Monday, 25 March 2013

Expunge

Good Lord! It’s been nearly a week since I’ve written anything and…that’s exactly the same sentence I started with last time. Which shouldn’t be surprising since I’ve just finished reading through my last entry and correcting it for mistakes. Seems like a hell of a lot has happened in the last week. Seems like for a man who doesn’t even have a job I’ve been incredibly busy. No time to write my sequel project, or this blog, or do very much of anything else. The emotions and confusion and figuring out and sharing has continued pretty much unabated. Plus, I’ve moved house. Let’s see…

Wednesday night I know I saw Nicky again. She came over in her new van to help me move but instead we ended up eating and cuddling and then surprisingly enough kissing and touching and once my hands got in her knickers there was only one way that was going to go. She asked me if I wanted to make love one last time in the flat and, naturally, I did. I kind of wish we’d done it after the dancing, ‘cos that was some serious major foreplay and I don’t know if I’ll ever be in that state again, and also because this time was a bit lame for a last time – my orgasm was poorly placed and timed – but, oh well. No moving or packing got done and she fell asleep in my arms and then left at two with a new plan to bring the van back over in the morning on her way to work and let me pack at my leisure. Which turned out to be a very good plan indeed.

So, yeah, I had to move out of my flat. I’d handed in my notice way back in the middle of February when I was feeling like dogdirt and, of course, it all made sense at the time. I was feeling like shit. Just treading water. Stuck in a town with nothing much going on except the massively painful reminders of this girl I once loved. My life in a rut. The English winter. And dreams of sun and adventure and flights of fancy to Canada or Greece. I’d said I’d go the first day of spring and I felt good about that.

Hadn’t done an I Ching, of course – was too afraid it would tell me not to go – but…well, surely it was the right thing, right?

Damn, I wish I’d done my I Ching when making that decision! And so I did one anyway, about a month too late…

“Dear I Ching, what would you have told me had I come to you in the beginning and proposed moving out of my flat?”

“Dear Rory, I would have said, ‘Number Three: Difficulty at the Beginning.’ And then I would have talked about how times of growth are beset with difficulties, like a first birth, but that those difficulties arise from the very profusion of all that is struggling to take form. When it is a man’s fate to undertake such new beginnings everything is unformed, dark, and in motion. It is good to persevere with this: the superior man brings order out of confusion. Stick at it. Don’t change anything. That could lead to disaster. And enlist the help of others.”

“Great: so basically what you’re saying is I shouldn’t have left my flat?”

“That’s right.”

“Fuck. Why didn’t I ask you? Well, I know why: because I was so desperate to escape the pain that I didn’t want you to stop me. Except now that I’ve come to realise that the pain is actually spurring me on to enormous growth – just as you’ve said – I guess I don’t mind it so much. How can you be so amazing and insightful? It’s not just the “yes or no” answer that I usually seek but also a perfect description of everything that has come to pass. The growth. The sticking at it. And even the need to seek out the help of others. I don’t think I’ve ever been so open to that, and it’s reaped such wonderful rewards. My mum is back in my life. My friends are saying I seem so much more humble and whole than I ever have. They feel connected to me again. Say the spiritual arrogance people always told me about but I never really believed in has disappeared. I cry in front of anyone. I’ve made myself a child again in my mother’s eyes and it feels comforting. All these years I’ve been doing it alone – probably my whole damn life – and it feels pretty amazing to let go of that. I’ve made some good decisions but I’ve made some bad ones too. Maybe I could have avoided those if I’d just known I could get some outside help. Oh, woe for the death of traditional life! For families that sit down and talk things through instead of innocent alone children stumbling from one misguided choice to the next. But that’s the past, and the past has gone: the future can be different.

“Anything else? Any changing lines?”

“Yes. One. Six in the second place means: difficulties pile up. Suddenly, there is an unexpected turn of affairs. The maiden is chaste and does not pledge herself. But after ten years, she pledges herself.”

And could that do anything but give me hope with regard to Nicky and make me think that perhaps she would come back to me after all? After, perhaps, this next trip to Ireland, or some more time has passed, or even after she’s tried again with some other guy?

Certainly, I can see a reason to stay in Leeds. Just to be close to her. To not disappear. The endurance and duration of the previous reading. The maintaining contact. I shouldn’t have given up my flat. I didn’t know that this overwhelming pain would prove to be not only bearable but that it’s continuous and embracing would bring me to better and better places.

Curse the world and its four-week notice periods! And curse myself for being so tight as to not consider that I could just have let the whole flat thing ride and, if worst came to worst, just duck out when the time came without giving notice and in the process lose only three or four weeks rent. What comparison in price a couple of hundred quid against the very growth of my soul?

But I had to have it figured out there and then – I couldn’t bear the thought of spring arriving and then having to face another month or pain and waiting and nothingness – and I had to make that decision all on my own without wise counsel to guide me through or at least present other options. So lonely, this life. Not just for company but in this constant process of making decisions. But at least that’s changing…

I’ll rewind now to the Friday previous and to the day Nicky and I went over to Ossett to buy her van and pop in to see my mum’s husband. One thing he’d said was that mum had tried to call me way back in November (after I’d emailed her following the LSD-realisation that falling out with her was stupid) but that she hadn’t been able to get through. So later on when I was walking home from Nicky’s it occurred to me that maybe she didn’t have the right number and that if I called now I’d either get her husband or the answer machine and I could give it to them. It was a little after five and I figured mum was probably still on her way home from work. I guess I wasn’t quite ready to facing up to talking to her. Well, it has been five years since we’ve had a civil conversation – only one very non-civil interaction in all that time – and you’ve got to ease into these things. Except…

Mum picks up the phone. And I’m so shocked and surprised I just start gabbling on about how I thought she was still at work and why I was calling – to give her my number – and then thinking maybe she doesn’t know yet that I’ve already been at hers that day so gabbling and explaining about that too and –

Well, you know what? It’s actually a really good way to break the ice, all that gabbling and bumbling and explaining and just yabbering on. Five years without a decent word between us and then suddenly I’m just chatting my head off and laughing about stuff and she’s being all fine and pleasant back. No need to address our hostilities – we both know the score; both know the other wants to bury the hatchet – and so we just chat all normal and friendly, like, and pretty soon I’m talking about all my emotional issues and problems and even though I’m talking through Woodhouse along the ride right in public view I let the tears fall down my cheek and have no problem opening up to my mother in this way – no longer the smart-aleck child who wants to have it all together but the child pure and simple – and in return she’s giving me outpourings of motherly advice and maybe it’s not so tender and cooing as it would be in the movies – she’s a bit more direct and abrupt than that – but it sure does make a lot of sense.

I drink it up. I feel infinitely grateful. And buzzed up and happy too for our restored connection and the humility in my heart.

When I arrive home just at the end of our conversation I see my neighbour coming home too and then we chat also over the garden wall and in response to his asking me how I’m doing I open my heart a little too and say it’s been a really hard time and it’s all about Nicky, etc, etc, and I feel no shame in that either. I know there are tears in my eyes and my chin is quivering. But even though all I’d thought him to be was a football-loving guy who liked to go out for pints he’s suddenly full of consolatory wisdom and understanding too. Says things that amaze me. About his own experiences and about what I must be going through. It’s one of those moments where suddenly the whole world seems enlightened and wise and I’m actually the only one who doesn’t know this stuff.

I feel awesome for having opened myself up. Letting the aloofness and maybe even arrogance drop. Just being myself: a boy. All those years of thinking I was something special, and being told it, and maybe trying to live up to it. Lost in thought and delusions of grandeur. But now I’m back in my heart and back to connecting with others. I don’t want to be anything special – or, rather, I realise now that I’m not – I just want to be myself. I don’t care who sees me down and in tears. I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I feel ashamed for ever thinking I was anything more than I am. More defence mechanisms, perhaps. More separation between myself and the people of this world. But I love both them and myself too much for that…

I went in the house and after a while I thought maybe it was time to send an apologetic text to Laura. She’d asked me not to contact her since New Year’s and I’d accepted that, despite the times when I’d feel so horrendously bad about how I’d acted with her and long to let her know. A few times I’d come close but the coin had always said no. This time the coin said yes. I wrote:

“Dear Laura, I just want you to know how sorry I am. For everything. I thought I was doing the right thing but life has recently kicked my lousy arse and taught me otherwise. I’ve acted like a smug, egocentric, arrogant bastard. I was deluded. I thought I was above it all and I had no idea how wrong I was. But ever since Vipassana I’ve seen what terrible mistakes I’ve made and I’ve suffered the consequences, please believe me. You can’t imagine how bad I feel about the pain I’ve caused you. I know now what a jerk I’ve been. I was wrong. I am so, so sorry.”

I sent that and I figured that would be it; he last communication had been pretty explicit in its request that I leave her alone so she could get on with the business of meeting someone decent. But within a minute she had replied saying she was literally just that moment sitting down to write me a text and that she’d had a bit of a mini-breakdown of her own and could I go over and see her. I was a little bit ecstatic, at the restored connection, and quite a bit concerned too. Of course I could go over and see her. I know she’s had her breakdowns in the past and I felt horrified at the thought of another one. I would be there for her. We made plans to meet up Saturday evening after my refereeing.

And – oh, my mad head! What is it that drives you so? For pretty much immediately there are words in there about how actually she’s the one for me and suddenly the story of all our twists and turns is being remoulded so that it’s “meant to be” and “everything is happening in its perfect time and place” and “all makes sense in hindsight.” Fuck this brain! Whatever woman came into my life I could do the same thing with – always have done even. The times I’ve cried over missed opportunities saying, we should have done this, we should have done that. Even when the relationship has begun always looking back convinced that it was meant to go another way, that we were supposed to get together sooner – or perhaps, once it’s gone wrong, not at all.

What the hell is it with me that everything has to fit some sort of pre-destined divine plan? This belief in “the right track”? This compulsion to create stories around my entire existence so that it all means something and leads somewhere good? Everything happens for a reason, they say – and it’s my brain’s mad foible that it wants to know the reason immediately, and will re-write the history of my life over and over again until current circumstances emerge from the chaos ordered and sensical, as though that was the way it was meant to be all along. I can only shake my head – one minute Nicky, the next Laura – and even if Sophie or Grace were to walk around the corner, them too – the whole story instantly reconstructed to make them fit. No wonder I can’t choose a woman. I have no idea how to.

But that’s all a tangent. In the event I stayed with Laura Saturday and Sunday night and it was pretty mellow and chill and took my mind off Nicky to some extent – though I did eventually confess some of my heartache and cry in front of her, despite thinking perhaps better of it but ultimately deciding it was wiser to share. In any case, she was resolved again that we were to remain brother and sister and I was glad for that, knowing my weak male resistance to lust when pressed up naked against a female body, despite what my wisdom and rationale might have committed to several hours earlier, and it was fine. But more on that later…

For now, I return to my flat, on the Wednesday morning – the day before my planned move out, and the day the new tenant was due to move in – and to me sitting down amongst all my jumble and beginning to pack. I was feeling pretty cool about the whole thing – I had plenty of time to get it sorted, knew that it would happen – and though the plan was a bit up in the air I –

Well, the plan: there’s a joke if I ever heard one – for what was my plan? I had a notion to go down to LondonThursday afternoon to see Mother Meera and then go over to stay with my friends in Kent. But what about all my stuff? You know, just typing it now I realise that I had no plan at all: I didn’t have a fricking clue! I just went to the toilet and all the time I was repeating, “what was I going to do? what was I going to do?” and I can’t believe I didn’t have an answer. I must have had something in my brain – but whatever it was, beyond putting my things in Nicky’s van and jettisoning most of it and going somewhere else…well, it’s gone now. But in the event…

I was packing my stuff and within a couple of minutes I had broken down in tears. Not an unusual occurrence for me of late but this was something different. Usually it’s heartbreak or regret or thoughts of Nicky or some other emotion – but this was like a message from my very soul, and the message was: “This is really fucking wrong.” God, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt something like that before – maybe once in Canada, when I had to leave Sophie to return to England – but it was undeniable. It was like something was wrong with the whole way the universe was turning. I mean, I often think I’m going wrong but that usually turns out okay and it’s not a major feeling. This was like I wanted to be physically sick. That if I didn’t act on it my whole life would be fucked. It kind of came out of nowhere really. It floored me with its power. I roared and cried and quit my packing and looked about my flat feeling so absolutely desperate and helpless and lost. I wallowed in that for a few minutes knowing that I was fucked beyond all notions of fuckedness and then I suppose I did what any normal man would do and got my ass into action.

How on Earth was I going to fix this? I needed to do something and I needed to do something fast. I texted Nicky and my mum and told them that I was packing and crying and knew it was all wrong to be leaving. I texted my landlord and asked him for the new tenant’s number and thought, well fuck it, maybe I’ll just offer them two hundred or even five hundred quid not to move in. I thought about friends I could stay with, places I could stash my stuff. But all that was too complex what with upcoming refereeing gigs and the need to access and repeatedly wash my kit. Nicky texted back and felt for me. My mum texted back and suggested an inexpensive hotel but then later that it was full. And I got on the phone and called this property guardian company that I knew had a few places in Leeds. There was one in Harehills that they could let me view on Monday. Too late, I said, I need to move like tomorrow. They called me back, said how about next Wednesday? I said that’s even further in the future, I’m leaving my flat tomorrow and I’ve suddenly realised I have to stay in Leeds. They called me back and arranged a viewing for the following day and then I was like, what are the chances of moving in that day too? They went through what I’d need to do – send in bank statements, work references, photo ID and proof of address – and I got it on, called people up, headed on over to uni and did some scanning and emailing and within an hour or so I’d got the whole kit and caboodle. Then I left there and thought, hell, what need for a viewing? And what if someone else gets in there before me and takes the room before I have a chance? And so I called them up again and said, hey, let’s just do it, I’ll pay the deposit now and then instead of it being a viewing it’ll be a collection of keys and I can move right in. And they were down with that and it was done.

10am: homeless and lost and confused and utterly, utterly fucked. 12pm: having paid a deposit on a place and moving in the next day.

Christ, I felt relieved. And also somewhat okay at my foolish last-minuteness once again. Although when I did move in I then started to wonder whether I’d done the right thing, perhaps hadn’t done it out of panic. The new tenant for my flat got back to me literally five minutes after I’d sent in the deposit. Both Nicky and my mum offered me a place to stay the Thursday night and another friend perhaps longer term. And the problem of my stuff was fixed because I could have taken it down my dad’s shop on the Friday – Nicky being off work – when originally it was going to be the Thursday when his opening hours and her free time non-coincided.

Well, sure, I overthink these things. And part of it was not liking the place so much (although now I’m in it it’s not so bad). And…

Yeah, ultimately, it’s overthinking. Just stuff like knowing how I’d mainly stayed in Leeds ‘cos I had like five refereeing fixtures coming up that I thought I needed to adhere to and then they all got cancelled for the snow. But no doubt if things take another turn I’ll be re-writing that whole story once again anyways. I guess it doesn’t really matter too much where I lay my head as long as I’m in the right town. I should have stayed in my flat and I loved my flat but now that’s gone and I’m here in a house in a new part of town and ultimately I guess it’s not that much different because I still sleep and type and it’s quiet and costs about the same (actually, a little bit less) and all the other things like my football and my squash and my friends are just as near and, in any case, if it’s wrong and I shouldn’t have committed to it and blah blah blah I can just go and lose a bit of money and that’s not the worst thing in the world now is it?

I overthink. I just get sad when I make wrong decisions. I’m so tired of making wrong decisions and, perhaps even worse, I’m not convinced I’ll make right decisions in the future. I keep leading myself into the wrong place and then I decide something lame to get myself out of that place. My life has been such a complex and tangled web – all the places I’ve lived and all the people I’ve known and how far and wide they and therefore my mind are scattered. Too many options and too many women. I feel sometimes right at the very end of my tether, at breaking point. I say I need a job and then I go online and am suddenly bombarded with ten thousand possible careers and it’s all too much for me. How I wish for a bit of simplicity. Would I not have become the same person inside – which is all that really matters – if I’d just stayed where I was all along?

So Thursday morning Nicky reappears with her van – me looking idiotically out the window awaiting her arrival like a half-brained puppy dog – and then I get down to packing and cleaning and loading and sorting and, wow, it’s such a big and tiresome operation. I’m thinking an hour or two and it’s more like six, non-stop, from nine a.m. to nearly three. It’s a little bit sad – I nearly cry when I glance over at the shelves and remember Nicky painting them so smilingly when we first moved in – but it’s also somewhat embarrassing when I think how ramshackle that flat is, with its damp in the corners and bits of walls crumbling here and there, the lame shower and the cheap carpet. Also embarrassing how messy I’ve let it become with all the dust and ‘bits’ and crud on the toilet and the sink. I don’t think I’ve done a drop of housework since I moved back in in August. And there I was all that time saying I couldn’t think of anything to do. It’s doubly embarrassing then to think of all the times Nicky was there and how she never even seemed to notice ‘cos I guess she liked me so much. But what was she doing in that little flat with me? And why did she keep coming back? I feel ashamed them. Ashamed again for not valuing her and what we had more. And ashamed for not being a better man. It’s about then, perhaps, that the idea strikes me that she’s actually too awesome for me and that she’s doing the right thing moving on. She fell in love with an idea of me – the me from my book and my stories and my youth – and what she got was something far, far removed. And she does so much, and is so cool and successful and all this time I thought we were on a par – and she, she confesses, felt somewhat in awe of me, for some weird reason (my forcefulness and certainty, perhaps?) – and yet the reality is maybe that she’s awesome and I’m not. That I should have been the one learning from her, and embracing her life, and not the other way around. I had my chance and I blew it. She’s better off without me.

Funny the thoughts you can get by looking at a shelf…

I pack, I clean, I hoover. I scrub the toilet and the sink and marvel at how white they look. Should have done that before. Should have mopped floors. Should have done regular housework. Maybe good to get out of this flat and snap out of my rut. What the hell have I become? So fuckin’ fatuous and lazy. Not the man a woman would want to be with anyway…

I’m viewing the new place at three thirty. I’m playing squash after that. And then I’ve to be on a train to Bradfordstraight from there to run the line on a game. Nicky’s offered me to stay at hers and cook some dinner. I’ve got it in my head that we should just go out and blow fifty quid on sushi – I want to say thank you for her help in moving and everything else besides – and maybe drink a bottle of wine and just go crazy and let go of everything (I don’t drink) but I won’t be back in Leeds till ten. It’s a mad fuckin’ day, to do all that and move in such confusion, but I guess it all works out.

I’m pretty chill at Nicky’s that night. I guess I’m done with all the emotional stuff and I’ve a new plan as far as that’s concerned. Tuesday my mum had texted me and suggested a meeting and we chatted for like four hours over tea and wandering around in Leeds and again I was just in that place of receiving and being open to advice and she said a lot of really cool things. The main one being that I really need to break my addiction to Nicky and probably do that through putting a bit of space between us and then seeing how I feel once my head comes out the other side. I’m not in a good place. I’m lovesick and obsessing over her and it’s doing neither of us any good. I mean, Nicky stays with it throughout and I’m grateful for that – but it’s still me feeding the donkey. And what it does to my own nervous system is probably even worse.

So that was Tuesday and, naturally, we sleep together on Wednesday and then a platonic night together on Thursday – these things aren’t easy to break, even when you know what you’re supposed to do – and the plan for Friday is for her to drive me over to my new place early on before she has to go off and do her busy-stuff and I guess that’ll be that. In fact, just after we wake up I put it to her. It must be the right time because I don’t feel the struggle or the sadness that I did before. I feel, I guess, calm and collected and say it’s what I need to do and, not that I won’t be there for her if she needs me, but that we need to stop all contact for a while. And then I reintroduce the idea of the sushi and say, are you doing anything tonight? Want to go out in style? And she’s free and up for it and we plan one last date.

She drives me over to mine. I move my stuff in. We hold each other for a long time and look again intently into one another’s eyes and then she’s gone, to mushroom co-op planning and other things besides. And I get down to the task and making this bare room my home and, actually, it ain’t so bad once I’ve got my stuff in it and arranged. I’m so frazzled and dehydrated and tired and hungry and confused about everything – but at least there’s a little bit of hope and, right or wrong, short-term or long, I guess it’s good to have something of a base.

I’ve no food in the house, though. I need to go out. The local area is full of little ethnic shops and it won’t be a problem. But as I exit my door I suddenly get the idea to go to my dad’s shop and just have a break and the coin concurs. I can eat on the way. And so off I go walking a whole new way into town and feel some habits break. No more uni to pass by and disappear into and spend too many hours online. No more Morrison’s and Home Bargains. Now it’s the desultory busy traffic road through Sheepscar. Oh well. Uni’s a habit I don’t mind breaking. And I actually prefer the Asian street action to studentville. Could be something good in this after all. And also…

Because of the way I’ve walked into town I’ve gone past my old school friend Steve’s workplace, at the Job Centre at the bottom of Eastgate. I’d seen him a few week’s back and given him my number but not heard anything from him (he’s kind of lame in that regard) and so I think I’ll pop in and get his. I pop in. He comes to give me a big hug – how cool to do that in front of everyone when you’re like a manager and in the middle of your working day – and asks me how I am. Well, thing is – surprise, surprise – I’m feeling emotional and fraught and the tears are pretty much right there anyway – and for once I don’t pretend otherwise and just tell the truth and he gets all concerned and whisks me straight into a private interview room and sits me down and asks what’s going on and I tell him. It’s a beautiful moment with this grand old friend. I cry unashamed and with head bowed confess I feel like I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with my life. He reaches out and holds my hand over the desk. He gives me a big hug. He says things that are awesome and wonderful and wise. Talks about how, despite it all, he thinks I look better than I have in years (my energy, he means). Touches on issues of humility and arrogance and shares his own stories and says how strongly he feels this will all prove to be a really good thing for me. His words are healing. And his presence, his concern and love. Once again, I feel so grateful for having opened myself up rather than doing the usual English thing and pretending that everything was okay. I know it will be, one day, but this day it’s not. No more being above it all. No more denying my humanity. People like you better when you’re real, and they amaze you in return. By a certain age everybody’s lived stuff like this. I guess I just thought I was different from your average Yorkshireman ‘cos I’d bummed around America and met saints. But I ain’t. I don’t think I even know the depth of how much all that stuff screwed me up.

Later on he texts me and says: “I love you Rory Miller. Please use this to soothe whenever necessary.” And a few hours after that: “It’s amazing that I met you in 1988 yet today I felt like I connected with you like I hadn’t for the longest time. I think you are at the beginning of what will be a great epoch.”

People amaze me. I’m so lucky to have these friends, even though I may go years without seeing them. I thought I was so alone and had no one to turn to. But now that I’ve turned and humbled myself and opened up to others, though a few haven’t been quite so successful, I’ve seen myself proved so gloriously wrong. All this heartache has been tough, but look at what it’s given me. I’ve got my mum back, my old best friend. My biodad called me up the other day totally out of the blue after maybe three years absence. Even my relationship with my dad, while not exactly intimate, is far better than it’s ever been. Something big is going down. And I’m starting to feel that, when the dust settles, my great friend Steve may be right.

I left him feeling better. I saw my dad for a while and he was all high on some recent youtube fame that had come his way – seventeen thousand hits in two weeks on a video some metal guitarist had posted of the two of them jamming in his shop. Then I went ‘home’ and had a nap and when I woke up later it was time to go on my date with Nicky. She picked me up in her van. I guess on the way we talked about her respective days and I was grateful to be able to have happy things to talk about. She parked right by the big wheel that currently graces the market car park in the centre of Leeds and I said we should go on it. She said one of her housemates said he’d heard it was lame, that all you saw was the multi-storey car park but I said he’s always seeing the negative in things but, anyways, we need to eat sushi. We went and ordered a pretty massive amount – it was about thirty-five quid, with no drinks or dessert – and chatted wonderfully and intimately and smiled and had loads of fun and then when we left I said, come one, let’s go on the wheel, why the hell not? and we were just in time for the last turn. It’s the kind of thing I would never do before, always such of a “No Man” and being so tight with money. It was six quid each but I didn’t really think about it, just did it. I wanted to show her that I could be better, that my determination to change was real. It was fun. I’ve only been on one big wheel before – that was in Leeds, when I was about nineteen – and it scared the shit out of me. This one was frickin’ terrifying too. It was so ridiculously high and all I could think about was the gondola coming off and crashing to the ground – and it was in a blizzard and the wind howled through the gaps and we shivered and held one another close – but the terror was fun and the view was awesome and by the second time around I was a bit more chill, her sitting on me knee and just having a really lovely time. And then we went ten-pin bowling – I paid – and though she got cross ‘cos I was bowling awesome and she couldn’t get a strike, when she finally got one in the third game – we’d only paid for two but a glitch in the system must’ve been kind to us – and then another after that (and, I must confess, I purposefully flunked my last two balls so that she would win) we left there with more smiles on our faces. An awesome date. How our relationship should have always been. Me, I guess, being something of a new and changed person and, actually, it didn’t even feel like effort.

At some point not too long before we broke up I felt like I just wasn’t any good at this relationship malarkey. Funnily enough, now that I’ve lost her and I guess we’re pretty much at the end of any hope for the future I feel more confident in my abilities than ever. These last few months have taught me so much. I guess I’ve been the dark and now seen the light. Done the wrong enough to know what’s right. It’s a shame it won’t be with her, given how close and loving we’ve become, and what an awesome person she is, but I guess that’s just the way it’s meant to be. Maybe she was never the one – maybe, as with Eve, who reflected my lost delusional New Age self to me and made me realise that I didn’t want that, Nicky’s reflecting something of a non-committal, restless, flighty travelling self. She’s always dreaming of getting away and always had one foot out the door and, though I did too, I think I’ve changed in that regard. But just because I’ve changed it doesn’t necessarily follow that she has. She may well have done, or she may change at some point in the future, or she may never. As far as I can see Eve is still lost in that New Age world of delusions and weirdness. I expect all these mirrors to move with me but maybe they don’t. It’s a phenomenon so worth factoring in when trying to understand the complexities of human romantic relationships. We attract what we are. We love and hate that part of ourselves that we see in another. In fact, the other, and all others, are our inner-selves made manifest externally. It could work no other way. I see myself in her and I decide I want [to be] something different. When the other decides the same thing that’s mutual growth. When not, that’s just your own lesson to take with you, painful though the attachment and unfulfilled dreams make it. I don’t know which way she’s going to go. Probably, I feel, towards adventure and newness and something not quite resembling those “adult responsibilities” that I feel myself so unnervingly drawn to.

We went back to mine after. She lent me a futon frame and helped me carry it up to my room. We lay on my bed and talked a little, our heads bowed into one another’s, those two pairs of eyes always but inches apart, as they have been for so many hours over recent weeks. It felt so much like that end scene from the movie ‘Beginners’, and I said as much. But apart from that my talking was done, except to tell her that I still felt the same way about wanting to be with her. She opened up to me a little and said she hoped I didn’t think she was toying with me – I had to confess that I wasn’t sure, though I believed and trusted in her goodness – and that she was scared and she wasn’t sure what she was scared of.

“I know,” I said, “you’re scared that I’ll go back to being how I was. And you’re scared of love. And commitment.”

Why shouldn’t she be? Even though she wanted to be with me and thought she’d have my babies did she really contemplate what love and commitment meant? The work, the effort. The sheer magnitude of the whole thing. Who wouldn’t be? I was, and even though I feel ready for it and want it, I still am. But I’ve thought it through and, though it’s scary, I’ve come to believe that the alternative is even worse. A life that ends in loneliness and fear. A life that goes nowhere except around and round, always peering over the cliff edge but being too afraid to jump. A life that could be filled with adventures and travel and ever-new people – but what then? To end up like one of those super-tanned zombies I saw in the Palenque hostels who just filled me with the horror and made me want to scream, “go home! get wed!” (the world but a mirror)?

I think what she’ll do is go away and maybe get with someone or maybe it’ll take her a few years to reach that stage. Maybe it’s all stupid me anyways, trying to figure all this stuff out rather than just doing what everyone else does and letting it happen naturally. Probably if I wasn’t so analytical we could have muddled along and then maybe love and commitment would have happened of its own accord. But the fact is, I am. And I wasn’t ready for it. And I’m still not – but what I am is more ready than ever.

We said our goodbyes. We know we’ll see each other again soon – I mean, I’m riding her bike and sleeping on her futon frame (my mattress) and she’s got my guitar and lives like five minutes away – but for now it’s zero contact and seeing where things are out the other side. It’s difficult, at first – but then I’ve broken addictions to chocolate and tea and booze and other things besides and I know how it goes: you suffer for three days and have headaches and urges and then you feel okay. As I type this it’s been 48-hours. She texted me Saturday morning to tell me a lot of trains weren’t running and then emailed me later with some details about a dance place she goes to but I haven’t replied. I’m not totally playing hard to get, I just know it’s what I have to do. This morning I felt like contacting her for the first time but that was something different. All being well I’ll reach that 72-hour mark…

And now I have to finish it off. There’s still more to this story and I know I won’t be able to leave this computer until I’ve typed it up complete. I wish I knew why I felt so compelled to type but all I know is I do. I wish I knew whether it was good for me, or whether I was being stupid. I wish I knew whether it served any greater purpose in the world and in the universe as a whole, whether the angels still consider it my “service to the Divine” – and if so, why I feel so uneasy about continuing to share things online and flip-flop back and forth between publishing and hiding and deleting it. And why no one ever feeds back. And to where it will all lead…

Probably what I need to do is pseudonymise my whole writing career. Then I could be free. But I mustn’t ever let this typing come between me and my personal relationships ever again…

So where was I? (A pit stop for reheated dhal and teapot-refill later) Oh yeah: the Friday night date and our saying goodbye and then sleeping alone in my new room for the first time and it was actually quite chill. Saturday Harry’s arranged us an early morning game of squash – 9.30 start – and I bike over there through maybe four inches of snow and after that we sauna and eat crisp sandwiches and chat till maybe half one. Good conversation. Even healing our own relationship and growing him in honesty a bit too. And then I decide to have some internet time, despite probably being served having a nap, and it’s getting on for four when I finally leave campus. There’s nothing on line, of course – but it always takes me at least an hour to realise that. Then it’s Home Bargains and my new home – still less than ten-minutes from the sports centre – and I think, what shall I do? and realise that what I’d really like to do is something non-restless and maybe what I might have done a long time ago, which is lie quietly on my bed with my headphones on and listen to a Gong album from start to finish and maybe doze off. I feel like I haven’t sat down in weeks, what with all the Nicky stuff and the flat and that. Just to turn off my brain. I’d love a vacation but I’m not sure that would do anything for my bottomless thinking…

I do doze off. And in the middle of that and having rewound the Gong that girl I went on the date with calls and gives me some job tips about finding work in sport. She’s back in Leedsfor the weekend and sounds a bit lonesome and forlorn. Me being me I think I’ll suggest going over to where she is and hanging out – but me being me I don’t dare suggest such a thing over the phone. Still: me being the new me I do so in a text not long after we’ve finished talking – no more missed opportunities – and, whaddya know? She doesn’t respond at all. But: nay bother, at least I did the thing I wanted to do. And not that I was after any ‘funny stuff’ (as I explained in a later also-ignored text), just figured the company would be nice (for both of us) and might help take my mind of Nicky. But getting physical with a new girl obviously not a good idea given everything I’ve previously said.

Later on I went wondering my new area looking for a box of matches to light the stove and dug its streets. I liked the Asian shops and that there was a bit of community – you know, real people as opposed to students. And I liked the change of scenery: breaking old habits and all that. I went into a mosque and sat in a dark corner and prayed, I guess, and even cried. My prayer was mostly telling my heart and then saying over and over, “help me God”; something like that.

Reminds me of a moment when I was in utter emotional turmoil one day last week and saying all the things I wanted and hating the pain I was going through. I wanted it so badly to be over. But I felt a voice inside assure me that this pain I was going through was actually the way to the things I desired. There was consolation in that.

When you say you want a thing God doesn’t necessarily send you the thing itself, but rather puts you on the path to the thing, and that may be a long and hard journey taking many years and involving much pain. Maybe that’s all everything is. Maybe even these desires for a wife and a family are but a means to a greater end.

Not that that means that I shouldn’t do them.

I came home and made dhal. I was mellow. I ate my dhal and went to bed nice and early. I didn’t watch a movie or Shooting Stars or fill my brain with anymore sights and sounds, I instead read some Conversations With God and marvelled again at how ever-deepening its wisdom becomes the more I learn about life. Everything I’m going through is written therein – but even though I’ve read the whole thing many times it is only in the living of it that I truly come to understand and make real in my existence. Which, interestingly enough, is a thing the book repeatedly says also.

Truly, as far as I’m concerned, it’s The Bible.

Sunday Harry and I played 9.30 squash again and then I had plans to go over to Dewsbury and call in and see Steve and his infant son (for the first time) before heading over to my mum’s to “get nagged by her husband.” She said he’d been looking forward to it and it was a shame I wasn’t going to be stopping over. But I figured a good nagging might be in order and so went for it anyway. I need to have people’s input into my life. I’ve lived so long without that. I maybe wouldn’t have made half the mistakes I’ve made if I’d had a more involved family and loved ones, and hadn’t been so entirely self-reliant all these years. Nicky was very self-reliant too and, in the mirror of her, I saw so clearly how it just doesn’t work. Her own parents’ marriage was saved by the intervention of her mum’s folks. I wish someone had stepped in and attempted to save my relationships instead of having to do it all on my own.

Anyways, in the event the trains to Dewsbury were cancelled and I took one over to Wakefield– mum lives pretty much equidistant – meaning that I would have to postpone seeing Steve till another time. On the other hand, it meant that I could see Laura and arranged to do so after mum’s. And off I went to get nagged, and the nagging, it was glorious.

My mum’s husband is a very good man. We’ve never really talked before. But he cares a lot and he’s got wisdom and, again, through my opening up in my time of need I got to see so much more of another person. A lot of it was about jobs: he feels a job would be good for me and I don’t disagree. Structure and income and all that jazz. But what job? Well, I guess time will tell on that one – because every time I think about it and go online I instantly become sick at the knowledge of all the options that are out there – and at the notion of having to spend all those hundreds of hours applying for them, typing the same things over and over and over – and run as fast as I can in the opposite direction. Also, I believe anyway that the best things come in a more old school way, through word of mouth and feeling. Plus, I’m not sure I need or want anything right now – the only thing that’s driving it is my fear and panic at what the hell I’m doing with my life but that seems to be settling. Of course, what they always say is, the thing with you is you’ve never found the thing that you want to do – and what I always know in that regard is that I have – that I want to write – but just that I’ve never knuckled down or found a way to make it pay. No one would question me if blogging was a paid job – in fact, I’d probably be receiving high praise for all these tens of thousands of words I churn out, be regarded as someone who was “really good at their job.” But in our society blogging your life and heart pays nada while kicking a ball into a net or selling unnecessary Chinese fripperies pays millions. Tant pis.

Also, we talked about relationships. Phil’s very discrete and doesn’t say things that don’t need saying – so when I said, you always liked Sophie, didn’t you? all he would say is, well, probably best not to go there. But, me being me, I couldn’t help but go there and then suddenly I was back to feeling miserable OVER HER and thinking about how that all went wrong. If I’d known what was going on, he said, referring to the time of our breakup, I’d have had you both over here and given you a talking to. But he did know, I thought – or at least my mum did. But my mum’s more standoffish, wouldn’t have wanted to get involved. “As long as you’re happy,” is all she’d ever say, “I don’t care what you do.” My theory on that is that it’s all a reaction to previous modes of parenting where people got involved too much – and then the sixties happened and the hippies said, oh, just let the kids run around naked and find their own way. It’s only in recent years that I’ve found myself bemoaning this and wishing that I’d had more parental guidance – but then would I have listened to it? Probably not. In any case, I definitely want to make sure I have more involvement in my own kids’ lives. Nicky’s grandparents saved her own parents’ marriage. And maybe she has a decent career because her parents are involved whereas I was just left to drift free. My mum, in her defence, says she told me that I had to finish my A-Levels and then could do what I wanted – but even that she didn’t enforce. She did what she did and she sees it her way and feel it’s right and it is right. But it’s not what I would want for myself, could I turn back the clock, nor what I want to give, which is the only thing I have control over. That, and making sure I get some good advice now and use the input of the good people around me, who, it turns out, are far more numerous than I’d previously imagined.

Anyway, I was depressed over Sophie for a bit of that – Phil “thought the world of her” and even suggested getting back in touch (“no chance – she’s told me ‘no contact’ and thinks I’m a nutter”) – but right now I don’t feel so bad. Maybe she was the one and maybe she wasn’t. She certainly wasn’t as nice as other people thought. Very standoffish – like me. And perhaps a little bit aloof and emotionally cold – like me. But!

No, I won’t go there; instead, I’ll get back to reality, and to leaving mum’s and biking over to Laura’s and then seeing her and feeling the quality of her hug and how comfortable I am with her and – is she my sister or something more? –she tells me about the party she was at the other day and says how this guy there– a kind of weird old hippy who calls himself a mystic but is a bit dodgy with women – told her, “you’re beautiful inside and out” – well, if you knew me and you knew everything about me you’d know that it chilled me to the bone.

“Beautiful inside and out”…the EXACT same words Momma had used when telling me “your soulmate is coming” all the way back in 2001. Right about the time I met Laura. And though I never said it to her back then, walking around Asda one time she’d said she felt like I was her soulmate. And other things besides…

“This one will be forever,” Momma had said. And “forever” is the exact same word I’d used when telling Laura why I’d never been able to be with her. “I couldn’t be with you,” I’d said, “because I knew it would be forever and I couldn’t handle that. I knew if we got together we’d stay together and you’d never want to get rid of me.”

Twelve years ago! And even five years ago, after I’d broken up with Sophie, I was back in her arms and making love and then realising that I felt like I wanted to marry her – and so ran away in the opposite direction and pushed her out once more.

All this was kind of dawning on me and it terrified me. Thinking about how she’s the only woman I’ve ever really felt comfortable with. Thinking about the lovemaking we’ve shared, which has always been awesome and easy and fun. Pretty much every other woman I’ve had performance issues but very rarely did with her. And thinking about when she was in my flat last year and we wondered why we were always drawn together and I said, one day we’ll figure it out and instantly felt this rush of emotion that made me think about getting her pregnant and giving her a baby.

But then haven’t I said all these things before? About how Sophie was the only woman I’ve ever been with that I wanted to marry, could imagine being pregnant with my child, and wanted to grow old with? That provider instinct that I felt arise so powerfully and spontaneously inside me when we were first together, knowing that I would do whatever it took to take care of her, and never felt again with another.

Was it a feeling so person-specific or was it the unlocking of something within me forever, to be applied to whoever it was that finally bore my child? The liberation of a blockage that couldn’t be felt again because it was an opening that, having taken place, was once and for all?

And what of all this stuff over Nicky? The enormity of the feeling. The knowing what a great and compatible person she is – or could be. Do I really want her? For, for sure, there were times when I really, really wanted others too. Perlilly, for example, who I never feel regret over because I know in my heart that she is a great person but that we were totally wrong for each other in any long-term kind of way. Nicky seems right, but maybe she’s not. Sophie felt like the one – and the course of my life seemed to back that up, but maybe it was about something completely different. And all throughout these years Laura has been there, in and out of my life, my friend and intermittent lover and confidante and sometimes hater and, Christ, she even bought a house one time in the village where I grew up and eventually returned to, thinking that was where she might raise children. And now here we are again, both alone and both wanting someone and both so utterly comfortable with one another…

She was in a good place, her mini-breakdown over, and giving me advice about my life. But I’d had enough of that for the time-being and instead suggested we watch some telly and we settled down on the couch to watch Miss Congeniality. I fell asleep nuzzled up behind her. Time with her is the only time I’ve felt rested the last few months. She wanted me to stay but I said I’d go home. I had a return train ticket – but when I realised part of my wanting to go home was me being tight I tossed a coin to be sure and the coin said, “home.” Probably wise. I was confused. We would have shared a bed. Not good as far as Nicky is concerned. Nor, probably, my own head or Laura herself, being adamant – well, a little bit adamant; hopefully adamant – that all we are is siblings and friends. Earlier she’d persuaded me to run around the garden naked with her in the snow and though I’d wanted to say “no”, not thinking for one moment that it could be fun, I’d gone with the “yes” and, whaddya know, it was.

But I got scared. In God’s honest truth, I got terrified. The last train from lonely old late night Outwood was late and I stood alone on the platform staring forlornly at the tracks wondering if maybe I’d be better off just climbing down and lying on them and letting the train slice off my head. I saw the full extent of my fear. It seemed to me like committing to her would be the end of my life. No more adventures or foolhardery or other women or mystery and romance. Truly, she would be forever, and even though this is what I keep saying I want and need and that the other road is a lonely stupid road I don’t want to walk down, a big part of me does. Fuck, that was an incredibly woeful half-hour I spent on that platform. I can’t even comprehend it now. But at the time it was almost unbearable. The weight of everything. The feeling of giving in to the one who was probably the one all along instead of chasing after others who don’t really want me.

But she’s not pretty enough: that was always one thing that stopped me.

And then that song I heard after first meeting Grace, which I felt at least temporarily cured me of her – “If you want to be happy for the rest of your life/never make a pretty woman your wife” – and how I’d laughed and took it as a sign and then thought of it often when I thought of Laura and how none of that stuff really matters anyway, it’s the love that counts.

Momma’s words, after my breakup with Eve: “She’s not the one. Another will be coming, beautiful inside and out, your soulmate. And this one will be forever.”

Twelve years ago. So much wasted time! Egad, we were so young back then – twenty-five and twenty-six and so much has happened in the years since…

But my dreams and subsequent relationship with Sophie – what was that? Nothing but preparation for this moment? Or –

That I Ching I did sitting in the library in Grimethorpe with Laura when I first went gallivanting to Canada after Sophie, propelled by signs and synchronicities. “You can’t escape your destiny,” it had said – and I’d taken it as a sign to go.

And back on the station at Outwood, thinking of all the things I haven’t done. Of Grace and crazy dreams to track her down in America. Or Julia, and how we’ve never had sex. Of the day last year when we were in her bed and we kissed and I fingered her to orgasm and then she said you should stay and make love with me but I said I had to get back to Yorkshire to referee 5-a-side and left her and didn’t make it for the 5-a-side anyway. Little stupid things in the grand big thing of actually knuckling down to commit to someone and make this go of it that I keep saying I want to make. All these women and all these confusions and just as I think I’ve made my mind up about Nicky back pops Laura into the picture and I’m left shaking my head once again. The signs point her way – but what of the signs that I talked about last week, that I said superseded anything from the outside? Those of my heart and my feelings of wanting. But what is wanting anyway? Is that where love and meaningful relationships are? Or is it in the simple comfort of being able to fall asleep with someone and not feel frantic? I don’t know what love is. Maybe that’s what love is and I just don’t recognise it.

These thoughts and feelings terrify me. I don’t know what to do about it. I feel like running in the opposite direction but I’ve a pretty good idea where that will lead. I wonder if maybe I should just do those things anyway – break into Americaand search for Grace; sleep with Julia; have one last night with Nicky – and then get them out of my system. But will my system ever be clear. And what of poor Laura, moving ever nearer to the age where pregnancy is far from a given? The clocks they are a-ticking. I feel the impendence of everything, in myself and in my life. Phil would say find some work and stick at it and stop with all the gadding. I know I need to knuckle down and I’m genuinely terrified that I might not have the ability to do it and what the hell will happen to me if that’s the case? And yet, even less than twentyfour hours later, I feel calmer and more optimistic about the whole thing. The awareness of problems and blockages and desires and the bringing them out into the open through words and sharing is sometimes all that is required to set the wheels of change in motion. And maybe the turning of those wheels in inexorable.

What drives the machine? Some outside force? God in His heaven? Or me with my heart and my new and ever-changing ideas about my life and what I want to do with it?

I’m starting to think the latter.

And, in any case, I don’t right now feel those things that made me want to jump under a train last night in Outwood. Maybe because I’m twelve miles from Laura and have no immediate plans to see her. Maybe because I’ve given six hours and eleven thousand words to typing out the last week of my life and put the seal on this current round of emotional turmoil and growth and realisations. I know as soon as I close this computer down I’ll be a new man and the wheels will turn again. God, it’s a weird old show, this one that I’m watching! There ain’t nothing like it even on all those channels we’ve got. And here I sit with all these things happening and yet just a guy in his dressing gown in a room in an empty vicarage in Leeds. It’s weird how the world turns so complex and busy outside my window yet how much more full of life does the world in my heart appear. What a period! What upheaval and change! And all thanks to pain and misery and romantic misfortune: man, I’ve got to be grateful for that. And for Nicky…

Where is she now, and what does she do? What wheels turn in her own head and life as she mulls over her options and me? Thinking, no doubt, about how much I’ve changed and all we’ve shared – and the weirdness of the timing that it should all come just when she’s made her plans to leave Leeds and start something new in Ireland, with perhaps a new man too. I know they’re having a little something – just texts and Skype for now – but off she goes over there again next week, and I know it’s probably a little something more. She’s flying, despite having made a no fly vow well over a year ago. She says it’s to see her friend, to find a place to park her van, but I know better than that. She managed a good few years without seeing her friend to not need to do it twice in six weeks. And to fly? Probably the dude’s paying for the ticket, wants her over there, and why not? Kind of thing I would do if I was in love with someone hot and awesome and desiring their body. I don’t feel too bad about letting her go – but I do worry that I won’t be able to feel the same intensity of feeling and wanting to make sure I do everything right with, say, Laura, as I currently do with her. We’ve shared so much and grown so close. I really felt that we could take that forward into our relationship and build on it, now that we actually know one another. But what can I do? She has to go and probably she’ll decide to make something happen with the guy. It’s perhaps reminiscent of the two of us when we were beginning: communication by email and falling for an idea of one another without really knowing the person. Is this a pattern of hers? Is this something she may do again and again? The Bee’s Wing and the I Ching’s “ten years”? Either way, whatever she decides, it’ll mean something for me. Probably, right now, I’m more terrified that she’ll say she wants to be with me, for I’m far from a hundred percent sure, and scared of what that might mean. And yet, two days ago, when my neighbour said, “let her go to Ireland, she’ll want you to be there with her after a while” I was all for it and shaping my future life around her. Shaping my life around a woman: something I said not too long ago I would no longer do. But love the most important thing. Except what of my own needs for some sort of stability and career and future? How to train in any field when floating after a wandering spirit who wants to live in vans and yurts and even benders? Sometimes I feel she’s so impractical, much as I admire her free-spirited ways. She buys a van and with insurance and tax that’s nearly two and a half grand gone in a flash, plus the price of the diesel to feed it, and feels only happy. She wants to live in a bender – as far as I can tell, a glorified tent – and licks her lips with anticipation. All I see is cold and rainy nights dreaming of a warm bathtub and the creature comforts a modern life affords. I did my year in a caravan and I liked it but I’m not so sure I’d want to do it again. Except…staying in that bell tent at the glamping place near York – with warm showers close by, mind, and a cooking stove – well, yes, that was very heaven. And the joys of the countryside and nature. And the prison-like feel of these modern houses and cities of ours. And giving in to running around naked in the snow last night and, yes, really rather enjoying it after all. Well, who knows? Are these women impractical or am I just a grumpy old man who needs a kick up the bum to snap out of this rut and go reclaim my joy? We danced for an hour in my flat and the memory is awesome. We worked up a sweat and I was horny as a billy goat. I would miss that. I can’t see myself doing it with Laura – but then maybe that’s just my limitation. And spending money on sushi and bowling and a big wheel – all the while I buy cheap crisps and mostly get everything on reduced and deny myself avocados. But what will I remember at the end of my life? That twelve quid I hoarded and spent on discounted butter or the time we giggled terrified on a big wheel in a blizzard looking down upon the beautiful rooftops of Leedsmarket with a wonderful woman in my arms? Christ, I’ve been such a loser!

Over at my mum’s she was baking bread and the smell was good. The bread was good too. Nicky liked to bake bread but I always pooh-poohed it because I figured it was just much easier and probably cheaper to buy even a luxury loaf like Burgen’s from the super and so what was the point? Just as I pooh-poohed her vegetable growing which, okay, didn’t exactly yield much but was fun and satisfying in the doing of it. All the fuckin’ ways I went wrong. And why? What was the root of my resistance? Was it resistance to her? Did I not really like her? Or would I have been like that with anybody? What was I punishing her over? The aforementioned trauma? Or was I just dragging my heels in rebellion at her wanting to be with me and my going along with it? Not that I didn’t want to be with her – or, at least, not that I didn’t want to be with my idea of her, and, of course, wanted the sex. But – fuck! I’m getting into different territory now.

In a nutshell: I’m terrified of commitment. I think I should bake some bread. I think when Nicky goes to Ireland that’ll be the end of us and she’ll come back reinforced with all the things she said before I went on my emotional bender: that we were over and she was sure she didn’t want it and that she was going to Ireland on her own. Probably Laura is my soulmate and not that we should have definitely been together at any time in the past – maybe these lessons learned were necessaries – but in my thinking right now we’re pretty much at make or break time and there is nothing left to do but “try it or deny it,” much as when Mother Meera answered my question when I was in Dublin back in 2002 – which, incidentally, rocketed me away from Laura and pretty much straight into the arms of Sophie.

Still, has God not answered my prayers and pointed His mighty finger at “the one”? And if She has, what am I to do about it when such a large part of me wants to run away and would rather die?

I’ll tell you what I’m going to do: I’m going to sign in for a good healthy dose of psychotherapy. There’s another thing I’ve long wanted but always been too tight to pay for. Except I probably need it now more than ever. Except again – you know what always happens when I feel I need therapy? Yes, that’s right: the thing that’s troubling me suddenly goes away, as though the awareness of it was enough to go beyond it.

Still, it might be a way to become aware of more things and therefore make up for lost time.

Also, I should probably find some sort of job and a career. Or at least give the writing a proper try, if that’s my dream.

Also, I think I should probably stop this entry. I’m a bit pissed off now ‘cos seven or eight paragraphs ago when I felt myself come to the end of reporting about my week I was having that giddy feeling that comes from being cleansed and released from everything. But then I got into speculation about Nicky – no longer reporting on “what actually happened” but going off into theoreticals – and that’s made me furrow my brow. How can theoreticals liberate me? I’ve taken it too far. All I really wanted to say was that I think we’ll soon be over and that I quite fancy spending one last night with her. But that’s speculation and unknown future too. Okay, from now on just stick to reporting on the facts or that good old mad expression of emotions. But talking about the ifs and buts of the woman you’re trying to forget is hardly sensible. And going on as you are now with a desire to bring it back to something joyful hardly sensible either. You see? More poor judgments and decisions. But you live and learn. Hopefully I’ll have learned enough by the time I’m on my deathbed to get through a paragraph without saying something stupid. Sheesh! It’s a bit like how I can rarely ever say goodbye in person without doing something lame right at the end. Which is perhaps something relevant to what I mentioned eleven sentences ago. Crap.

And also: laugh out loud.

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