Sunday 7.49pm

I am listening to Babies by Colleen.

So I am thinking about Naughtyman. He has become a beautiful child. He reminds me a lot of my friend T, who was a beautiful man. We drifted apart and I regret it. We fell out over some stupid shit and never made it up. I met up with him when I moved to London a few years back. He was working for the government, the education department, and he seemed shamefaced about it. I don’t know why we didn’t connect at that meeting; we had been the best of friends.

Naughtyman had a head problem when he was a baby. He had lain too often on one side of his head, and had a plagiocephaly, a flat head. We fixed it with a rainbow-coloured helmet. It cost a bomb but it was money well spent. He is a truly beautiful child. I cannot help seeing myself reflected in him too: he is sensitive and gentle. I truly wish I will not break him.

Today we were at Lollipops, a horribly loud children’s playhouse. Naughtyman spent most of his time in the ballpit at the bottom of one of the slides. He was too young, too gentle for the rough and tumble, but somehow he managed to be always just half a foot from the flailing arms, inches from the foot that would kick him in the face.

You are never sure with Naughtyman what he does or doesn’t understand. He keeps his own counsel. He is interested in trains.

It breaks my heart to think about him. I don’t know how else to say it. He seems so perfect, so beautiful. He is unformed and I don’t want to form him. I want to keep him cocooned so that he can just bloom into whatever he is, without anyone’s impressing anything on him at all. I don’t have ideas for him. I don’t have principles, dreams, goals.

I have long ago realised that I do not consist of anything and I have nothing to offer a child, except not to hurt them if I am capable of not doing it.

It breaks my heart to think about him. I am entirely without words to describe how I think about him. That is a strange place for me to be in, because I often have more words than thought.

I was thinking about what matters to me. And I realised that it was very little specific. I have positions. You know what I mean. We all have them. Things we profess to believe. Mine all boil down to share. I don’t know why. I have not forensically analysed my beliefs. Maybe I do not feel the world shares enough for me.

I know you do not matter to me. If you are reading this, you do not. I am sorry to say it, and I know that at least some people who read this will be hurt by it, but I cannot help it. I am limited, stunted. I am everything I do not want Naughtyman to be. I know that my dad felt the same about me, and that scares me.

One person online meant something to me. It wasn’t mutual. I kidded myself that it was, but only part of me was kidding; the rest knows the score and it was burned. Maybe two, but in the first instance I was scared. I was scared of feeling anything for someone who wasn’t, could never be, real. I wish I hadn’t been. I wish I could have her back. She must have been mystified. I’m sure I did not do the right thing. I threw away a friendship I could treasure. And I knew it was one. Usually, you do not know who really has any value for you, particularly online, but Sh did. I will probably never find anyone I’d rather walk a mile with. What a cunt I am. It does not make me feel any better to know it.

***

I am listening to Yasmin the light by Explosions in the Sky. It has a gentle, moving riff. Moving may be the wrong word. Maybe it would move you, maybe not.

So I like to think I am gentle and moving. But I have forgotten how to be either. I am hollow and stupid.

I realised today that what I most want is to die. I do not mean I feel suicidal. How stupid! I mean that I wish I could feel I could. I do not know that I will ever feel that and it worries me. I am treading water, sometimes sinking a little, sometimes rising a little. Sometimes I even feel I’m floating.

I am hollow and stupid. Why would you think I’m anything else? I want to be, and I can pretend to be, but how can I convince you for any length of time?

***

I am going to die in this town. I will never go home. I know it. I look at all the stuff strewn through this house and I know that I will never be able to pick all that up and take it somewhere else.

I can never love my life. I do not know what it would take.

I am going to die in this fucking town. I will be almost entirely unmourned.

I want Naughtyman to love me. All I want in this world, when I sum it up, is to be loved. Yet I bite those who love me. Over and over. I suppose I want to know they are for real, and not just loving me because they love themselves.

I know what love is. I know what uncompromising, unrelenting, unsparing love is. I feel it!

I feel a love that you cannot describe, that you cannot beat, that you cannot quantify, that you cannot buy, sell or trade. I know love because I love my Zenella, Zenita and Naughtyman fiercely!

I love them in a way that feels like being crushed in a vice, that you cannot gainsay or bargain with. I love them in a way that feels like a dream of love, love you could only imagine. I would never have known it if they had not existed; I would never have believed it was possible.

When Naughtyman smiles – and he has a beautiful smile, mine, a hundred per cent my smile, my genes expressing themselves in his smile, although you’ll never see it on me – the world shifts just a foot to one side, and there is everything possible.

I wish I could die.

***

I am listening to Tribulations by LCD Soundsystem.

So I like to think I am tough enough. It has never been good for me but the world hates softness or so it seems.

I believe in love like I don’t believe in anything else. I believe in it because without it life is just nothing. It is just the absurd collison of atoms. Only a feeling I cannot describe can transcend that.

I know why you believe in a god. I know why.

I believe too. I just don’t want it to have that name.

So I am watching Naughtyman lying in the ballpit, the balls are closing over him, and he is happy, entirely within the moment, and I want to stop it, stop time right here, I LOVE HIM, time can only hurt that, please god let it all stop right here, we are happy, do not let the world go on.

posted by Dr Zen @ 8:38 pm