Nearly happy

It is like a heady perfume has swamped me and I can't think because I think about her.

I don't mind.

It was not love at first sight. I'm not like that. It was love at first conversation. It was electricity, power. I knew she could power me. I knew she could allow me to live and I could allow her to live.

I don't even know what I'm fucking saying. If you understand, you understand.

***

In Carindale, I am thinking, they all chose these clothes, at some point, all these people chose the clothes they are wearing. Unless their mothers chose them.

When my mother chose my clothes, I wore a miscellany. It was the seventies though and mad flares were actually stylish. I was accidentally in tune with the zeitgeist. I didn't care. Girls liked me. That's all I cared about.

I'm not going to lie to you. It's all I care about now.

***

I am thinking, they all chose to have their hair cut that way. Except my hair, I don't even think about it much.

And my clothes, I don't think about them much. What do I even look like. A lump of shit in poorly considered jeans.

My girlfriend has a sense of style. I don't mean she's fashionable. I mean she wears stuff that's very her. I feel embarrassed and clumsy to be her man.

But it's like she opened a door and I rushed through. I have spent years with women who wanted me to be someone else, the ones I was with and the ones I was kind of with but not really. They all wanted a version of me that didn't really exist -- a Windows 11, Grand Theft Nice Guy, a me that really is all the things they think i am.

Mad thing is, I am all the things they think I am.

***

Zenella is only telling me I'm handsome as a joke but you know what, I let my heart beat faster. I let my soul soar because there have been times I have only lived for her. There have been times I have wanted it all to stop stop stop and I didn't give in to that because I loved her so much.

That doesn't make me noble. It makes me fiery proud.

You know what? She didn't become what she might have been. She became what she is. And she isn't like anyone else. Hell fucking yes I am proud that my kids are just who they are. Hell fucking yes I am proud they are like no one else.

It will hurt them. When they realise they have been raised backward and fucked up so that they don't fit, maybe they will be angry like I was angry.

Then they will realise, I hope they will realise, it was a gift. I mean, you decide for yourself what it is worth but it's a gift of sorts. You are who you are. You are not categorisable. You are not wholly real yet you are as real as a person can be. You are a contradiction, you are legion, you are different from different angles.

You are fucking marvellous.

I would pay everything I have for her smile and I have. I have hurt her but I have not broken her.

***

She comes back with a swag full of books. I admit it, it is thrilling to have a child whose biggest love is books, who says, give me all your money so I can buy books, who cherishes books, imagination, the best of us.

We write our best. That's what we do. We write to say, we are worth it.

I believe you are worth it. Whoever is reading this, if anyone reads this, I believe you are worth it. I refuse to stop.

***

The people look sad in Carindale. No one ever smiles. No one laughs. It does not make us happy to shop. I ask myself if I am happy but I can't think about shopping. All I think about is Ally Ally Ally and how happy I nearly am.

Nearly am.

Because I'm afraid. Afraid that if I let go I might drown.

***

No one has read this far. You gave up in the second paragraph or the third if you're a diehard. So I am left talking to only myself.

Davey, I am ready to love you again. I am ready to cherish you again but I have felt those tentative steps to fucking it up and I have to tell you, ask you, plead with you.

Don't fuck it up.

You have the opportunity to love. To pour as much love as you can into the world. So pour, motherfucker. Pour, keep pouring, don't stop, don't ever stop. Be happy at last. Your children are beautiful and they're whole. Your woman is beautiful and she loves you. You are beautiful and you cannot deny it.

Yesterday, I thought about my mum and I cried because if only. But she knew and does not need to be here to have known. She knew.

posted by Dr Zen @ 10:28 pm