“There are some times that I feel we are absolutely nowhere”
Sometimes I find myself lost in the weeds, I am in the tall grass. Lost somewhere deep inside myself without the ability to reach out and grab something to stop me from falling down. Unable to steady myself at the speed at which I am moving. I reach out and there’s nothing there to grab hold of, and even if there was I am traveling too fast for any effective holds to be anywhere near useful. Lately I’ve been listening to some music by new artist Kings Elliot who puts it just right in the song “I’m getting tired of me” in which she sings “I’m fighting fires all the time
You know that I’d escape it if I could“. Which more than perfectly sums things up right now, but even more so is the hook of the song which is (at least for me) “There’s nowhere to go when I’m getting tired of me“.
There is nowhere to go when I’m getting tired of me. What a statement, and so much truth in those eleven words. Feeling alone is for me a big part of things. I know that I can be a burden to the few friends that can still call my own, and I really, really don’t wish to be that. I’d love to not have some kinda drama going on whenever I get to speak with my friends. So I pretend, or at the very least I try to. Sometimes, I leak out, I can’t help it. I am after all human, and that is what we do. And please, to anyone who bothers to read this.. this isn’t a cry for help or anything of the sort. This is me using the platform I have available to me, to leak out a little bit.
This week.. well no this month.. March was a bit of a roller-coaster for me. – Ok, it’s always a roller-coaster and there is no getting off the fucker, but March.. jeez. It started early in the month with a planned trip down to London. The place I still feel I have history, still have unfinished business and still feel is my spiritual home. I was down for a selection of shows, performances and gigs, and the journey of getting there was also a big thing to tick off my x40.co.uk list of upcoming experiences. The first of which while down there was going the Cinema to see the UNCHARTED movie (don’t bother, it’s about as good as any other game turned movie film), but the experience of going the cinema alone was good. I enjoyed that. – Perhaps not that particular cinema again, with all those stairs, but I will go to another again alone soon.
I can be alone, I can operate absolutely fine alone. But you don’t imagine that when you want to be alone, that you will be lonely too.
Anyway, the second thing on the list for London was a double booking, of my own making. A film which I’ve seen before – Run Lola Run followed by a talk at the Barbican (of all of the iconic places to visit in London), and a Kings Elliot gig that I was very surprised to be able to get a singular ticket to go and see. What did I choose to do? – Neither. I was already out in Central London, so I was halfway to both of them. After the film finished I thought I should probably get some hot food inside me. When I was done with that, it was.. too late to make the start of the film and I was frankly too tired to do the traveling required to go and see the gig. I went back to the hotel. Instant regret of my decision of course, even though to myself and anyone else I was denying that I was disappointed. Of course I was.
The next evening however I had another event to go to, a modern dance performance at Sadlers Wells. I wasn’t going to miss this one for anything. A collaboration between Lucinda Childs and Philip Glass. The performance was excellent. Sure, going alone was strange at first, but I got there on time, cooled down a bit, waited for the house to open and took my seat almost straight away. The venue filled up to full. So glad I didn’t flake out on that one.
For the rest of my London break, I visited some of the old places I like to go when I get the chance to get back to London. But what I realised this time is that.. I don’t have the energy anymore. I know I pushed myself, and the result was that I was generally too tired to do and enjoy some of the things I had planned to do. I am not in the greatest of health anymore, and I need to learn to accept that. Perhaps it won’t always be that way. But perhaps it will, nobody knows what the future holds.
There was a little break of a few weeks then before a Sunday night event back in Liverpool which was a classical concert that I decided to take the ladies of my family to see. I enjoyed that a lot, it was relaxing. But it was the first of three events on back to back nights. This proved to be, for me, too much. On the Tuesday night I was in Manchester to see another dance performance, this one at The Lowry… except I didn’t make it. A train connection was cancelled, and then a fuck up with the local trams. I got so far as to be able to see the venue, but for me it was way more than a 5 minute walk to get there, and with events these days not allowing latecomers (which I agree with), there was no chance I would make it. So off home I went, tail between my legs, pissed off and angry with myself. Sure, the trains – not my fault, but I was still pissed with myself. I literally got into the house and went to bed.
On the Wednesday night I took my aunt to see The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time, at the Empire in Liverpool. I had read the book years ago and I remembered the story pretty well, but the performance was fantastic. I will be honest, after the failure of the night before I really didn’t want to go and with the troubles getting to town for Sunday night’s event, I really didn’t have it in me to try. But I am glad we went.
AND THEN… nothing, a planned nothing for three weeks. A rest. Remember I’d gone from being in the house for two years or more to forcing myself outside in the world with the people again. It was good to be inside.. for a day, till I fell ill on the Tuesday of the first week.. which lasted till the following Monday.. when I thought it’d gone, but oh no, a reprise the following day, so week two, still ill. Fuck. Not the way I intended to spend my ‘rest’ from events. I am so fed up of being inside now, it’s ridiculous. But I think it’s more my mind that is fed up of being trapped inside. So if I could do that thing that we all want to do, and separate out my mind from my physical being, then we’d be all set.
Unfortunately, that’s not how things work.
Set all of that past experience tiredness against a backdrop of frustration with a bit of mixed in loneliness and doubt, I have been very much stuck in my head this past week or so. But during that time I have also had the opportunity to talk about and discuss MY feelings of depersonalisation and derealisation with a community of helpful and simply welcoming & understanding, like-minded people from the most unlikeliest of sources… and that was Monday. That helped for a time. Tuesday, I am not sure where it went.. and today Wednesday.. it was.. there was good and bad in there, but it’s only really the bad we tend to remember.. sometimes, or at least that’s me. That’s my mind. That’s the anxiety that still controls me.
April, things to look forward to.. Groove Armada.. gig x2, back in London, whirlwind Easter (of course) weekend. Supposed to be with a friend or two, but will I be again alone? We will find out after Easter. Later in the month is another event, but a local one in Liverpool that I hope to have a guest lined up for. Let’s leave it there for now.
