Oh the days I am living

November 5th

timeswhenlucywasright — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 17:16:50 +0000

I don’t know where to start. How to explain the unnameable emotion that’s held me tight since 6:20 this evening.

I wish I could go back and stop myself from saying it. I wish I hadn’t gotten intoxicated enough to be able to realise what I’d known for longer than I ever thought.

But if I did I’d lose every single pinpoint of perfection. For some short moments it was enough to say it.

All I wanted tonight was to take his hand in mine like I did last night. I don’t remember properly when it was. I remember individual points on the timeline. I remember everything I felt.

He didn’t believe me last night. Felt the need to ask me if I’d meant everything I said.

Of course I had.

All I want right now isn’t any of the crap I talked about last night. I wanted to hold his hand and hug him like I did for hours last night because he’s him. He’s safe. He’s him.

It all feels unreal to me now. That walk we took knowing we needed to talk. The words echo and tumble in my head.

I told someone how I felt about them for the first time to their face. And it all went to nothing.

I’m ashamed. He said I did nothing wrong, that I was one of his best friends. He said every lovely thing he normally does.

I never got my chance to say what I wanted to. I did what was best - what I always do. I acted normal.

I think i gave myself away, though that’s where this all started.

It derailed like some scene from a film. But it wasn’t like that. It was four shades of anguish and shame and a million things still left unsaid. And I think my parting words as the most difficult conversation I’ve had in a long long time ended were telling.

“You still smell good.”

I smiled, the expression not reaching my face properly. I think he laughed; who knows.

And then I walked away, waving in an impression of my insouciant public manner.

See, he told me last night I should be myself truly. Feelings and all. But I told him why I lie to myself.

And so I sat playing the piano like i had last night, searching the crowd for his face. And every time I thought about it I had to stop myself from breaking down.

He’s seen my soul. I don’t know if he realises it, but he saw it illuminated through a misty haze of drink and emotions.

Ironic that I will now be much more protective.

He remembers everything. All the things we still haven’t spoken about but he knows are true, they’re clawing at my skull. He knew me well enough to know what I’d hidden from him; why shouldnt he see that I’m in agony here?

I fucked up. I fucked up so badly. I fucked up and now look what I’m left with.

The ease between us is still there - it was almost too perfect.

I stood under the fireworks wishing to be next to him just for that, and I was crying as I laughed at the colourburst above my head. You can smile while your heart is breaking. I have to.

The words “not ready” have never been so potent.

22nd November

timeswhenlucywasright — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:07:38 +0000

Plenty of things are disintegrating all around me, but I still feel relatively fine. I don’t mean my usual ‘fine’, I mean something a little different.

It’s odd, knowing how many things are waiting inside your head to make you cry, but still having a heartful of mush reducing you to a sappy smile around ninety per cent of the time. I feel guilty for it. Guilty for feeling some sort of comfort. Typical.

Everything is shockingly real at the minute; and yet, utterly dreamlike. I want some of it to be a dream, resigning itself to the stained-glass shimmers of the annals of imagination, in the darkness where it belongs… And some of it I need so desperately to be real, if only to anchor myself to this earth by anything more than name and a list of arbitrary facts and figures that may be what I am but not who I am.

Odd things flash through my memory, sticking in their assumed places like stones thrown into a raging river of uncertainty. Memory’s a strange thing. Feeling’s too. I remember exactly the feeling of a hand on my waist for a brief second, but I don’t know how to name the emotion that went with it.

… Waking in the light, it could be any time. No new messages.

Probably time for bed, then.

20th November - II

timeswhenlucywasright — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:19:55 +0000

You think I’m like water, inconsistent and forever flowing from one thing to the next, having no loyalty.

I’m only like water in that I can change state with the right catalyst. I’m hard when I need to be but the simplest thing can melt me - or undo me, sending my component parts flying to the very bounds of the space I’m in. I can’t help the fluidity of my mood: I fluctuate like some sort of volatile compound, forever with the propensity to react, destroying me and my surroundings. All I am that is certain is my failings. They stay fixed, fixed like the definition of whatever compound I am.

I really am just science, aren’t I?

20th November

timeswhenlucywasright — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:16:37 +0000

Strange how massively things can change in a very short time.

I seem to think this a lot; however, for once, the changes are one that have, overall, made me feel good instead of bad. That’s important: not many sudden changes can override the bad so completely. But this sudden change has.

I could start over-analysing how I’ve forced myself to move on from someone who will never see me the way I do, and then discovered someone else… but I won’t. I’ve made mistake… but they’re not important. Noone is angry with me. Noone is ashamed of me.

I’m not ashamed of myself. And, more importantly, neither is he. I’ve never been so glad to lose a bet. Fifty pence, I think that’s easily worth losing in exchange for him remembering.

This time, I wanted to remember and be remembered. I never want to forget any of it. Any of it at all.

I didn’t believe him at first. But he stuck to it, his hands ever present on my shoulders. And I began to see. Began to feel.

Purple sweater. Two pairs of muddy, cold feet. Hot Fuss on the stereo. These aren’t stupid details to notice like usual, but important ones. I’m glad I’m always in the kitchen at parties with this turn of events, dancing by the drink table and the fridge wrapped up tightly in his arms. So very tightly, with his shy lips on my neck. I didn’t care that everyone could see his hands slowly moving across my back and shoulders. It was enough to have them there and to reach up on my tiptoes to wrap my arms around him. I don’t even care that neither of us could dance properly. None of that is important.

Morrissey was at least half right: shyness is nice. “I don’t know how to!”

“Me neither.”

His eyes found mine. For a second I though he wasn’t going to.

I had my first kiss with a boy I never knew liked me in the middle of an SW19 kitchen while Hot Fuss blared out.

Of course, someone had to ruin it for us. Even someone I trusted. My first experience of speaking against someone’s lips was shouting at someone.

Out in the cold, we got enough time to actually feel the kiss before we got interrupted. It’s a weird sensation, but it went right through me in the best possible way. If only it had lasted longer.

Mood successfully killed, we just spent the rest of the night side by side, him shifting in his chair beside me to be able to hold me properly. And that, as they say, is that.

I could go over the whys and wherefores of last night, documenting the horrible surges and plummets of emotion that seem to characterise moments of change for me. I could do my analytical trick.

But I won’t. I’m not going to try to break this down into little rational chunks of information with calculated uncertainties. I’m not second guessing. Tomorrow, if I have to take the walk of shame in the common room, I can do it with utter pride. I have done what was right for two people.

I am happy.

18th November

timeswhenlucywasright — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:00:18 +0000

Here I am, once again in the library. But it’s not the high-vaulted room where I had my cognitive debate back in October. Everything is different.

Unusually for me, I’m completely silent. All around me there’s talk, a sussurration that whirrs around me like a wave gathering speed and volume. World away from the dead stillness of the blue ceilinged room fifty steps away. Maybe thirty. I have no idea. It doesn’t really matter anyway.

I’m the sole person here of my age, bookended by boys in red-crested blazers and the cohort that’ll be living off takeaways and cheap booze this time next year. I can assume that I will probably starve to death once I leave home. How intrepid of me.

I’m scared about tomorrow; in fact, I’m probably as scared as he was by me. I don’t like that facet of my personality: the dark, dirty underside of the preservable. All that is shameful contained and caged by the reason I can muster, all that I fear. I went to that party as Fear and left as Regret, black streaks migrating down my cheekbones.

Bones. All I am is bones. Bones of existence and sense and certainty, fleshed out and filled in by emotions. They stopper one gap and make six more gaping holes; the word made flesh. Which word am I?

Am I fascinating, a billion shimmering colours scintillating in the light of observation? A I logical, a steadfast column of reason holding up some edifice of control? Or am I nothing at all except the lack of definition, framed by twenty-seven million different mistakes, past and present? If time’s meaningless - what a nihilistic thing to say - if time’s meaningless, with the past unfolding right now in the heart of some distant start whose light will only touch my pale and abstracted face in its death throes, while now is the future in the centre of someone else’s world, am I just mistakes in the present, perpetually erring in the dark of the light?

Enlightenment is a dark thing when you’re the subject when you’re the subject of the reformation. I think if I were an artist this would be called my black period. But I’m not an artist. I’m nothing. I’m nothing but a set of personality quirks and a list of flaws.

Someone I know ducks into the blue-ceilinged room. Our eyes meet briefly - and he continues. We have no significance to one another here in the realm of books.

Amazing how well I’ve so far avoided writing what I really want to. I want to expurgate my soul of its demons, rid myself of the dybbuk on my hunched shoulder. But I fear the expurgation will show me things that I don’t want to see. I know they’re there. They’re always there.

Stuck in my own personal dark ages, I pray for and abhor the revolution that mst surely come.

November 13th

timeswhenlucywasright — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:21:56 +0000

I spent last night in my father’s bedroom from when he was my age.

That entire house is so bound up in memories that it’s probably life force holding it up. But it’s all changing. It’s wrong that I’m only becoming so comfortable to wander around now, now that it’s all ending.

I can’t bear that he’ll never see me go to university. I want to make him proud, I want to be the best firstborn grandchild anyone has ever had. I want him to live forever.

It’s hard seeing him this way. Feels unreal. Utterly unreal.

It’s cruel that time is running out. There’s so much that… that will never be. I hate it. I hate god if he exists for doing this to my grandfather, the one who I’ve always wanted to make proud.

I need time to deal with this. I play normal but I’ve been crying in the kitchen. It all seems like some horrific nightmare.

I don’t know what I’m feeling at the minute. It scares me. I don’t have a clue what’s going on inside my head. All I amount to right now is an overweight, useless teenage girl with a heap of fears and too many stupid dreams who continues to balls everything important up.

I’ve given up looking for meaning past the details now.

November 10th

timeswhenlucywasright — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 22:27:41 +0000

I don’t know what to think today. Not because of any particular trauma, but because of general nothingness. Bright points intersperse themselves infrequently along a dull timeline of grey.

I like grey, though. It’s comforting. It’s a mix of all the colours and none of them.

There I go again. Always analysing.

I wish people would stop telling me we’re a cute couple. Well, I don’t. It’s more that I wish they’d say it with any possibility of it existing.

To be honest, I wasn’t ready either. Never am.

I shouldn’t have gone in today. I feel like shit, my legs like achey cotton wool, my head sore. I’ve had all my female teachers but one comment on my countenance with concern. Pale and cold and tired. I can’t help it. Too many outside forces.

Nothing changes.

November 9th

timeswhenlucywasright — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:56:24 +0000

Sat in the car in an underground car park, I prop my feet up on the headrest of the passenger seat. I don’t know why I’ve come out, to be honest. I suppose getting dressed and making an effort to leave my bedroom is the first step to making myself go into school tomorrow.

See, if I was anyone else - anyone sane - I wouldn’t be bothering to analyse this. But as it is, I live my life in a constant stream of self-analysis. Ironic that I’m even doing it now, in an attempt to pin down whatever it is that makes up my personality. Interesting that as somewhat of a nihilist with an acceptance that there is no meaning to the world, I still look for meaning to everything I do. I’m an exercise in character traits. I think it’s all the literature interpretation.

If I wasn’t quite so over-analytical, this would be exactly what it is: a teenage girl, off sick from school, sitting in the car waiting for her parents to return with the shopping. In fact, it wouldn’t be anything at all.

I don’t know why I do it. I have to pin down everything into lists of facts and things that have a degree of uncertainty. I have to attempt to establish some sort of causality - because lord forbid that I never meant anything.

I suppose it could be that I’m looking for certainty because my own mind is a mess. It’s also probably that I’m self absorbed. There’s a point when all the analysis just becomes stupid details about things that don’t matter.

They’ve returned now. I have a banana.

I’m not even going to bother to analyse that.

November 8th

timeswhenlucywasright — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 21:27:16 +0000

Everything is changing.

The family dynamic is gone, smashed to pieces. The stalwart is fading. I’m now considered an adult, acting like I know how to cope with it all and only failing as I sit in a room that used to be something completely different with a hospital bed in the corner.

People are changing. The sociopath is now given to fluttering waves, and admitting his innermost feelings. The year is split in two. The heavy drinker nearly died.

And then there’s me.

Everything I try to type I erase; none of it’s good enough. Like me.

I’m caught in a whirlwind of emotion and blurred recollections and questioned dreams, well aware of the precipice upon which I once again stand. Things change so fast. I can only recall bits and pieces of last week up until Friday. Ironic.

But there are solid points that anchor me. And one of them is the friendship that I thought I’d ruined. I said a lot of things; and part of the reason for that was the safety I feel in his presence. I told him that. It’s unclear exactly where we stand…. But above all he’s my best friend there, and I’m not ever taking that for granted. I’m happy to let it slide for now. If there’s more to be said it’s up to him - because there’s other things, far away from Saturday, that we still haven’t broached. But if he’s fine with it, so am I. Call it being rational.

That said, I couldn’t tell you what’s going to happen next. Everything is different and sometimes I feel like I need to catch my breath, get the world and its workings to slow for a while. And yet I hate the stagnation. When will I ever make sense?

It’s all so unreal.

November 6th

timeswhenlucywasright — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:51:47 +0000

Oh, the interminable irony. Well and truly The Screwup Kid now. I think three women with one eye between them are having a right old laugh at me. It’s like living in a fictional world: I go from tragedy, to movie-esque scenes, to a bloody farce.

It would happen to someone so eternally bound up in their own layers of fiction and fact - because I see myself very clearly. I know very much who I am.

It’s the reality of living that life that I struggle with.

November 4th

timeswhenlucywasright — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:49:16 +0000

I’m going to regret this in the morning.

October 31st

timeswhenlucywasright — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:48:13 +0000

I’m a fucking liar.

That’s what I am by necessity. I’m honest but I have to lie to protect myself from… from what I lie about. I seek to protect myself and shield others, at the cost of my honesty. Who knows what the irony of that is, though I should, seeing as I’m the queen of irony.

I’m a coward too. No matter how many stands I make, I’m reduced to hiding. I’m reduced to the pathetic figure now huddled under a duvet that ends up covered in ink within hours of it being washed. I destroy everything good.

Though sometimes I think they’re being destroyed for me.

It feels like there’s no escape. Nothing I can do to cure the stagnation. It’s festering in the very walls of the house. I fear growing up if I end up stuck.

I fear not getting out of here. I won’t be defined by this, by lies and fear and salt water stains. This may shake me up and shape me, but it won’t be my be all and end all. I won’t let it be so. There’s always a choice.

But it’s the wrong choices being made perpetually and noone gives a fuck about me or my sanity. That’s the truth. That’s the cold hard fucking truth and it’s not setting me free. The truth is trapping me and moulding me and ruining me. Let this truth die. Let it all die because this is not what I want. Let it all die so I can start again from the ashes. Let me be free.

One more time one more time I won’t do this any more, I want out. Rock and a hard place and they’re both the devil’s own bastard. I swear my mind won’t take it any more but somehow it does, where’s my breaking point? Have I hit it, and this my disintegration? Have they finally destroyed me?

The blood’s beating in my limbs like a reminder that this is life, this is my fact. I’m only good at fiction. And yet now I tell only the truth. Everything I say has truth to it but it’s a case of what people want to hear. Noone would believe me about my raging mind anyway.

I could make a list of my grievances but who would care? All it would amount to is one unknown girl, slowly losing her mind to people who notice nothing outside their own castle walls.

I’m just as walled. Locked in … and locking everyone else out.

Noone is as they seem.

October 30th

timeswhenlucywasright — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:46:53 +0000

The glittering lights of london lie beneath the road’s sweep as far as the eye can see on the right.

It’s beautiful. I love the city. As much as the countryside may be picturesque, I need a bit of excitement. Civilisation.

We’ve turned our backs on it now, riding into deepest darkest Surrey, the land of private schools ringed by coffee shops and garden centres.

I spent a lot of time surrounded by coffee and tea today. I have been a ‘dear’ and a ‘star’ and countless other things besides, in a situation that veers from tragedy to comedy every second. Odd how lovely the last three days have been when the underpinnings fall apart at the seams.

It’s very dark outside. The sky, where I can see it, is a sort of deep soft plum colour. Has been since we left the blue and white house. Nice to have a constant for a change when everything’s six of one and half a dozen of another.

I feel bad for wanting to smile.

October 30th

timeswhenlucywasright — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:46:52 +0000

The glittering lights of london lie beneath the road’s sweep as far as the eye can see on the right.

It’s beautiful. I love the city. As much as the countryside may be picturesque, I need a bit of excitement. Civilisation.

We’ve turned our backs on it now, riding into deepest darkest Surrey, the land of private schools ringed by coffee shops and garden centres.

I feel bad for wanting to smile.

October 28th

timeswhenlucywasright — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:45:24 +0000

I remarked earlier that I would have my first positive entry for this weird little project of mine, as I sat in a dark room with two of my best friends watching a fat woman eat a doughnut hanging from a string.

The afternoon slash evening was like that. I have been sat on, I have had my knee and elbow licked, i have had by chest used as a pillow and cited as Thor’s hammer Mjolnir. Funny, most of the evening seemed to involve physical invasion of space, mainly by a boy with blonde highlights in his brown hair. Lord only knows why Teresa invited us over.

But it doesn’t last, see. No matter how good my day has been, something always spoils it.

A phonecall in the car. Making conversation because we know something bad’s happened. And now there’s yet another fracas that I won’t even bother with.

Yet again, I’m left lying in the dark with my headphones turned up high enough to hurt. The sound from the one working side echoes to my other ear so I hear a set of ghostly subsidiary harmonics.

I don’t even cry any more. I just ache. Ache and ache and ache until I think I’ll die from how I feel. Hopeless. Does apathy kill?

No… Not apathy. I’m not apathetic. Far from it. I think if I was apathetic it would hurt less.

Desensitised… That’s the word. And that worries me. I should have to be so used to things that I’m desensitised. It’s wrong. My emotions are abnormal enough without this.

It’s with some irony that I realise I’m only any good at writing depressing stuff. Maybe that’s why my days are destined to be imperfect; it’s showing that all I am is a miserably inspired writer.

Or maybe I’m just miserable… and there’s only so much a pair of headphones can block out.

October 26th

timeswhenlucywasright — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:44:07 +0000

I probably look like a paedophile sitting alone in the playground.

It’s completely empty except for me, in my soaked boots and massive hoodie. I wanted to sit up top, on the upper level of the piece of metal and plastic that I used to like sitting on about three years ago, but it’s too wet. So I’m sat underneath, looking like the hoodlum everyone probably thinks I am.

I’d forgotten how much I love coming out to the park on my own. I’ve come to the rec, or what I’ve always known as Big Park. I’d go in the woods, if I wasn’t too scared of being in them alone. Maybe one day.

I probably should have gone to Little Park, seeing as they’re apparently knocking it down soon. It’s grimmer than here, but I feel a certain sense of kinship with it. If it’s still standing in two years, I will go and sit there for an hour on the day before I leave home. And I’ll come here too, to play my guitar. No guitar today though, too cold.

Two years’ time. If all goes well, I’ll be in university by this time in 2013. Strange thought. I’ve placed such reverence on university life for so long; I wonder how it’ll actually be.

I’ve only just noticed the spider web hanging by my head, with a fly trapped in it. How long has it been struggling beside me, without me noticing?

The wind’s picked up. The beautiful sky’s clouding into a whole new beauty.

I love this time of year. I love the cold and bluster of encroaching winter. I love the bite in the air as I walk through the parks with a book and writing implements, searching for a place to sit and be peaceful for a while.

I should have done this more often this last week and a half. How often I seem to say things like that. Ironic.

The walk up here is always like some kind of memory trail when I haven’t been in a while. I have to do my kerb walk on the entrance, I have to ignore the paved path. I can pinpoint on the road where my black and red floral dolly pram broke. I can show you where I considered throwing snow at the estate agent’s window.

It’s much colder now. I probably look a fool sitting here like this, but I’m peaceful here. The leaves can fall and spiral around me all they want.

The trees are a strange colour. It’s like red and orange and pink, all mixed together, but each colour still visible. And over at the end of the playground where I never used to go past the gate, there’s a deep red right in front of pale green. I never noticed how beautiful this place is before.

Even the man who was in the basketball court - which I’ve never set foot in, as far as I can remember - who came out to stare at me as I arrived, like some interloper, even he’s going home. I didn’t notice he had a dog.

Cabin fever’s being cured, I think, at least temporarily. I haven’t seen people in a while. I don’t count family as people, obviously. Strange that I feel less isolated while I’m out here in isolation, the only sound outside of my headphones being the wind and the cars behind me.

Maybe it’s where I am that does it. The remembrance of many days spent here, spanning my childhood, and then my adolescence. It’s safe here, in the park, surrounded by the red railings with the yellow gates… And yet the dark woods are not safe. The eternal conflict of security in one’s past; there’s always a flaw to it that you don’t fully see until later.

I’ve had the Kids From Yesterday on repeat. I’m loath to turn it off; because that’s what I am. I’m a kid from yesterday.

All around me, countless incarnations of myself dance in their individual pasts. Too many changes to count. Too many children who I met once, and never saw again, friendships of the moment falling into the wreckage and dust of the past, amongst the leaf mulch and asphalt.

I still haven’t been able to blow that bug free.

I stand up, leaning against the metal. I don’t know why I’m smiling. Maybe it’s hope, as I look up at the burnished trees against the now-clearing sky.

It’s probably time I went back to the real world now.

October 27th

timeswhenlucywasright — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:29:40 +0100

My little brother is becoming a bigot.

This Dale Farm thing is a snafu, and I wouldn’t argue that the evictees are entirely in the right, but using information that isn’t actually fact to call all gypsies evil is wrong.

It’s that bloody school. Peer pressure. He’s surrounded by people who think it’s acceptable to call people pikeys and discrimate against that. And he’s obsessed with people thinking he’s wearing fakes. I wouldn’t want to be friends with people who rip you unless you wear brands. I’m not friends with people like that. I might be less popular than them, but I’m not bothered about that.

And I’m certainly not bothered about changing my views to fit in. I never will be. I am myself and I will not change myself for the sheer purpose of getting invited to more parties.

I know that my brother finds me embarrassing because I’m different. This rankles, as I’m not the one embarrassing myself with views that aren’t my own. And it’s upsetting, as I’m being punished for who I am. I might not look or act like typical sixteen and three quarter year olds, but at least I know my own mind.

I’m ashamed to call him my brother if he’s going to be like this.

October 24th

timeswhenlucywasright — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 23:45:39 +0100

The house smells vaguely of apples.

Or, at least, I’d expect it to, the amount of them we’ve eaten recently. Fucking apples. Even they’ve turned out to be imperfect like that day we spent in the blue and white house a few weeks ago. It seemed so lovely, but really we knew the truth.

The truth of the apples is brown and mouldering in the bin.

Maybe I shouldn’t attach such symbolism to everything, but it’s how I exist. I’m an analyst, I look for patterns. I want to explain things. And yet, as a thinker, I know things can’t be explained when they pertain to events that aren’t on a scientifically explainable level; those aren’t even the right words. Even if we can explain something, it doesn’t mean there’s a reason for it. In my experience there’s little reason for a lot of things on a larger scale. How ironic, that the incomprehensible, the very tiny and the very large are explainable, but the things in the middle aren’t except for as a part or a sum of a whole. How like a physicist of me, able to explain quantum and planets, but having no explanation for why a family can fall apart. How utterly heartless I must be.

Or maybe I have too much heart. I’m made of imperfections and one of them is my incredible ability to feel. I feel too much, one could argue. Too deeply. And yet my emotional, creative side is balanced almost perfectly by the logician in me, the one who coldly assesses everything.

It’s the rationalist that is the only thing that saves me from the other half of me, where the … instability, or whatever you’d call it, resides. Too much soul searching has always been dangerous, as has too little, in another of those delightful contradictions my character seems honour-bound to provide me with. I’m a study in contrasts. If you could paint my psyche, I’d be the perfect colour study for GCSE art students. Wouldn’t that please the moderate synaesthete in me?

Interesting how I compartmentalise myself. I do that too much. And yet I see myself as a whole with inherent divisions. I can’t look at myself too much or I fear I’m overtaken by the tide of self confusion.

Interesting how I’m so detached when I analyse myself like this and yet I turn hysterical in other self-assessments. I’m a psychiatrist’s dream.

If I eat any more apple and cinnamon, I’ll turn into a bloody apple.

Analyse THAT, Mr Freud.

October 23rd

timeswhenlucywasright — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 18:13:31 +0100

Suburban War. I think that’s where we’re at. I hate the suburbs. It’s boring. Oddly, even the lack of class here annoys me. Half chav, half posh, or the inbetween.

The inbetween. Where I reside on many counts. Inbetween classes. Inbetween social groups. Inbetween stereotypes. Inbetween ages. Inbetween dreams. Jack of all trades, master of none. The numerous attempts at new ideas show that, and the way they all go to nothing. How very suburban of me.

As much as I dislike the suburbs – because this isn’t really a village, it’s just the space between several towns, all of whom seem to struggle for any one identity – I don’t know where else I’d live. Well, this sin’t strictly true. I know where I’d like to live, but my identity would be different. If I’d grown up in the city, I wonder how my sense of isolation would have manifested – or would it have manifested at all? If we’d moved to out to that country village in the hills, would I have gone mad from the eternal quiet? Or would I have become rural, used to isolation?

My life – that overarching concept that I can lay claim to only in part due to its constant and inescapable changeability – would not be the same if I had not spent my entire childhood and adolescence in this place. Friendships – different. Schooling – different. Even where I mooch around would be different.

I think this odd little nowhere place that’s neither one thing nor the other lies deeper within me than I’d have expected maybe two, three year ago. It’s interesting to explore one’s roots – oh, how deplorably pretentious I sound – because of what they actually mean. My mother is from an old mining town in Lancashire that people associate with whippets and pies. Her childhood is diametrically opposite to mine – yes, is. Her life under northern skies once filled with coal smoke is still within her; it will never leave her. It’s distinctive because it’s utterly different to my technology-filled private school sterilised southern existence. My father’s is harder to pin down in the same way, although I know more about it. It’s all different worlds to mine.

My world, as it stands, seems to have little identity to it. There seems nothing particularly era-defining about it: maybe that’s what defines it. I suppose when I look back I’ll be able to pin it down, but as I live it I can only attempt to rationalise what I can.

Living in the hinterlands of suburbia makes me into the person I am. It’s left me in the unique position that those who live in places without much of an identity except for the blatant lack of one share, the feeling of belonging nowhere. This place has little hold on me.

It’s also made me isolated. The people are not ones I’d associate with. The only teenage dream I live here is that of wandering around feeling disenfranchised. This is the perfect place to foster the disenfranchised who really ought not to be disenfranchised.

And here, in this conglomerate of housing and rubbish corner shops with nothing to do and no one to see, where I am miles away from my school and my friends are at the least a town away, where I’m surrounded by civilisation that I’m not interested in, is where I feel stuck. This place is like a swamp.

It’s the perfect place to foster one girl’s tendency towards isolation and let it fester into becoming isolationist as a way of life.

And now we’re isolated from the once-unbreachable head of the family, who’s now just unreachable in the blue and white Orpington house that creaks when you go up the stairs. But he’s not coming down the stairs. And soon, he won’t at all.

I really wish I’d written this song. But then I wouldn’t be able to appreciate it.

I think you yourself can’t appreciate your own life. I know I can’t.

It’s probably time I switched repeat off.

October 22nd

timeswhenlucywasright — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 17:49:23 +0100

Snap.

The burning plank splits in half, flames licking along its pale length. Dark trails are beginning to form up the wood -

What does it matter? Things are created and things are destroyed. You’re born. You live.

You die.

It’s all lies anyway.