the weight

At Seamill Hydro, a few days away, a holiday. I thought I would feel supremely relaxed there and return home revived but I should have known no-one ever earns a quick fix, no matter how good they try to be. I carried troubles about with me like being at the supermarket with no baskets and too few hands. I thought every night that I would put on pyjamas and sit up, relaxed, and worries would melt away, but how could they when I didn't even know what they were?

We booked for three but took four and the weekend was spent theorising how to evade notice. A friend who lives nearby, visiting for dinner. And for breakfast. The continual moving of bedding and straightening up of areas where numerous bodies had been. The idea that the maids would happen upon four wash bags and actually care, never mind notice. The number 3 on a sheet while four towels appeared on the counter. Honestly I think it was very clear to everyone that there were four people ambling about the premises each day, and such worries were pointless. It's funny observing people so rigid in learned goodness that the smallest infringements set them off kilter so quickly. You talk of Catholic guilt and that is definately that because of the hypocricy and the ignorance inherent in the application of morals. Everyone else has learned to live with the multiple personalities. You flip through the photographs and go one too far, it appears a mistake but I can tell you are happy, wanting to share the illicitness and the debaucherie with someone else. Someone impressionable. Someone already on their path. I'm becoming very good at putting my head in the sand too and I hate it, I hate it with every fibre of my being. I use my favourite analogy, the man standing up to thugs and getting stabbed from it. The two schools of thought: he's a hero, a martyr, standing up in the face of it; or an idiot, who could be safe in his house, sand to his neck, rather than dead, and cold, and finished. Some say it's over-exaggeration but to me it is black and white and grey is non-existant. Things happen everyday and I always want to stand but then I feel a parody of myself. I talked it over at breakfast on the last day and it all seemed so clear as things tend to in the bright, hopeful light of morning. Later in the evening I talked to the one person I trust and it seemed much more muddy and by the time night was emerging I was backing myself through a doorway and the unease was creeping past. Sometimes I think this means it's better for me not to always be making a scence over issues of rights and morals and indignations. Other times I feel like I am failing the very core of my being.

We walked on the beach and the sea could be in and it could be out but we were all there and I felt my separation so clearly that it may as well have been written in the sand. I don't understand why I am still surprised by it even when I have accepted it. I followed the three of them and took photographs and felt sad that such things come so easily to me and that I still have to tone down my skills to preserve others. They walked in lines and trailed eachother in age and I took pictures choreographed and mimicing the ones taken now of siblings in impromptu studios in shopping centres, blown up onto canvases, giant headlines of pride in oneself. There was another person taking pictures with a camera like Stuart's and I took a picture of him only because I felt some affinity by vitue of us both holding a similar device. No-one waited for me and no-one ever would as though I was intended as a lone wolf forever. They go at eachother's pace and I am consistently syncopated.

We walked down the stairs of the familiar exit to the apartment blocks and I pulled my phone out my back pocket once again, knowing to them I seemed a teenager hooked on other people. I didn't care; it's been a long time since I cared if I come across as young. A single message indicated that I had recieved phd funding at the last hurdle and I told them and they were happy and the grinned and I had to call people but I don't know where my own happiness was. They all wanted to recreate the moment later but I wanted the feeling and there hadn't been any to recreate so I sat with a smile like a shell and hollow and dark, dark brown. She said, 'you seem quite calm' and she was right but it wasn't calm it was searching and desperate and she said, 'it must be a huge weight off you' and she was wrong and I felt the weight of not knowing weigh heavier than ever. I ordered us prosecco to celebrate and I drank a glass and it made no effect and I hoped that one day there would be a different beverage used to celebrate events; one that chimed with my being and not with my anomolies.

When I was home I managed to identify some roots and it was painful all over again but in a dull, aching way that seemed peverse. I woke this morning with a mouth like a snowball and when I opened my mouth it cracked and ached and epitomised what my brain couldn't envisage, like it was protecting myself from vicious circles of doubt and unease. I imagined my jaw, dislocated, relocated, injections and plans washed out as and more plans piled on unsafely. I diagnosed online and it eased off and I realised it was jaw clenching from stress and it made such sense that it was like a slap in the face.

At the gym I listened to favourite songs and ran in the large empty room and I ran far faster than usual and I visualised things and I tried to tap into the fear and if I did then that's good but I'm not even sure what it is and trying to describe the invisible is the only way I think I can surmise what being offbalance for no reason is like. Stress sits on you, a burden, waiting and weighing and hoping your concentration will waver and it will be able to declare itself once more. On one of the seldom occassions where I happened to be in a church when I was young the minister talked of the holding of a grudge as a literal thing. He placed a toy bird of my friend Imogen on his shoulder and told us that holding a grudge was carrying around this bird and that it was no fun to carry around a bird like that all day. We all agreed. He was right, we should shift what we are carrying around like weights. But he never told us how.