Today

Having a bit of a teary day today. The snow falls outside the window and earlier it was sunny - but I spent most of it in bed computer procrastinating again. I watched a bit of Billy Elliot, and that moved me and led to me reading about the miners' strike on Wikipedia and, whaddya know, I totally started bawling. There's something in me that really connects to these powerful moments in British history - like whenever I think about the Battle of Britain or Winston Churchill. I wasn't there, but it hits me - and hits me when things like the holocaust and 9/11 don't. Must be something in the collective national unconscious or something. The miners' strike I was there though - living in South Elmsall at the time, where they had running battles and stuff - though I don't remember any of it (it ended about two months before my first real memories kick in). The struggle of the little people. And people banding together. I think that's what does it - community. Later - just now, in fact - I watched the last episode of 'The Royle Family' and, as ever, that had me crying as well. And once more it's the same thing: community - family - people coming together. Little people. Damaged people. People who bawl and shout and mostly talk a loud of shite but then have those moments where suddenly...everything shifts and the connection, the love is right there with them. I watch it on TV and read about it because I don't have those things in my life; in a way I've largely distanced myself from them because I always thought I was above my hometown, my old friends, my family. My dad says he's proud of me (because of writing the book) and I feel what he means, even if I can't feel it myself. He drinks and smokes and swears and thinks all manner of crazy thing, and he's got so much anger and weirdness sometimes - and yet there's a depth in his feeling in some moments that I'm not sure I can really relate to. When he talks about loving someone (my mother) and how he'll never love anyone like that again. And yet they fought and hated each other and lived such base lives, in so many ways. Maybe that's it. I don't really live a base life and I don't understand - but who 'loves' more than the midnight drunk screaming and shouting in the lamplit street after a night of alcohol-fuelled arguments with his lover? Is that love? Or something else? Am I justified in my coolness, my not wanting, my lack of emotional intensity?

And yet I know that I am capable of those things: that though I mostly float above the world of emotion I'm often touched by these moments of expressing something in a word, in a feeling that can instantly bring tears to my eyes, warmth to my heart. I give someone a compliment and I feel the depth of it, feel my heart moved and stir. I watch some documentary, some piece of Hollywood fluff, and tears are pretty much guaranteed. I have love - I know I do - it's just that I have so little opportunity to express it, I suppose - and so much uncertainty about how to do so. I just want to hold people sometimes; words fail me, I don't know what to say. And why say? Why speak? So much of it is pointless. Sometimes...if I could strum my guitar and get away with not saying anything very much I guess I wouldn't mind. But I also want to be liked and to be seen as being 'normal' and so I make talk and chatter that doesn't perhaps always represent me because it's better to do that than to be thought of as weird and not have other people around, I suppose. And none of that I meant to say - it was just a weird digression that is perhaps true, perhaps isn't; is perhaps related to something else. But what I really meant to say was it's this lack of family, this lack of community that does it. I live in a world where I'm always moving from one place to the next, and so are most of the people I know, and I've never really given it a chance in any one place, haven't settled down with someone, grown up and old with a particular bunch of friends, nor had any children: there's so little to tie my emotions to, because really love takes time, takes years of growth and comfort and it's perhaps only the kind of love that comes with family and community and it's little wonder that I'm so attracted to places like Mexico, where those things still exist, and TV shows and films set in little working-class British towns where people struggle and fight and live and die together together together. Together - is that the key word here? Or, as per usual, am I just waffling again?

I couldn't get to sleep last night - I tried about 11 o'clock, thinking myself tired and in need of a good night after the weekend's exertions - but then I kept thinking about this girl and worrying that I might have made her pregnant. Truth is, we didn't use any contraception and though I didn't come in her I definitely leaked a bit - during moments of holding on - and then went back inside her. I don't know why I didn't think not to do that. Anyways, not being able to sleep I flicked back on the computer and read stuff about getting pregnant and how long semen can live outside the body and all that and it didn't make me feel good. And then I read about the morning after pill and thought I should better get in touch with her. And then I did an I Ching reading and got this chapter that was headed by an image of a woman suckling a baby. And that freaked me out even more. Although when I read it there was also some stuff in there about not giving in to the desire for temporary pleasure. But at the same time I realised that I always freak out about getting someone pregnant - it's definitely my biggest fear - and that if it had happened I would just accept it as a 'meant to be' and get on with it, do my best, and probably get a real proper job. In fact, I could quite easily see some advantages.

Except, there was more to it than that: because getting anyone other than my ex pregnant would mean that me and my ex would never have any chance to get back together and make babies of our own, and that's what really bothers me about the whole thing. I suppose, basically, I can't accept that she's not the one. She's the only one I've been with where this issue was never a fear. And if it had happened, I would have welcomed it. She's the only one, too, who I've felt a real major provider instinct for - like, how when we got together I just knew that I would give my life and my time to working for her and our offspring, no matter what it took. It surprised me. I had no idea it was there. And it hasn't come back since. Sometimes I hate what a tit I was with her - even though I know, relatively speaking, I wasn't that bad, and that she was just as not-that-bad. We fell out and broke up over nothing, really. And that was three years ago now, after four years together, and all the girls I've ever met and been with, she's still the one. Except that's how my dad feels about my mum - and I can't imagine a more ill-matched couple. So maybe I'm just being crazy. But, boy oh boy, how I wish I could see her, could get these feelings straight, could find out with my own eyes and heart (and not just with this thinking) whether there was anything real there or not, so I could move on, or otherwise. But she doesn't reply to my emails very often and I guess she doesn't want to see me. It's a pain. I don't really understand it - although I know she was hurt when we didn't get back together when we perhaps had the chance a couple or years back, and probably doesn't want to go there again. Sometimes I think I should just go see her and let the chips fall where they may. Because it seems like such a shame, given that there might be a chance of something, to just live the rest of my/our lives separate and perhaps with the wrong people when we could have been so right, just for the sake of pride, or avoiding some messiness, or fear. But fear is strong. And I didn't realise I was going to type any of that either.

I was thinking of something today. Thinking of how I wrote on my facebook status something about not being able to find a 'celebrity doppelgänger' picture (which seems to be a latest craze; not that anyone invited me to the party) and instantly had in my head the words of imagined others selecting fat and ugly and wildly inappropriate people. And then I wrote something about crying while reading of the miners' strike and wondering what it was all about, and there I immediately anticipated responses such as, 'because you're a big girl.' Likewise, I'm always afraid that Matt and Easterly will change their minds about me coming to live with them, about being their son's godfather, all for some unknown reason, something to do with me being lame or unreliable or them having found someone better. It's weird. I guess I have some self-esteem issues going on inside. I mean, they say that they love me and that they want me around and to all appearances it seems to be true - yet, deep inside my heart, I can't ever really trust and feel it. Nor do I know how to deal with it. Perhaps it's one reason why I move so much. And another reason why I avoid the depths to which friends and family and community take you - the exact depths that I simultaneously feel so moved by and, perhaps, long for. I dunno.

In other news - for someone who has hopes of writing a book on premature ejaculation I was disappointingly long-lasting this weekend (must have been well over the half-hour mark). Not that it didn't take a lot of effort, mind - and pretty much constant effort at that. It's such a pain at times. I thought today maybe I should start a blog on the subject (though might need a girlfriend to make it viable). I also thought today - a thought inspired by watching Julie & Julia on the way back from Canada - that it's such a shame that I'm so hung-up on being a writer of books, on being published, when I was once so happy writing blogs and just expressing and stuff. I'm blocked in all my other endeavours - but writing a blog is always a pleasure - and a useful one at that. Okay, so it's far from pretty and rambles and makes little linear sense...but I dig the expression; it serves its purpose; it's free and easy and there's not of that pressure of thinking, I have to be a writer, I have to smart, I have to be funny and good and make sense. This is for me. It's my diary, and my therapy, and my friend. I mean, I haven't even tried to get a single reader with this one (and I know I've got people lined up and waiting to read these words) (well, two, at least) and I'm not sure that I will. I like it the way it is right now. Maybe I should just give up on this whole 'trying to be a proper published writer' thing for a while and relax and have fun. Although, having said that, I did get a positive email from an agent who actually wants to meet up with me and seems like a decent chap. Hope I've still got some enthusiasm for my book and its themes left somewhere!

Lots of love,

Rory