First World Problems

I have a lot of questions that either can’t be answered or just plain won’t be answered. I’m getting sick and tired of not knowing what’s going to happen or how things might turn out. Simple things like what job will I get to fund my India Dream, and others that are just scared little bird thoughts which I can’t force off. You can quieten them with laughter and friends but those murmurs of curling and writhing wonderings are always there, just loitering.

It’s an odd thing, when we are confronted with the truth of the things we’ve feared all along. There is a sort of satisfaction in knowing you were right, followed instantly by that booming dooming panic. What do you do when you think you know the truth of it all? I’ve said before that I can’t quite decide whether I’m cruelly intuitive or maddeningly naïve and that I’ll never know.

You can’t get away from the things you know and you can’t get away from the things you don’t. That’s why I’d like to be four again, when the thing that worried me most was that maybe my Mum might find out I’d lit a match in my bedroom, stolen Dad’s cufflinks or laid down in a puddle. I think there is something in ignorance that us self-pitying folk often overlook. You don’t know it all, and what’s more, you don’t give a fuck. At all.

What I wouldn’t give to have that. To have all of my sorry little first world problems swept away by a brush of innocence, like pulling back the curtain to a morning light which tells you somehow it was all a dream, those things only happen in poorly written tv sitcoms. Fresh crisp air that spikes your lungs, singes your throat as you knock it back greedily.

It’s been a long time and I’ve just realised it’s still going to be a long time before I get all that back. I think that’s alright though. One just has to cope with the not knowing, perhaps even embrace it, this element of life’s many rituals that are just inevitable for the young, good-natured and mildly foolish. It’s far from ideal, debatably fixable… but it’s manageable for now.

It hits us all at some point in our lives, that abrasive truth that as soon as it’s said, we realise it’s something we’ve always known. It’s not like a bullet, more like a wind graze. You know the culprit is right there, but you still don’t see it coming. Then you get home, take off your boots and there it is. A stinging, nagging, pain. It’ll heal. They’ll heal. It’s interesting too, the way different humans heal themselves. Either licking their own wounds or seeking out others or just leaving them open to heal themselves.

There are those who inflict injuries hoping that’ll at least distract them from their own. These are the people that need most looking after I reckon. Everyone just wants to avoid humiliation and feeling uncared for. Everything is relative though, isn't it?

Being Feral

I wish I could impress upon you the notion of the stars curving round to meet the sea. It's something dark, delicate and hopeless. They can't even communicate because as magical as they look from the window of a flying tin can, they are just inanimate substance. To state the obvious. This hopelessness that I feel towards the direction of our kind can only be cured, albeit temporarily, by remembering that there are some things that we can know, innately. We know that happiness and contentment are wonderful. The knowledge that love, true love, is paramount. For family, friends and lovers alike. What other emotion is as inexplicable? Yes, there are plenty that are so strong that they can honestly kill us, lift us into the sky or render us somewhat impossible. But you tend to be able to use some smart little metaphor to explain those ones... even if it does belittle the notion entirely. But that love you can have for another human being is, as I say, inexplicable.

When all else seems dark and we cannot see, we yearn for the light. Even if that light is balanced temporarily and woefully at the tip of a match. We turn it upright so that it burns, not matter how pitifully, for as long as possible.

So, I regularly describe myself as feral. I use this word instead of wild because 'wild' has become associated with something desirable. I think perhaps I would be a little more content if I didn't view the world in the way I do... but I also think that would make me a fucking idiot, so who knows. Sometimes, a lot of the time actually, I just sit and listen to what people aren't saying. It's far more interesting than the drivel that is gushing from their mouths. I can't really explain that either. But people are either scared or blissfully uncaring, or both. Some people just have the strangest priorities, but then again, I couldn't begin to tell you what the right ones should be. I often look at society and find it illogical and ridiculous. It's not what we were created to cope with. We as a species, have done it all wrong. It makes me feel claustrophobic, and every time I feel like that, I find myself running as fast as I can towards any form of nature. And that reaction is as innate to me as survival really ought to be to most.

But if the popularity of MacDonald's is anything to go by, survival is an innate notion lost on billions.

When I think about the things I know innately and often against my will it makes me wonder. Either I know something you once knew or in fact have never known, or I'm the ignorant one and you know it all.

When we live in an existence where even our questions are questionable, and the ground to cling to can be torn from heart and soul in the space of a second, surely that means we can only find sanctuary in the immaterial and inexplicable? I find, as soon as something can be explained, it no longer belongs to us. Because where do we draw the line between imagination and ambition? Right now, they are just shapes on a page.

When I struggle most, it seems to directly correlate with a lack of love, for and from those around me. It turns into a disconnection, a realisation that due to a series of potential coincidences, you know these people. A flip of the coin, a different hand, an alternate role of the dice, and you might never know them. And you wouldn't even have missed each other, because how can you miss something you never knew?

 So the disconnection of us as people, as creatures just drifting in various directions does nothing for me, other than press upon me the importance of making those connections, of falling in love with as many people and as many places as possible.

The heart is meant to be used to the maximum of it's capacity, in every stretch. Whether it's fluttering skywards, getting wrung out like a tired old flannel or being pulled out through the bottom of you stomach by an enormous magnet. At least when you die, know that it's been worn out.

Because honestly, what else can we do with it?
I don't know nearly anything really.

So who am I to even begin to wonder what it is I fear on a nightly basis?

Sleeping shouldn't be difficult. I blame the lack of air, the blind beating the window, the little box I have to call mine. I'd like to go back to the wild please. At least I know what's there is real and doesn't care whether I'm there or not.