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    Forwarding Address 28 years-old human... Pancreatitis Depressed
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September 18, 2004 - 1:58 am "And when faced with tempatation you know a man should stand and fight" It�s gone 1am and I am up drinking beer and surfing the internet. Is this life with internet-connection at home? Blimey, I�ll never sleep again! The whole world at my fingertips whilst sitting in my living room! Of course the internet also offers a huge variety of psychopaths and weirdos, but then so does the London underground, hey ho. I updated early this morning just before I left to work to explain to anyone who cared that I was very hungover. Last night Fairy, Bee and I went to our local bar in Wanstead for some wine and a catch up. By 11pm we were in the dirty-chicken place next door discussing chip quality with the guys that worked there following two attempts at karaoke (first �Flashdance�, second �Perfect�, both equally awful). We drank far too much wine and then far too much whisky. I came home and decided that it was the ideal time to convert some .wps files to Word documents for work. I had to close one eye to stop the letters moving about the screen. I also ventured onto Dland in my drunken state, bad idea in the state I was in. So this morning, having gulped two pints of leon squash and a can of diet pepsi during the night, I was feeling on the rough side of dodgy to say the least. I had to have TWO cans of full fat irn-bru and a large kitkat before I felt vaguely normal enough to do my job. Before I go on the write about the deep and meaningfuls I just wanted to post a picture or two. Aaaages ago I promised pictures of our Murder Mystery 1960s themed dinner party�  Mr D hams it up as the camp photographer� Fairy strikes a pose 1960s style, baby, yeah! The girls strike a pose. That�s me on the right� My diary isn�t a secret - my best friends know about it, some of my oldest diaryland friends know I�m still here, my husband knows I keep a diary here (he even knows my history here and even kept a diary himself for a while) but he doesn�t know the name, but it�d be easy for him to find out if he wanted. So whatever I write here is open and honest and true. Unlike a lot of internet lurkers you can trust me to be relaying the truth. Last night, through the swirly haze of drunkenness, I made a decision to make a short quick visit to the past. Isn�t it strange how the past seems somehow disconnected from reality? Like, the girls who bullied me at school and made my life hell for five years � seeing their names on Friends Reunited and reading about how they are mothers and wives, working in respectable jobs, moving amongst grown-ups. It�s strange to imagine them behaving themselves and knuckling down to some work when in my memory they live as 15 year-old delinquents putting chewing gum in my hair. If I went to a certain street in West London, not far from Westbourne Park, and knocked on the door of a certain office I would be met by my first boyfriend, who broke my heart more than once before I broke his. And he would look older, not the 24-year-old I remember from 1995, but an older man � a husband now, with two little girls. But in my memory he�s young and careless wearing Doc Martin�s and a waistcoat and smoking camel lights. If I called the same mobile number that I still know by heart since 1997 the man that would answer now would different to the 20-year-old I fell in love with seven years ago. I suspect he would still be overly theatrical and flitting from one poorly paid musician job to another, but he�d be older, wiser, unknown to me as he was then. In my spare room in my flat in a box, under piles of other boxes of the clutter that comes about when two people come together to share a life, there is a yellow and blue diary that I kept three and a half years ago. I haven�t looked at it since January 2002. It details a relationship that now lives in the non-existence of the past � stories of longing and passion and love and dealing with grief. All the things that were so real to me that turned out to be somebody else�s twisted reality. I forced myself to forget that number, but if I called it now, if somebody said hey here�s that guy�s number, then I would hear an unfamiliar voice from an unreal past and it�s weird to think he even exists. But then today it dawned on me - I just don�t feel anything any more, I don�t hate or resent or despise or dislike. Something terrible happened that can never ever be undone or explained. But I am alive, I am here, I am alive, I have a wonderful husband, a wonderful life, incredible fortune, a dream job�so where�s the point in letting something die horribly when you can let a memory live well? There is a famous quote - �To err is human, to forgive is divine�. I don�t claim to be divine, but I can claim to be forgiving. I have no reason to hate someone for their bad decisions, God knows they hate themselves enough for both of us, and despite the lies and the unreality...despite all that I can forgive. I can forgive because we are here for a short short short short time, too short a time to dedicate energy to unfinished affairs and bitter memories. So today I tied up a few lose ends and told a few truths to someone who, I kind of hope, may have needed to hear them. The succinct way to put it is �I forgive you�. I will never forget, I will never put aside in a dark corner of my mind the hurt you caused or the damage you did, because it�s these things that add to a person and make them grow. But today I discovered that to forgive feels good, I tied up some fraying ends and made some peace�nothing can ever be wrong about peace. The weird thing was I didn�t think I needed to make any peace, and I wasn�t looking to. I just stumbled into it and now that I have actually done it I feel - released, like I am looking at somebody over a wide gulf of sea and nodding and saying �it�s ok, no worries..don�t mention it�. And I would never have even done it had not been for Pinot Grigio. Let�s just say, between us, �I drank too much and shouted it aloud�. But best of all, while we�re looking back, is the past that came back to haunt me on the stairs of St James�s Park Underground Station one day. The familiar face of a university crush and adversary long forgotten. That bit of past is now my present and my beautiful future. And that is something I would never put back. |
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