Letters For People I’ve Lost No.1

I don’t know if you know who you are or if you’ll be reading this, but I’m going to start writing letters to people I’ve lost.

I think about you all a lot now that I have so little to do, just sitting alone in my room wondering if I should go out and meet new people or try to resume contact with the people who seem like they’d rather forget me.

I still feel connected to many of you, and often it feels like the need to re-establish contact is a natural and inescapable force, like a kind of localized gravity. Some of you are damaged people, messed up people, people who have lied to me and harmed me. Some are beautiful people who looked out for me and made me feel safe and cared for but who… I don’t really want to go into the details on here just yet, but maybe there are some things you can’t undo — relationship deadly sins or whatever.

Anyway, I am thinking about a couple of people now who were very different. I’ll start with the first one that comes to mind: a girl I had a few months relationship with about a year ago…

You told me a couple of days ago you think it might be possible for us to be friends again, but said it depends on me and my behaviour. You said similar things before but changed your mind. I sent you a reply but now I don’t want to bother you anymore for risk of breaking something that finally looks almost plausible to fix, so I’m writing this to try to vent the emotions a little bit.

You told me once you could see us like the old couple in Waiting for God, growing old together, and I said I reckon out of the two I’d probably be Diana, the cantankerous old crazy woman. I felt at the time you wanted a bad-boy, a dangerous musician type, and I did my best to play to that. But that comes with its own downsides, and I ended up trapped between a desire to keep things exciting and vibrant, and your growing judgments based on what what you saw as a lack of consideration for you and those around you. I felt in a bind, unable to turn this way or that, unable to keep you interested enough to develop the long-term closeness I truly wanted without you forming judgments that would make you think badly of me, which certainly you have told me you do now. That night when, frustrated and confused, I got drunk and ended up severely upsetting you and many of your friends… it wasn’t the first time I’d done something similar and it makes sense you decided you’d had enough of me and ended our friendship.

At the time you told me after three months we could get over the event and be friends again, but when the time came you decided, from a new distance, you’d rather not. And that’s been it, apart from a few e-mails in which you told me how terrible you thought me to be, and how messed up you considered me.

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The last time I saw you in the flesh was when I bumped into you randomly at a festival. I was excited to tell you what I’d been doing and how I was trying to get myself back up and running, but then I saw your disappointment and sadness about me: about someone you believe believe to be worthless, to have no value in the world at all. At least, that’s my reading. It seems true.

I wonder if we’ll ever be friends again.

Today I am Befuddled Bcademic

Today I am befuddled academic. I wear him like a cloak and I like him. He is polite and nice and just the right amount of suave not to cause offence. He has spindly fingers and wears a business suit with a scarf that looks endearing in an ill-fitting way. I wonder what he would drink and if it would be tea or perhaps he likes something else. I will find out as he reveals himself to me.

The young Chinese child opposite me is making hissing noises and trying to get my attention. At one point she shouts out:

“NOT AGAIN!”

And looks straight at me. I’m not sure I understand what this means. I have a paper to read, but I’m not reading it, I’m writing this. The constant clack-clack of my fingers on the keys is fast enough to be slightly painful on the loan laptop given to me for my research. I am told I must wipe it afterwards but I don’t suppose it matters.

I have been making a computer game but I think perhaps only a very select group of people will want to play it because I have so little money to promote it. On the overhead speaker a man is telling me the next stop will be Doncaster. I’m not 100% sure what Doncaster is like and I can’t remember whether I’ve been there. I think probably I have. Plausible I have. It seems likely that I stopped in a nice quiet pub between journeys and some of the locals eyed me suspiciously as I ordered a single of a whiskey far more expensive than I look like I can afford. Far more expensive, in fact, than I really can.

I am on the train to meet Rabbit-Cat, but it is not that same Rabbit-Cat I met before. This Rabbit-Cat is different. I haven’t even seen her yet, and I don’t know anything about her. Nor have we arranged a meeting and nor has anyone else told me to meet her. Yet somehow I know she will meet me somewhere. I get feelings like this sometimes, you know — some things just are.

I feel as if I am being marionetted by another creature and the movement of my fingers is no-longer my own, as if someone else is inhabiting my conciousness, as at many other points in my life I have been sure they are. This doesn’t so much concern me at the moment. I am more concerned with my writing and the slight pain in my knee and one of my feet from wearing ill-fitting shoes.