Hells Half Acre

Hells half acre. 

No idea why i’ve called it that ....I wanted to get “hell” into the title i suppose. I think it’s a film or a book but i could be wrong. People talk about being in the eye of the hurricane...how it’s quiet there ( well that could be bollocks but anyway) ...that’s where i sort of am at the minute.  I say sort of as to be honest i’m not really sure how to express the way I feel in any meaningful sense...nothing new there then. I feel the need to write...if only to take my mind off things...or at least deflect the panic...stem the terror....fill my head as much as possible with the noise of something else. I have decisions to make. Decisions I don’t want to make.  None of the options before me are palatable.  Some are less palatable than others.  To even call them “options” is pushing it. They are outcomes.  What i decide will affect them but to some degree they’ve already been decided.  That may make little sense but again that’s not unusual.  I was never cut out for retail.  When i ran away from university and back to the comforting arms of the family business i began the process of denial...of caving in to the easier option.  Maybe i’d always done it but that was the first really big cave in. Of course at the time it made sense.  Well i can tell myself that.  Deep down I knew i was running away...that i was making a mistake...that i was giving up because i could. Must do is a great master as they say and they are mainly right. I had a get out...an option....and i took it. I hated Queens. I’d great hopes for university but when i actually got there i discovered it was not what i was expecting.  I’m not sure what i was expecting and maybe that’s part of the problem. When you are 18 and a bit of a loner with very little self confidence expectations can be ...well a bit blurry.  I’ve no idea why this is even getting a mention as i haven’t thought of Queens in years ...i certainly hasn’t intended to mention it or think about it. But there it is ...just sitting there in my memory bank...waving to me.  Drawing me back to that first of many failures...well the first major one.  And it was a biggie.  Not just because of the academic consequences (i’d very possibly have failed to complete the course) but more because it set a pattern. Once you get on a certain path it can be difficult to get off it. My failure was not so much in quitting but in not attaching enough import to the act.  It was too easy. I quit because I could.  It was a test and i failed.  And that failure stalks me to this moment sitting here in the dark thirty five years later. I vividly remember the huge relief that came over me when i decided to get on the bus and not come back that day in 1983. Making the decision brought relief...at least temporarily. I can remember walking down Newry Street to the shop feeling that a great weight had been lifted.  Little did I know. I was exchanging one weight for another of an entirely different heft.  I could not have known in fairness as i did not know much in those days. I only knew i did not have to go back.  That was enough.  My parents were no doubt disappointed but supportive.  They did not make it difficult.  I did play around with the idea of going back...in fact that was sort of the plan..yes sort of again.  Once i’d gotten over the initial euphoria of leaving i decided to give it another go. I suspect i knew i wouldnt but it was  convenient to have the option still available ...and Queens were obliging in that regard. I maintained the fiction to myself that i would return and do what i’d originally intended ..Law. A year or so later I went back and this time stayed a week.  The first time i’d stayed three months. On the way down to Belfast to the halls of residence on the Sunday afternoon (my father had managed to get me a bed in Union College through a minister friend) to leave off my stuff I started to have second thoughts. I’m pretty sure i’d had them before that but i don’t remember...i only remember that car journey and by the time i was coming back up the motorway i’d pretty much decided i wasn’t going back. I went in the following morning and having bumped into a friend from school (he was the year below me but we were now on the same level...both newbies) began to waver...at least i did until lunchtime.  By tea time i’d made the decision and i was gone by the Friday.  It wasn’t for me. The year spent in the shop had changed my perspective on things and i couldn’t face the prospect of four years of study. Maybe it had just made me lazy.  Or maybe it was something of the old homesickness...the dislocation from the familiar that had tripped me up the first time.  Or maybe i just didn’t know what i wanted.  Whatever it was that was that.  I left again this time for good. For the second time it was easier to leave than to stay.  To stay would have been the tougher option...the riskier one...or so i believed.  In the end we make our own risk and we don’t always recognize it even if it’s in our face.  I did the easier thing.  There’s a pattern here. Many  years later I fell into the same trap and it cost me my marriage. I took the easier option ...or rather i avoided the difficult decisions. I played it safe and i paid the price. Safe is a relative concept.  It’s always easy to convince yourself that doing nothing is for the best...because doing nothing is always easier than doing something.  What should i have done? Too long a story.  The point is i trades risk for what i thought was safety. But it wasn’t.  My safer ground opened up and swallowed me down whole.  I’ve never really faced things.  Not really. Or key things at any rate.  I don’t know what would have happened had i stayed at Uni...in a way it doesn’t matter.  It’s not the point.  I don’t actually dwell on it.  I’m not sure why it’s come to the fore  now.  I’ve never really gotten a grip on regret...a wasted and pointless  emotion.  That’s if it is one.  When you put things down in writing you can go off on tangents and maybe that’s what this is.  A tangent.  I’m faced with decisions again.  This time there are no easy options.  It’s not like then.  And yet maybe it’s not that different in a way. I still don’t face things.  It’s my achilles heel.  It has cost me a lot. It will cost me more before i’m finished.