Here comes the sun

 

 

I love new beginnings. There’s something about them that’s clean, fresh, sunny. Like the early morning sunlight of a new day. The dew is fresh on the grass, the earth smells clean and damp, the world is reborn once again. It’s an amazing feeling.

 

I love new years precisely for this reason. I know it’s a man-made concept, I know that it’s rather meaningless in the end, but something just… changes. I always associate a new year with this fresh, hopeful feeling… Like you’ve woken up to a world made entirely of clay – a world that you can change and mold to fit a better you. A you that you can mold to make the world just a little nicer to live in.

 

This past year has been insanity. So beautiful. So terrible. So perfectly flawed. I have made so many good friends and so many mistakes. I have had the best and worst times of my life so far. I have fallen in love. I have struggled with myself and my family. I have never been so unkind. I have never been more giving of my love. I met people who have changed the way I think and feel. I met people who made me feel glad to just be in the same room with them. I met people who terrified me with how much of them I could see in myself. I kept so many secrets. I broke so many promises – mostly to myself. I got burned but I burned bright. I pushed aside people I should have kept close, I got close to people I didn’t entirely trust. There have been times that I have never felt more beautiful on the outside. But there have also been times that I have never felt so small and ugly on the inside. I have never felt this constant need to be forgiven as I strongly as I do now, and this need goes out to so many people. I took incredible risks but the dare-devil adrenalin rush it gave me was worth it, even when they didn’t go the way I wanted.

 

I have very, very few regrets.

25/12/2008

Christmas is here. I just wish I wasn’t finding it so hard to concentrate. So many things are crowding my mind when all I want is to forget them all and concentrate on my family, who I have been pushing aside for too long because of my own problems. Lately I have been feeling myself undeserving of their constant concern for me, their unexpected cuddles and other little gestures of love that have been forthcoming no matter my mood. Which has usually been black or at least on the dark side.

 

For no other reason that Christmas being imminent, I’ve tried to lighten up a little over the past few weeks. Yesterday and today have been spent well in that respect at least.

Christmas flies

 

Christmas flies. Delightful and intensely annoying at the same time. They buzz in around October and remind you that the year is drawing to an end and by the time the end of the year actually rolls around you’re thoroughly sick of them. If they weren’t around, though, you’d notice immediately. They seem to be getting less and less now, which is sad. But maybe that means something too. That we’re growing up, that we don’t anticipate them anymore, that there’s no need for them anymore. I miss them.

 

My feelings about Christmas tend to fluctuate these days. Sometimes I surreptitiously switch on some carols on my iPod and sing along in my head while at office, barely able to contain my childish excitement that Christmas time is finally here. At other times, I couldn’t feel less Christmassy, less happy or festive. Which frustrates me, because I love Christmas – not for the presents and the sales and the over-commercialization of the season – but for the simple thrill of doing something so quaintly traditional, something I’ve been doing since I was a little kid.

 

It’s sad how things have changed through the years though. Not sad so much as bittersweet, I guess. I remember how we used to do things when I was small. Nothing out of the ordinary really, nothing large scale, but it was what I was brought up doing, so it was just…special.

Blurred clarity

 

 

She’s restless. Shifting in her seat at work, she watches enviously as other early risers walk into work early and settle at their desks, animated and refreshed after the three day holiday and a good night’s sleep.

She hasn’t slept well. Despite not having woken up even once since she drifted off the night before, she still didn’t sleep well. Strange dreams dogged her the night through and she only remembers flashes of them but they still leave her with a bad feeling that nags continuously at the fringes of her mind.

 

…An old friend from school leads her by the hand, into a nook of a strange house on the beach, and leans forward to kiss her. She doesn’t know if she wants to so she backs away. The friend appears awkward for a little and then  speaks earnestly to her but she can’t hear what’s being said. Again her friend moves closer and she is back up against the wall of the room, nervous but strangely excited. Before anything happens, a couple bursts into the room, making out feverishly. They stop when they realize they aren’t alone and stare inhospitably at her and her friend. The friend takes her by the hand once more and they leave hurriedly.

 

…She has now turned into a boy, jogging laps around a darkened pool in swimming trunks. He is sweating, worried about something, unhappy about everything. He realizes he had done more laps than he needs to but he keeps going, unhindered by the ache in his legs, spurred on by the thud of his shoes against the cement. He jogs a little way behind the rest of the squad, sensing their hostility but not really worried by it. The coach watches him, impressed. Sympathetic.

Don’t Look Back

 

“That song I told you about…”

x

 

Don’t Look Back – Telepopmusik

 

Sit still, and close your eyes
What’s behind the other door
No more silence, don’t kill this thing we got called love
Just searching for the perfect drug

When Love comes calling
Don’t look back
When love comes calling
Don’t look away

And I’m standing over here
Watching you over there
Smiling, happy, unaware
Oh, life is spinning round
You’re going underground, forgetting who we were
Let’s try and keep it just one more day

You take your love
And throw it all around
Like it’s nothing special
Just a sound
Let me say one more thing
I don’t think you realize
That a day is like a year sometime

Rain fell down…

 

Got caught in the rain today. Well, not caught, really. I just walked right into it. Knowing it was raining, knowing I didn’t have an umbrella. But I wanted to get home so I walked out, mentally preparing myself for what I’d see when I looked in the mirror once I got home. Smudged eye liner, straggling hair, damp jeans and muddy toes. In other words, a mess.

 

Usually my walks to and from work pass in a blur because I’m plugged into my iPod and my concentration is solely on the song I’m listening to and my accompanying mood. My surroundings fade into a series of vague impressions… Sunlight winking through the trees when I look up, making me squint and smile. The honk of a bad tempered vehicle as it zooms past, barely missing the dreamy looking pedestrian who has strayed from the (largely undefined) sidewalk almost into the middle of the road. The soundless hello from the army guys who man the roads each day and know me well enough by sight not to get offended when I sometimes ignore them, having missed their greeting because of the song blaring in my ears. I tend to look at the roads a lot, trying to dodge everything from puddles, potholes and piles of gravel to large unsavoury dollops of cow dung.

The Fight

Lights off.

 

She closes her eyes, savouring the inky blackness, feeling it wash over her skin. Cool. Slinky. Soft.

 

She doesn’t recall where the light switch is, but she doesn’t care… She can’t see anything but the black and it’s a total mind fuck. Standing still, she could be in a tiny box, just big enough for her frame, or in an endless expanse of nothing. Standing still she’d never know.

 

She closes her eyes and waits for him. His warmth against her cool skin. His stubble against her smooth cheek. His larger frame, enveloping her small one.

 

One disappearing into the other. Both disappearing in the darkness.

 

If the real thing is anywhere near as good as she remembers… “Mmm” she murmurs to herself, waiting, aching, wanting.

 

The touch comes.

 

Her eyes fly open.

 

Something’s wrong.

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Darling

 

I’ve finally run out of things to say to you. Run out of ways to explain how much it hurt when you left.

 

How bright the spark of hope was when you asked me back only to push me away again. How the brightness of each spark dimmed every time it happened. And it happened a lot.

 

Our little cycle.

 

I thought it must mean something that we couldn’t stay away from each other. Surely it must. But every time you proved me wrong. Every time I wound up alone, missing you, with the terrible knowledge that your thoughts of me were being constantly overshadowed by thoughts of someone else.

 

You say you want me but how can I ever believe those words from you again? Everything you have done has gone against it.

That old feeling…

 

It’s happening… And yet… Could it?

 

She giggles. Bites her lip and smiles at herself in the mirror. Checks her hair. Again.

 

Such a weird mix of feelings. Suddenly strange. Suddenly shy. Suddenly good. Suddenly self conscious. Suddenly happy. Suddenly unsure. Suddenly even a little scared.

 

The drive is long, the roads are wet. The static on the radio crackles and she remembers with a jolt to put on another song. Quickly sifting through the songs on her iPod, she looks for one to fit her unusual mood. She picks Love and Affection by Joan Armatrading – one of her all-time favourites. She’s listened to it hundreds of times before, but when she sings it now, she mixes up the words. She glances at herself in the rear-view mirror and can’t hold in the laugh that bubbles up into her throat at her own silliness.

 

A boy on the road catches her eye and smiles despite the rain pelting down on him. It’s a flirtatious smile and she rolls her eyes in exasperation as the car zooms past, leaving him behind.