with a family I had met online and had only just physically met. It was a great time even if unusual. In 2001 I spent Christmas in Surrey, England, with the family of my then housemate. I’d only just met the family and it was a very difficult experience to sit in their living room as they al...

We departed from a desolate airport in Johannesburg at one minute to midnight... the day had been hot, extraordinarily bright and mixed with all the gloomy emotions that compete for dominance on the final day spent with family before saying goodbye for an indefinite period of time. I’d left for the airport too early because i don’t like to drag out the misery of the pending goodbye. I also needed to do some shopping for gifts and assumed that the early arrival would give me time to do so. I checked my bags and then went for a drink with my parents. To my surprise, there was a rather calm feel to it and there even seemed to be a certain element of cheer. Perhaps we were all secretly looking forward to having our own space again? Once the drinks were finished, we paid and walked over to security. I hugged my mother and she started to cry. A lump arose in my throat and tears started to sting my eyes. I walked to my dad and hugged him, too. He thanked me for all of the help I’d given ...

Sometimes it's difficult to hold on... to hold on to anything. Sometimes it's difficult to go on. I need to write something. I need to write. To walk away from this bullshit life of lies and lost hope. This dancing through hoops of fire. Growing old and stale and being expected to beg and be grateful to serve.

We met for the first time... a flash in time... a flicker... and yet there was much more than a flicker. Bright lights crashed within and voices called out your name to me through the night. I cursed circumstance and chance. I longed for a different time and place... somewhere we could meet and be free to choose the path from there. A spark, a link, a whispering of what could be. And yet, there you were... so close but out of reach. I awoke to a brilliant African sun. I took my mother out shopping and for lunch and then came home to read in the sunlit garden. A storm moved in and violently shook the earth. Hail fell as thunder and lightning seemed to rock the house. Then, suddenly, the sky cleared and the sun reappeared with calm. Music and alcohol soothed the soul as the sun shone with a promise of peace. Alas, 'tis in the dark death of night that one feels most lonely. In a few nights I'll leave this wandering listless place where little happens and move onto...

One thing that I have learned in this life is that the people who you are absolutely uninterested in will always make contact and they will talk and talk and talk whereas the ones you desperately want to hear from very rarely, if ever, make contact.  I’ve also come to realise that there is nothing that quite gets me down like broken communication with someone whom I’d so dearly love to hear from. However, it is such a constant and recurring theme that I should be quite used to it by now. Anyway, it’s just another happy Monday morning. People are laughing and cheerful… and I cannot for the life of me fathom why. 

The sun’s visits are growing shorter by the day and it feels as if my days themselves are doing the same. There is this darkness within that I can’t seem to extinguish without you. But you are so distant and so cold now that all hope is lost. And still I cling. I cringe when I imagine what you must think and feel. How you must see me as something so far removed, an ancient relic of the past; replaced again and again by things more meaningful and more exciting. To me, interactions with humans are few and occur very infrequently. Therefore, to meet one like you is something incredibly unique but to share the intimacy that we did is something beyond imagination and meant more to me than you could ever possibly know. I’ve been trying for so long to let go. I trudge on in search for a reason to trudge on. And as another winter arrives there doesn’t seem to be one.

It’s the self-loathing that holds me back. You see, I can’t hold any faith or hope in a relationship when I simply see myself as impossible to put up with for a prolonged period of time. I do not have the money, the body, the mind, the personality to shut out the darkness and smile for you. The mark of sorrow has been with me since birth and, at the age of thirty nine, the relationship with myself is as rocky as it has ever been. Small doses. Just small doses. Please. Sorry.