Time

1 year

1 week

1 day 

ago

I lost my heart 

12 Weeks

6 days

11 hours

13 minutes

ago

dxxxxxxxx last came to call

8 weeks

1 day

14 hours

7 minutes 

ago

She could not look back 

I had to drive away

Now I have a friend

Why do I feel so sad?

A funny old life

The Unmerrygoround

I have now dealt with, or at least understood and accepted, those things in my past which have caused me so much pain and, over the years, influenced too many of my decisions. I want to move forward now. My fear is that I may have simply left it too late........

I keep returning to the same old problem.

Loneliness

I have no friends local to me whatsoever. The "friends" I did have turned out to be selfish and manipulative individuals - I am better off without them.

The difficulty is simply this - how to acquire a social life.

I need to make contact with people, gain acquaintances, make friends - real ones. I have joined a local writers group but it meets but once a month and I will not attend my first one for another three weeks. The exercise I take is solitary, I have always detested team sports and sports clubs are far too competitive.

I went to the pub last night, somewhat in desperation of some social contact. Fortunately some neighbours were there and we chatted, inconsequential stuff - they were fairly drunk and holding a conversation wasn't easy or terrifically satisfying. I had two pints of beer (which made me feel awful all of today) and I left when they did. There was no one else I knew, no one else with whom I could reasonably strike up a conversation.

I just feel so dead-ended. I promised myself that I would escape and get off my face tonight, after finishing the work I had to do but, in the end, that is just a false escape and I lie here, sober as a judge.

I cannot see a way up and out of this predicament. I will keep trying, keep smiling, keep breathing but right at this moment all I feel like doing is curling up and dying.

I felt I was making headway last week. I bought a 2nd CDJ (its still in its box). I also bought about 30 classic vinyls, tunes that I really love. I have tried to play them. They leave me cold. I cannot even find a release in music.

I no longer know what to do.

This is the core problem and I am finding it intractable. I am lonely. Contact no longer seems to touch me. I feel divorced from it as though it is unreal (which of course much of it is).

I fear that I will just grow older, more lonely and eventually wear a groove in my life so deep they will be able to bury me in it.

The real underlying problem is one of contrast, expectation and longing.

For decades, throughout my childhood and my marriage, I thought that life was just supposed to be largely without affection, without love, without passion. I grew to accept the little that I did get as being the most that was possible.

Now I find that most of my life has passed by without great amounts of these precious things. The difference is that I now KNOW what they really feel like.

I want and need more. And I don't see a practicable way to enable myself to become open to finding them.

(Not such) A Funny Old Life

Working title

A towel, abandoned, draped over a bathroom door

A pillowcase that still carries a faint scent

Books of poetry, a tube of shampoo, some coffee

And a deep and abiding sense of love

I try to lock the door on these

Until such time as they can be properly explored

A time beyond fear and trepidation

A time beyond deceit and exhaustion

Things, objects, can be hidden, locked away.

Out of sight and on their own they are defused

If only emotion were so tractable........

How can I lock away my reawakened passions

For good poetry

For smiles and happiness

For love?

I make myself another cup of excellent coffee

To remind me of this task

As I weep at the huge, dimly lit structure in my mind

Its large and old and crumbling in areas

Its bound up in metal bracing upon which,

tacked on as if in afterthought,

is written "Love"

A funny old life

On freedom, choice and the pleasing of others

In order to enjoy life I think it is necessary to have friends. 

It is not uncommon to think that friends have expectations that we should satisfy as part of some social contract, or for the keeping of the peace or simply to please someone that we feel we ought to please. We sometimes, in this manner, act against our own best interests (as we might perceive them to be selfish), as a result of a sense of duty or out of guilt. 

I seek to demand nothing of my friends. I want no-one I know to be conflicted by a perceived expectation that I want something. All I ask for is a modicum of respect (e.g. "dont take the piss TOO much").

In this undemanding way I find life much more rational. I no longer, as I did in my youth, pursue the validation of others. Still, the opinions of those I like and love are important to me but here is the difference: the people concerned are all a bit like me - undemanding of their friends for the most part and not principally driven by the need for attention or validation.

I have made it my rule not to be judgemental, excepting of course when someone is deliberately hurting another where this is avoidable: holding dear the principle of "do no harm" is the only criteria by which I judge someone's morality.

I suppose that those that harm deliberately are just extreme in their individual belief in their sense of entitlement. Last time I checked, most of them are schoolyard bullies writ large. Its just an upgrade in the bullies demand from "Gimme yer chocolate!" to "Bleed/Suffer/Pay/Take That ya (insert derogatory expletive of choice)!"

It does not matter whether a person who makes an unreasonable demand is doing so in the setting of business, partnership, friendship or a mugging (in the playground or in the street): once you have given in, they wont be satisfied with less than compliance without at least a little conflict. 

I make a point of deliberately declining such demands, usually in good grace but certainly with significant assertiveness. I suppose it might be my father leaning over my shoulder, with me acting out the active part of the "I want doesn't get!" script but I don't think so. 

It feels more like self preservation.

A Funny Old Life