i would rather i died than you did

so anyway,

it's the way
i feel inside
and it's all
because you lied

it's a cool, almost autumnal evening, which is odd, because it's pretty much midsummer. i am making a tape and the kids are out in the garden. they are bouncing on their trampoline and stuff, and there's a lot more screaming than there ought to be, but zenita is going through a screaming phase, so i try not to care unless it's a sound of pain.

and mrs zen was telling me that she was in contact with a, an old uni friend, on facebook. you what? i said. i didn't know you had facebook? and mrs zen is very much not the type. online is mostly a mystery to her, just a place where i meet women that she finds threatening. although actually, most of the time she thinks i'm meeting women, i'm reading about poker. endlessly reading about it, learning not a thing. i have promised myself to be systematic in the new year, to study to a plan.

new year. shit, isn't it? we don't do the things we ought to when we know we ought to. we just say tomorrow, and then one tomorrow we die.

so a is going to visit in february or something, and i'm glad, because we're not in touch, and i do like her. i used to have a huge crush on her. and it was kind of reciprocated, but you know how complicated life can make simple things, so we never fucked, and one night we were close enough but a jealous friend intercepted and it never happened. i am sad about that in a vague way. if i ever rise above vague in any sphere of my life, that will be good, but i'm not expecting it.

i'd still fuck her actually, in case you were wondering.

i know, you think i'd fuck anything, but i'm not sure that's true. i don't really enjoy it and i don't think i'm any good at it. the best a woman could do with me is straight out say, do this and do it like this.

so m comes round for christmas, for dinner and that, and we're talking, and i am saying to him that he doesn't sound like someone who loves queensland. he sounds like he is trying to convince himself that he does, but it's hollow.

he sort of agrees. and he's saying he could not go back to the north, because the people are just retards. and i say, well, i will hopefully talk you into coming to brighton with me.

the kids love him because i am a great judge of character and so are they. if you don't get on with my kids, there is just something wrong with you, because they're pretty good, all in all.

and i'm saying to mrs zen, i said to m that it would not be straight away, the day you say we are going, you are committed, i start thinking about it, but it will be maybe 18 months. and m was saying, that's a long time. and i was saying, yeah, but you don't just move a family of five just like that.

i do not feel trapped by responsibility. i am proud that i bear it like a man. i am proud that i chose to hurt myself by cutting into my freedom so that i can be sure i can keep them, feed them and allow them to have mostly what they want.

but i say to mrs zen that when i feel that she will never say we are going, she is committed, i will leave her. i will not live the rest of my life and die here.

i have been having pains in my chest. i'm pretty sure it's a muscle thing and nothing to be alarmed about. but it makes you think.

i want to climb maiden castle with naughtyman and look out over dorset, me and him, the wind in our hair.

and i was saying to m, a warm summer's day, wasps in the tree, in a walled beer garden, you cannot do that here, and he's saying, no, you can do that down south. and i'm thinking, dude, you can't, but i cannot think why not, i just know you can't.

and i know it's a bit confused in my head because it's mixed up with that afternoon in lyme regis, when i was having tea with my sister s, and i got a phone call about a job and the woman was almost apologetic about the pay and it was 10K more than the job i'd just lost.

so then we went fossilhunting, and i never loved s more than i did that day. but i have to say, i have always loved her, but with a love that is not escapable, not tradeable, almost not real.

so yesterday we phone them and i talk to s and her baby l. my heart is breaking because what the fuck am i doing here? and of course they have felt this way too. but i am me, not them, and what i feel means more.

how else are you supposed to think about the world? what you feel means more, right?

and i am not worried about my chest so much as i am worried about how dysfunctional i have been recently. i am completely off my feed, iykwim. it is like i have no view of myself, no regard for myself. a couple of years ago, i would play diplomacy obsessively but i was bad at it because i would write like a cunt instead of thinking about it. and now it's werewolf and i'm the same. it's like i'm so keen to do well that i can't help doing badly.

does that even make sense?

you know why i still want to fuck a? i want to still be me. i want to still be wanted, not to be this old, worn-out fucking idiot. i have no self-image, no idea of who i am. s used to say i had no proper boundaries, or some such psychological babbly bullshit, and she was right. but she was guessing, not showing insight, so i disregarded that shit.

i will not live the rest of my life and die here. i know i have to decide soon. my kids are playing in the room as i write this. how is that a decision i can even contemplate, let alone make?

i would have to leave them behind, allow them to become the people i despise, to allow mrs zen's family to mould them.

i do not feel like they are hers. they are mine. they are so much like me, mostly in the best ways. i look at naughtyman and he is such a gentle, beautiful little soul. and i never let him doubt that i love him. i do not think i could be faulted for tenderness. yeah, i make all the mistakes we all make. i shout and rage sometimes. i'm too tough, or too soft, or too unable to see what works. or whatever. but he cannot doubt i love him.

but if i walk away, what can he think but that i didn't care enough to stay?

they are so much like me, i know how easily they can be broken.

i don't have any good ideas. i have been cast adrift. i seem to be alone in a sea of morons. maybe i am wrong about them, but i don't know how to become right, when my sister s has a child and i have never seen it, and i have traded my chance to see her now for stability for my own kids and i don't even know what i'm saying except that i am drowning, already drowned, gone far away, and i left just this shell, a zombie who has to live and die and never think, because if i think, i just drown all over again.

and if you have any love for me, any at all, do not send me solutions. i do not need solutions. i need fortitude, and no one can grant you that, you find it within or you never have it. do not send me solutions. just return it to sender, forget i ever existed, let me die without a word.

posted by Dr Zen @ 5:54 pm