Lost

 

It's been 8 years since I last wrote here. Life has a way of creeping up on you when you least expect it, which is a dumb thought because it's really creeping up on you all the time. Maybe it's not that I don't expect it to, but that I've grown tired of lying in wait for its next great slapper of an event. 

I don't want to be self pitying, I know that life happens and that much of what has happened, I've brought upon myself. The me that's done all of that- I'd love to deny that its well and truly who I am at the core of my being. And yet I find myself less and less able to argue that some part of me maybe wanted to fail. Some part of me was looking for a way out that didn't involve actually admitting some sort of defeat. Perhaps I wanted to hit rock bottom, in a hope that it would truly change me. Without wanting to sound cliche, everytime I seemed to hit some sort of rock bottom, the rock cracked and gave way to another fresh pit for me to tumble down all over again. 

I can't, and won't, recap the last 8 years. I'm stuck in a cycle of imagining what point of the past I'd reset me life to to truly have the life I want, and it feels like I'm using that to cope with how hard it is to actively make those changes in the present. That said, I'm also caught in a trap right now. It's a great trap with some sort of end date that isn't as far away as it feels but also one that makes it tough to look forward to the future after it. I'm almost afraid of fully embracing the life I have right now, but I don't quite know why. I guess to some extent my brain is still hoping I can go back and live a life of solitary, depressed, hedonism, just live to forget everything around me. And the truth that really I'm mostly terrified that I'm going to be alone for another sweet while just doesn't help at all. 

I could list all the things I need to start doing to have some chance of enjoying life instead of just wavering around a point slightly below normal, but quite frankly that's not why I'm here right now. I don't know why I'm here. Some part of me must have felt that the therapy option that i think I have is still a daunting prospect and I could do with letting the thoughts in my mind out? The last thing that came to mind before some subconscious train of thought led me here was along the lines of me internally screaming into a pillow. 
I'm not a lost cause. I try to remind myself of that now and again, even if it feels like I'm closer to lost than I am to anything else. Lost in all senses: in a place where I know no one and no thing, lost in a job where I think i know what i'm doing and yet feel like the knowledge is always just out of reach, lost in a group of people who I barely exist alongside for the convenience of not being physically alone, lost without papa to phone up and talk to. Lost without a real place that my brain says is "home". I know ma has a house, and didi has a house, but I feel like the idea of home crumbled with papa's ashes. Even if I didn't quite visit enough, the feeling of entering the house to the smell of ma's cooking, giving her a big hug and then the same with papa was the most "home" I felt for the last 8 years. And the second closest was maybe coming back to manchester, pulling into the coach or train station and feeling a sigh of relief leave my mouth. And now I have neither. I have ma and her home, yes. And I know she wants it to be ours but I don't feel london to be my home. Apart from her, I barely feel like I have anything there that truly brings my heart and soul any peace.