12. Once Upon A Time

The moon has my attention, appearing, as it does, like a broke-off fingernail stuck to a blackboard. How many more times will I see it full? Will I see it full again? Do I really care? 

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It’s a funny thing not knowing how I feel about still being alive, about not being dead yet. Was sure I’d be dead by now. Whether I don’t know how I feel or I’m simply unable to put feelings into words, I can’t say. Am I relieved? Disappointed? A bittersweet blending of both?

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Once upon a time...

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So far so good, right? Not a bad start to the story I want to write… if that’s what this is, or turns out to be. All good stories should start that way, like in fairy tales. After all, when you get right down to it, writing a journal means, directly or indirectly, writing about yourself, your life. What’s life if it isn’t a story? A revelation? And what four better words are there to start the telling of it? If you’re really lucky, like if you manage to throw the die the right way more often than not, then your story gets to end with these well-known (and comforting to children) words: And they all lived happily ever after.

Outrageously, as it transpires, it doesn’t usually go that way. A realisation has been surfacing for some time now, and presently, like a bulb lighting up the dark interiors, the following dawns: most of the time, for most of the people stuck momentarily to this planet, it really doesn’t go that way at all. A horror strikes me, akin to the one that seized me in its clammy, banana-fingers-grip when I was 5 and discovered that Santa Claus was faker than an artificial Christmas tree.

Realising rolls in like fog covering the track I’ve just lost contact with. On-purpose thinking, control over cogitation and all reason…

out of reach again.

Early morning’s creeping in, but I’m not ready to go back to sleep - I’ll be damned if I’m giving in that easy. I sat down hours ago to write, and that’s just what I’m going to do.

Need to stretch aching back and legs first. Stroll over to the radio. Switch it on.

Won’t go to bed until I’ve said what I came to say. Sit back down with a creak (unsure whether it’s the chair or my knees), and consider the waiting page with furrowed brow. What was I trying to say? Something about… the strangeness of the last half year. 

Mind’s all jazzed up - has been for over an hour. Trapped in the middle of a square hour. Don’t believe much thesedays, but I believe that. Feels like waking up over and over. Waking up to find myself lost in No Man’s Land. A Nowhere Man whose best laid plans are – at best - misplaced, disappeared through a hole in my pocket. They were here. Only a moment ago. Nowhere now. Not. For nobody.

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So what was it? Something happened – a little over 6-months ago. Something happened I could never have imagined. Something so royally fucked with my head and so precisely blew-apart my heart (pretty much my solar-plexus and chestal area, too) that, just to keep from shattering into tiny pieces, suddenly, one fine day, I just stopped thinking about it. Stopped thinking. About what happened. Simply tossed all thoughts on the subject into the drawer of an old dresser in the basement of my mind. Unplugged. Disconnected.

In the immediate aftermath of this momentous decision, I felt like a hollowed out egg-shell – an egg that’s been pinpricked at each end and had its insides sucked out. Fragile, ready to crack. Felt empty. And eversince, been comfortably numb.

Up until Friday night anyway, when I was cheated by Death and ended up with this journal as a consolation prize or something.

Death. Makes you wonder about the notion of ‘free-will’, doesn’t it? Makes me wonder. Show me a person with Free Will who’d write anything other than they all lived  happily-ever-after at the end of their story and I’ll show you a lunatic or a bare-faced liar.

Question: Why do so many stories end so far from the ideal?

Answer: No Free Will. Or, scarier still: Most people are crazy and don’t have a clue as to what they’re saying or doing. Guess that goes for me, too.

Do I really know what I’m saying or doing? I’m not so sure thesedays. And I used to be so definite.

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