One thousand years of solitude

It's been a strange weekend, a very introspective one, and some stuff has happened to make me think that I need to take a couple of weeks out to reassess my life and myself and pretty much everything.

My life is a fucking mess, and I'm a fucking mess, and something has to change.

I've been coasting on empty for so long I think I've forgotten what it's like to live, to really truly live, to grab every moment as it comes and to experience, to really experience, to open my arms out wide, to open my heart, rather than hiding behind that oh-so-effective protective layer of mine that keeps me safe but doesn't let much through. I need to pull myself off my hamster wheel, dissolve my comfort zone and let myself feel, properly feel, probably for the first time since Sam broke me.

I need to let myself heal. I need to really look at myself, to meet my eyes in the mirror and not be afraid to look into the depths. I need to learn to like what I see.

And I know I need to stop the drugs and all the other excesses I indulge in to keep myself emotionally numb.

I'll be back when I've managed to make a dent in that Teflon hide of mine.

In the meantime, I found a poem today which I wrote after Sam left all those years ago. I'm not sure it's particularly good but it probably says quite a lot about me, so I thought I'd share it. What does make me laugh a bit is that when I wrote it I obviously imagined myself to have achieved some kind of high-powered business-type job by the year 2005. I guess my life hasn't quite turned out like I imagined all those years ago...

Alternative Vistas: 2005
It is your eyes I see when I close mine
and pull you out of the dark recesses
of my mind at the end of each long day.
Finally relaxed, shards of light slanting
through the blinds on to the bed, I lie back,
shedding suit, briefcase, reams of paper,
smart shoes; my uniform, my armour,
guarding raw flesh, smothering me,
saving me from harsh real world life, forty-five
to fifty hours of every working week.

When I smell you on strange passing skin, you
leap out of the cubby hole constructed
for sometimes longed-for long-gone lovers.
The soundtrack of my life swells with
bitter-sweet thoughts of could-have-been.
I walk to work, city smells surrounding
my fragile frame; my mind filled
with alternative vistas and the look
in your eyes when you realise that you
could, possibly, might well have, loved me.