Those words or a variation of them have hung around my life like a bad smell for a long time now. Today was a bad day. Well a worse day than usual. There are reasons but I won't go into them. There doesn't always have to be specific ones but today there were. You need to beware the slippery slope effect. It can start with vague unease and before you know it you are staring into the abyss. That's how it works. The mind (well my mind anyway) doesn't just jump it quantum leaps. Before you know it you are spiraling downwards uncontrollably. The effort required to reach out and grab at anything that can arrest your descent is enormous...you are too busy tumbling. If you've ever slid out of control down a hill or rocky incline you will get the picture. I couldn't settle this evening so I went for a short drive to a quiet, calming spot near where I live...sadly the lake side haven was packed with others of a similar intent so I retraced my steps and found myself turning off the road to a spot I haven't visited in a while. It's a secluded lay by set in off the road and overlooking the river Bann the purpose of which I've never been sure of other than to provide a handy spot for amorous or illicit rendezvous. The last time I was sitting here would have been about six or seven years ago and it would have been about 2 am. I'd stormed out of the house after a particularity caustic exchange and had driven here down the back roads at about 90 miles an hour ...it was the only place I could think of to go through the thick fog of madness that engulfed me. I say madness because I don't know what else to call it. It wasn't the first time I'd walked/run out of the house in a state after som e row or other and it wouldn't be the last but it sticks in my mind more than the others. I was gripped by madness that night. I remember feeling like my head was going to burst. My mind was threatening to break apart...whatever that means. There's no good way of explaining a feeling like that...other than by saying that the memory of it still causes me to wince as you would from a sudden pain. I remember screaming at God to do something...to help me or kill me. And I remember slamming my head repeatedly against the steering wheel as I sat here in the darkness till it hurt...perhaps in the hope that I could shake lose the horror of it all. I can't remember much else. Not even how long I was there for. About six months later I had left the house for good.
As I sit here now with the light fading in exactly the same spot a lot of those buried emotions are resurfacing as I knew they probably would. They have of course taken on a new and slightly different edge. Pain always adapts and evolves. Darwin would have approved. Writing this has settled me a bit. As to what brought me here...not sure. Partly a need to reconnect with old hurts perhaps ...if that makes any sense at all. A place can do that. Perhaps also to make sense of more immediate turmoil. But that is too ambitious. Maybe to explore the connection between the two. And they are connected...though not in an obvious way. That's how the mind operates.
I began by saying that it is easier to give in than to fight. And it is. I'm very tired. Tired of the grind of things...of the constant fire-fighting that is my life...of the struggle to keep everything going...of the fear and anxiety that gnaws at me incessantly...of the constant need to keep my guard up...of the way I feel about myself most of the time...of the anger that writhes and burns and won't go away...all of it. For a little while tonight giving up seemed more appealing than usual. But I think I will fight on...for now.
It's time to head back to the house for some food and a bath. Interpol are playing at full volume. Turn on the Bright Lights. Not sure if it's a metaphor but it'll do.
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