The World You Love

Now that I'm getting better (definitely nowhere near the end, but somewhere near the middle, rather than at the start) I'm starting to reassess my position in the treatment spectrum. I feel really strange telling my psychologist all of the things I have told her. I don't have any skeletons or things that I would feel super ashamed of should they wind up on the front page of a newspaper but it makes me feel quite vulnerable having told her the things that I have so far. Maybe I'm just being paranoid.

I still feel clear but today it feels a little bit manic. I feel precarious, like tomorrow I might awake and feel bad again. I don't not feel bad now - I just feel an absence of emotion. That's not entirely true, I don't feel numb. But I feel as though I could watch a comedy and not laugh, watch a tragedy and not cry, listen to a friend mope and not feel concerned. I feel...

I don't feel. It's like I process the emotions mentally and the output is the same.

I was thinking, today, about how I don't feel connected to a life source that guides my journey. When I went to England I was full of it, relying entirely upon this instinct that informed all of the choices I made. I felt earthed, as though my decisions had been made for me and my path was pre-ordained. Nothing particularly magical happened on my trip except that I felt hopeful and stripped away of most worry, anxiety, fear, conjecture...

When I was in Brecon or somewhere in Wales, I stayed up for hours talking to this middle-aged guy from England who'd just completed a mountain run. The weather was atrocious and he struck me as a cross between an indie kid who'd never quite grown up and Marcus' dippy father in the film About A Boy. Harmless. We chatted about different things and I tried to put into words the luck and good fortune that I felt to be able to travel to the opposite side of the world for a holiday. Hang out. Do my own thing. He made no sign that he'd understood this needful quest that I was on and said he was going to 'have a wee' which I've never heard an adult say in formal conversation.

The point I think my therapist is trying to make to me at the moment is that nothing is pre-ordained, nothing is set in stone, nothing is certain or eventual. I can hope and wish and pray for the perseverance to write a novel, the talent to write a good one and the luck to get it published but it will take a lot of perseverance, talent and luck to achieve this. In the meantime my heart might be pulled somewhere else.

She asked me if I would be happy with the kind of existence I've currently got - a basic one, where my basic needs are met, my thoughts are moderate, my dreams forgotten. I said of course, it didn't seem so bad, and besides, I'm happy at the moment.

She said of course I'm happy, it doesn't hurt where I am, and where I was before was hurting me.

I guess I'm just ordinary. But maybe there's no need for a 'just' in front of the ordinary.