I’ve caught myself. I
have started writing this blog a few times.
Once was to lament the death of Prince – already written about
that. Next, was to speak about how many
times I had tried to start writing this blog but had stopped and deleted what I
had written. This felt familiar, and yes
– I had written about doing just that thing too. It goes back to the previous blog, I
suppose. I am now in a routine – I just
typed that as “not in a routine” because the word “rut” was playing about
inside my head.
Everything that falls out of my hands through this keyboard
onto the document feels like self-pity.
Even as I try to write as dispassionately about how I have spent time
over this last couple of weeks – horrible long time due to it being Easter and
holidays – reads like woe is me melodrama.
So, let’s put it as simply as I can:
I have managed to spend a night away working and it was
fine.
I have managed to spend a couple of nights away with
immediate family and it was fine.
I have managed to spend a couple of nights away with
extended family and without internet and it was fine.
I have spent the rest of the last couple of weeks getting
sores on my arse because I cannot bring myself to move from the sofa and go
outside.
There. Simple.
My running completely stopped. I have now managed to get myself back out
onto the streets, over the last few days, and do feel much better physically
for this – except that the sit-up sores are not something I wanted to go
through again. It has done nothing for
my mental state, though.
I have tried and succeeded in doing a bit more research for
a writing project I have been trying to write for a year or so, now. That has been somewhat rewarding but I am
struggling to actually commit to research and writing and a more accurate
description of my time would be that I sit with numerous tabs open on my screen
and the one actually facing me is one I can simply scroll through and lose
hours in. Hours. Whole evenings. Whole days. It’s pathetic.
And then we have the April day, again.
It’s two April days, actually. On April 20th 2017 I decided that
I should stop drinking. I was drinking
like a Welshman and so when I ran – and I ran an exercised a lot, at the time –
I was losing no weight. So, on morning
of April 21st 2017, as I staggered back up the incline to my house,
I decided to stop drinking. In my fridge
sat the remnants of the night before’s supply.
It remained there through to me leaving New Zealand. A constant harrying of the head. I’ve got back to the UK and simply carried
on. I taste beer in my mouth, in my
head, most days. Holidays, when there is
time, is the worst, of course. But,
there we go. Two years. And why was I
drinking so on April 20th 2017?
Prince, of course.
And there we are, pathetic number two – in many ways. A man whose music and attitude I admired,
that I was a fan of, who I never met and who had no knowledge of me at all,
died. And joy stopped. Melodramatic, yes, but simply the only way I
can describe how his death impacted me.
Obviously, other elements for such an effect to occur were in place, and
his death, and the mode and manner of his death, was just the final piece, the
final weight that was too much for me to carry.
As yet, I have not been able to displace that weight, nor feel joyful as
a part of who I am.
I know when I am alive.
I know this routine – when I’m not left with so much time on my hands –
will see me through to when I am alive again.
That time is a few years ahead but I know it is coming. From now til then is the struggle and finding
the will to get there.
