The cold isn't so bad now.
Loneliness and other ailments.
Since I last published anything on the 8th of January, this is my 7th drafted post. I’ve tried to write about a video game that moved me to tears, some of my old poems and a few meaningful things I learned in my existentialism module, but every time I’ve stopped within a hundred or two hundred words of starting. A lot has changed since that last published post. I’ve finally finished my 2nd year of university, 3 years later than I had originally intended. I’ve survived 2 exam seasons, 6 essays and a mates’ holiday in Sicily.
My friends, family and my therapist all say I should feel proud, I think they’re right and for a week or so after I handed in my last essay, I did. But for some reason I don’t believe it anymore. I feel like nothing about my life has changed since the 8th of January, I’ve fudged and fumbled my way through some academic work that if I was working at my so-called “best” I’d have done much, much better in.
Since the beginning of this week, I’ve started to have trouble sleeping and it’s as if I can’t kid myself anymore, the distraction of university deadlines isn’t keeping my blinkers on. There’s something missing from my life.
It’s been missing for a while, as far as I can tell. Unknowingly, I was seeking it when I first dropped out of university and in those miserable interim jobs that filled 2022 and 2023 while I had no idea what my future would look like.
My favourite part of the day while working as a tree surgeon in 2022 (aside from going home) was the 4-5 week stretch after the clocks went forward where the sun would rise right as I got off the bus at the top of Muswell Hill at 6:30AM.
As you may be able to tell, I’m having a little trouble keeping this one on theme, I promise I’ve a point to make eventually.
The first time it happened I thought of the sentiment that I’d always hear from adults and deep movies about life being fleeting so I would stop for 10 minutes on the corner of Alexandra Palace to watch the sun breach the horizon over London. Coincidentally, 2022 was probably the longest year of my life so far, what with working 7-4 and not having any idea what I’d be doing in 12 months time, but looking back, so much of it was unremarkable that it seems fleeting. I guess that’s what they meant.
So when I do look back, particularly now as I type this, I really am grateful I stopped to watch the sunrise every chance I could, even if it made me 10 minutes late to work. It amounts to about 4-5 hours of my entire life spent watching the sunrise which, in some strange way, I’m very proud of. Maybe I should keep those private moments private; is that what makes them special? My instinct is no.
This week I went to Camden with a dear, dear friend of mine. We danced at a little bar where a friend of the bartender was playing guitar and singing and a friend of the theirs was improvising on the violin. It was a glimpse of how things should be.
I regret to say that when I was 18/19 and in a relationship, I was too embarrassed to dance in public, much less sing in front of others. I’m filled with deep regret when remembering my ex-girlfriend attempting to drag me to the dance floor at a party and me refusing out of shame. Now, with a little good fortune and encouragement from friends, I can’t imagine a life without singing and dancing.
I wrote a piece on the effect of music on dementia before new years. Since I was maybe 15, I always understood music as an important part of my life, but always passively, as a listener. I started singing to myself a couple years ago, always when I was sure no one else could hear. I have a particularly potent memory of being home alone and belting the Les Misérables soundtrack. However, rather interestingly to me, a flatmate of mine complemented my singing in September last year and, as she was a musician and singer herself, it was the validation I needed to unleash a truly repressed part of my soul.
Now all I really want is someone to sing and dance with. It’s what immediately came to mind when I reflected on those sunrises. 2022 was the loneliest year of my life, I had no-one to share any of it with, I lost some dear friends that year. It obviously means a lot to me otherwise I wouldn’t have written a word of it but I can’t deny the yearning I feel for something more.
For some reason I still can’t quite articulate, I really need someone by my side when I experience something powerful. Maybe it’s simply to justify what I’m feeling, to say
“Yeah, you’re right.”
I think it also has something to do with the fact that I’ve been single for a while, It’s hard, after a certain period of time, not to start thinking that there may be something missing/wrong with you. I looked around at a belated birthday celebration of mine at the start of June and realised that I was the only one of nine people in the room who wasn’t in a relationship.
What I really want to express, here, is my desire for shared experience and my reflection of just how valuable it has been every time I’ve encountered it. I don’t really care anymore, I want to sing and dance and be myself and I want to do it with someone else’s hand firmly grasped in mine, however long it might be until I get there.
I’ve written a few poems on the feeling; I’ll probably stick one at the bottom here, it’s the only one I feel is worth sharing as it gets reasonably close to conveying the feeling I’m trying to capture. It’s a slightly nauseating battle between wanting to be self reliant and wanting to completely dissolve into someone else. I hear again and again that I should learn to love myself before loving someone else but I don’t really believe that anymore.
How the fuck am I supposed to do this shit alone?
The Cold isn’t so Bad Now
Bang.
Breathless. An icy wind tears at your face, then your back, then your face again. You’re falling. There are others falling with you but you only ever glimpse them. You see the sky, then the ground then the sky again, the earth getting closer with each rotation.
Bang.
You’re struck, cold hands grabbing, you meet someone’s piercing, terrified eyes. The wind is deafening but you cling to each other, oh so tight, if you would only hold them tighter you might be saved. Their face is such a beautiful distraction as the ground rushes up at you that you forget about it altogether.
It feels as if you’ve known them your whole life.
the cold isn’t so bad now…