I’m not sure where to start sometimes. I’ve been meaning to write in my diary for a while but I kept wanting it to be in chronological order so I found myself avoiding it. I’d look at it and feel guilty. Today I apologised to future me for abandoning that thought and just letting me write.
And the same goes for here. There’s a mild pressure I put on myself for not wanting to let all these passing moments slip me by. If I don’t document my life, will I remember the things I’ve done? How many wonderful moments have I forgotten about and will I find it in me one day? Will it come back like a pony bounding towards me, oh you beautiful thing, I forgot all about you.
Those memories are reserved for niche and peculiar memories I’d forgotten all about; like the time I pressed a penny into freshly cemented together bricks, in a shed I will never step into again, a house I will never return to. A place that encapsulates people that are no longer here. The last time I was there, I went to visit the shed and I bent over quite low to find the penny, still hugged by those bricks. It was pretty low, I was pretty young. I still remember the smell of my grandads shed.
Time and writing go hand in hand for me. Be quick, these fleetingly moments will pass and you will forget. I’m pretty forgetful. Or am I selective in the things I hear? I’m still not sure. Sometimes I’ll remember something someone said years prior, that they totally forgot they said, but I’ll forget where they just said they came from and what they did that morning. I’ll ask them again what they got up to that day and I’ll be like “oh sorry you’ve just told me”. I was daydreaming about something completely irrelevant, my apologies.
My life exists betwixt this strange reality and an, almost, untouchable daydream. They don’t sit side by side but more merged and blended into one. One morning I’ll be walking on the moors where I live and the next, I’ll be on a carousel in the sky, in a world where all these things never happened. Some morning I’ll sit on a bench and look up at the underbelly of the leaves on a tree and then I’ll imagine what it’s like to be fluttering there and what they see when they look down on me.
My life and years are time stamped by who broke by heart and how I healed it. It does feel like I’m in a perpetual state of someone else’s misery, my demise and how I chose to heal that year. So what year are we in now? I’m not sure yet but I’m half way between forgetting how someone held me, lied and fed me whilst simultaneously exhausting myself in training for a marathon I haven’t even signed up for yet. This is new. I’ve never healed this way before.
Between these two things, I walked 300 kilometres in places across Europe and knackered my body out. To heal a broken heart I seem to want to travel, kiss strangers and tire my bones. I still wonder if this is at least one normal way through it? Please don’t answer that question.
So where have I been you ask so kindly? I’m still unsure. It feels like I dreamt these past three years. I fell in love with a figment of my imagination, a person that I can confidently say does not exist. But I’m forever an optimist, forever a lover. I wanted so badly to believe the wonderful lies. The very pretty lies. This time, my head existed in my daydreams and not in reality. Because in reality, it wasn’t pretty. The truth was ugly. I learned a lot about myself in these years. Not with who I am and what I want, I think those have been very solid knowings but in learning the signs of what to avoid.
In kids films, sometimes the villain is nice as pie at the start. Think of the child catcher in ‘Chitty Chitty, Bang Bang’, enticing and alluring. To lure the children in, he swaps his dark clothes for a whimsical colourful coat and hat and promises lollipops and ice cream… only to trap them in a cage.
This was my life. I was lured in by all the sparkly things but when the curtains lifted, it was a horrible sight. Sometimes I question how I fell for such magic.
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So, that’s the tale of my brief misfortune. That’s where I’ve been, I’ve been busy rebuilding a life for myself. One I’m proud to tell people about. I realised I hid so much from the people I love in my life and somehow I didn’t even realise how dreadful that really is. Love is a tricky old game and I’ve been dealt some terrible hands but I’m trying to travel right back to the roots of everything and flip my life inside out to really and honestly rebuild a healthy life because Lord knows my heart has been through enough.