Back into the shade

Square One

I’ve been here before. Many times. The shade. The poor footing, uncertainy future, tummy tingling trepidation of what would be square were it a game.

Most days I keep it positive. “it’s a new chapter” is the general refrain. Some days a shadow is cast and the coldness brings a foreboding hard to ignore. “You’re on your own, and it’s gonna get pretty darn bad”.

I’m led on my single bed in a farmhouse forty minutes walk from anywhere that isn’t here. Jeff Buckley is playing on youtube. It’s a nineteen-ninety-nine kind of night. I feel a young man again. Not in a good way. But in a way that I lef the security of youth and not yet prepared for the chasm of adulthood. Im forty-three. I shouldn’t be in this position. Am I fundamentally flawed? A failure? Are all my aspriations and confidences delusions.

The drink didn’t help. It never does.

I slept in the bath earlier and woke up in cold water and a dark bathroom. Not the best start to the end of the day.

I quickly switch back to YouTube to pick another song. More Jeff Buckley. But I want to choose the song, not the algorythm.

Do I start too many paragraphs with “I” too much? That is a questions to myself. Myself?… hmmm… interesting. Is my writing revealing my narcissim?

Madrid

I messaged my friend in Madrid earlier - “hey mate, what you up to next week and April?“. He wasn’t sure and gave the impression he was in the process of sorting his life out too. By “gave the impression” I mean he said exactly that.

Fuck!

Kinda needed him to have already done that and was ready to help me do the same. Is everyone else just as screwed as me? Does that make me feel better?

Good questions, but I need answers right now.

The alternative is my brothers couch. No more lying on my bed listening to Jeff Buckley and endulging in my failures. From now on it will be endulging over a tall cappuccino in Starbucks. Not my favourite place for wallowing.

A Plan

Something falling into my lap would be great right now. I check my emails like its social media. Scrolling to refresh in the hope a new email with the answers to my prayers will slide into my inbox. It never does.

I know that I need to make a plan. The kind of plan that I won’t like. The kind of plan that concedes to a life that sucks for a chunk of time. Am I even strong enough for that kind of plan anymore? I guess I’ll have to be.

Tonight will be long. I’m still feeling off from my bath-sleep. I feel unprepared and uninspired to commit to anything toinght. Netflix and some Korean series seems like the most attractive proposition. But at least, right now, I’m writing.

The music is getting a bit full-on now. It might be time to make a change. Whatever happens I can’t afford this dispair. Even if hope is a delusion, I desperately need to cling onto it.

Let’s see if I have had any emails come through.

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LiterallyShane Davis

"It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul."