Sometimes when you miss someone, it comes with a time stamp. I miss you, but I’ll see you on Monday. I miss you but we’ll be together again in two weeks. It hurts and it’s awkward and lonely but it has an end in sight and you know you’ll feel the warmth of that person again soon. When someone leaves you, one way or another, the missing becomes indefinite, and the comfort you had before from the simple word ‘soon’ is gone. Instead of soon it becomes never and it can feel like staring into infinite space and seeing nothing but darkness.
So that’s where I’m currently at. Staring into the black and wondering why she isn’t there staring back at me.
It’s been a few months since I wrote to this blog, or to the few people who read it late at night when there is literally nothing better to do but be mildly depressed by someone else’s midnight musing. I’ll give you the spark notes, up until now. After Christmas I got sick, and it led to me getting depressed, and overwhelmed. I was under pressure to move out of the flat above the pub and find my own place and I stopped enjoying being at work. My drinking got heavily worse and eventually I was a pale imitation of myself, just coaxing through the days as fast as I could to get to my next drink. At the end of March, I moved out of the pub and into my own space, which helped massively. I no longer felt like I was permanently attached to work, not living above the place, and the separation gave me some sense of normalcy. That said, my drinking was at a high point and eventually I started to casually use drugs again on my days off just to maintain the high I was no longer receiving from alcohol. Work was going well for a while but I was struggling to keep up the pace. I wasn’t into the drugs the way I used to be, but for a while it was once a week, which was already too much.
Cut scene to a month or so later and I met a girl and fell madly in love (far to fast and far too hard). The timing couldn’t have been worse. I’d stopped using drugs but I was still drinking heavily. My medication wasn’t working as a result of the alcohol and my mental health was on a downward spiral, heading for a crash. It was a strange feeling for me, because it had been so long since I had any kind of relationship that felt serious, or that had real stakes. All of a sudden, I had this perfect happy thing in my life and although it felt so good to have that, I wasn’t getting any better. I didn’t realize then that you can’t rely on another person to fix you, it just isn’t fair. Not on them or on you. You have to fix you for you and that’s a tough thing to do for someone who struggles to find reasons to love themselves. Eventually (and sadly far too soon) the walls of the new and fragile relationship came crashing down, and she made the decision to leave me. For her good and, I suppose she thought, for mine. I’m not so sure on that last part but what can you do? You can’t make someone love you. No matter how much you love them, when they’re gone you can’t force them to feel the same, however sad that is.
I didn’t take it very well and for the first few days I became the worst person to work with or to be around. I took a few days off work and went back to Northampton on what I suppose you would call a bender. Now here we are, sober and tired, and staring into the infinite black, wishing there could be another Monday. I’m trying to find reasons to do well for my own sake. I haven’t had a drink in four days and I’ve started eating again (after stupidly starving myself for the first week). I’m trying to leave the baggage at the door when I arrive at work, and be the happy jovial leader that my staff, colleagues and guests need me to be. I’ve started joking again and laughing again and whilst those who are closer to me know that there’s very little behind any of my smiles, I’m putting the effort in to appear okay. Fake it until I make it, as the saying goes. At first, I thought maybe I should try and become a better version of myself for her (the version I should have been for her in the first place) but I realized fast that that was only in the vain hope of her coming back. I don’t think she’s coming back, hell I’m pretty damn certain of it. So, I have to try and find reasons to be the better me for my own sake. That’s a tough ask. At the moment I feel like, without her, I don’t want to be better. I miss her, a lot, and indefinitely. Which hurts like crazy, but again, what else can you do but put your best foot forward and move? Drinking isn’t going to bring her back and it sure as hell isn’t going to make me any happier in the long run. Nor will drugs or any other number of misbehaviors I have previously found myself addicted to. I have no choice but to get up every day and make good choices. Even if it’s the last thing I want to do!
My visit to Northampton was I suppose a somewhat cathartic experience. Besides getting to see my friends, and get their advice on things, I got to leave and come back here. The last drink I had was in Northampton and in a way, it’s a little like leaving that version of me back there. Which was what was supposed to happen a year ago when I first moved away and arrived in Milton Keynes. I wish it had, and I can’t help but wonder if things had been different, would she still be in my life? It’s impossible to say what goes on in the multiverse, but I’m sure there’s a version of me out there somewhere whose much happier tonight than I am! Lucky bastard!
It's 3am, and it’s times like this, when it’s quiet and the worlds asleep around me that my thoughts creep up and try to scar me from the inside. It’s times like this that I want to reach for a drink and cry because the empty space on the sofa won’t be filled with her again. So tonight I decided to type, as a distraction. That’s all this is, me trying to focus my thoughts somewhere for a short while. I hope I have the energy to write something for this blog again soon and I hope next time it’s something a little more positive. For now, I’m stuck with a broken heart and a necklace I can’t seem to take off; staring deeply into the dark wishing for another Monday that I know won’t come. Missing her indefinitely, and envying the me I could have been.
That is all for now,
- W.L
Comments