I’ve been writing a lot, but nothing really worth publishing on its own. Mainly angry revelations and paranoid ramblings about myself/my life/people around me which I’ve realised while inebriated, and lots of lists: things I hate about me, a hit list of people who have wronged me, lists of books to request from the library, lists of lies I’ve been told, ways I’ve disappointed my father, etc. But here’s some stuff from my notebook that I’ve written this month that isn’t illegible nonsense.
♥
December 2018: blunt blades, absinthe for breakfast, the coke cock-up, Don’t You Forget About Me, lipstick-lined lies, moving the photograph of me and my granddad in the silver frame from the hallway to the kitchen window, rag curls, cherry cheesecake, self-fulfilling prophecies, Suicidal Sundays, a barbed-wire belt, winter berry scented washing up liquid, Death Row Dinner, the highest bidder, breaking up with someone I’m not in a relationship with, the name “Liusaidh” being pronounced “Lucy”, the most tragic DJ set in north London, angina attack or shit gear or just heartbreak???, drunk epiphanies, peak paranoia, feeling as lost as an inland seagull, that rape dream (no, nightmare), waking up with stigmata on my hands and feet, all of the birthdays, pretending to identify constellations, falling in love with a(nother) stranger I met in the smoking area, Murakami keeping me alive again, setting my only warm coat on fire and watching it burn to nothing, picking your scabs, hot-wiring a JCB and driving it across a golf course, missing the last post for Christmas cards, missing my father, this sentence summarising my month sounding like a shite Lana Del Rey song.
A constant flow
Of grieving and deceiving,
Everyone who loves me
Leaves me.
A life lived in shades of black, in varying degrees of pain. No light, just darkness. Even my shadow has abandoned me. I haven’t seen her for so long. I often wonder what she gets up to behind my back when I’m not looking. But she’s not there. Hasn’t been for ages. I hope she’s okay, wherever she is.
Epigraph of The Waste Land:
“I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae hanging in a jar and when the boys said to her: Sybil, what do you want? She replied: I want to die.”
These raised white lines
remind me of battles won,
lovers lost and days gone by.
Dead men wouldn’t envy me.
I can’t stop thinking about Tess Durbeyfield.
“There was another date … that of her own death; a day which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she manually passed over it; but not the less surely there. When was it?” (Hardy, about Tess)
London is a great place to die. Perfect, actually. So many faces, no recognition, no importance. Places to hide. Tall buildings. Lax security. Thames. Parks. Forests. Lakes. The Heath. Bridges with no nets. Platforms with no barriers. Stations with no guard. Bodies with no names. Wards with no beds. Crisis line with no one to answer at the other end. Traffic. A-roads. North Circ. Drugs. Fights. Acid. Knives. Guns. Fun. Tragic and romantic and historic. Magic. The perfect place to disappear. Out of the frying pan, into the melting pot. The perfect place to die.
How strange it is to be alone in a big city. Kings Cross at Christmas. An agoraphobes nightmare. An extrovert writer’s dream. And still, completely and utterly alone. Tears streaming down my face. I have never felt so alone as I do tonight. Never in my life have I felt so alone as I do now, with all these people all about, and the sounds and the chaos and the languages and the kinetics. Even London doesn’t love me anymore. It has spat me out, just like everyone else. Everything is very confusing but I don’t have the time or energy to work it out nor to be afraid. There’s just no time. Time is running out, why don’t you understand that?
I need to get better. I have to. I can’t get any worse than I am now. Surely not. It can’t be possible. If I get any worse, I won’t ever get better. This is not defeatist, this is truth.
The bad thoughts
that I think
In relation to myself
are turning out
To be true
and it seems as if
There’s absolutely nothing
you or I can do
About it.
♥
I’d like to thank everyone for their support over the past year: your kind emails and comments do not go unread (in fact, I treasure all your lovely words of praise and encouragement) and I am so grateful for every person who visits my site and reads my work.
I wish you a happy holiday wherever you are in the world, and pray that 2019 is better for all of us.
Cheers! HLR xx
Treacle Heart 