I ran away. I bladed, did muay thai. Tried desperately to find myself. I didn't actually hit rock bottom, but in the sanctuary of my office toilet, I sought respite.
And then I started again. Or tried. Or am trying.
Except it just feels like, every so often I'm pushing against some kind of firm, gentle but impossibly solid invisible force. I'm trying to make my way up this slope but it's so bloody difficult.
I don't want to let myself slip back down, and so I fight that too. But fighting against either direction proves tiring work. And so, I want to just stop. Not sit down and rest, but just hang on- my fingers clutching at sharp, awkward edges, my nails caught and cutting into dirt.
I can do with this taking a long while, but it's too long a way down to fall. So I'd like to stay here.
And then,
And then I find that as I hold on, just hold on without moving or fighting even, I'm pulled down by the weight of myself.
It's like, I need to, I'm forced to do something.
-------------
Even in the cab, I'm doing something-
Prepping myself for the class I'm on my way to. Changing out my shoes, tidying myself up.
I don't plug myself into music, this twenty minute ride. Sometimes it feels like I'm wasting time- like that time with music in my ears could be spent thinking about what I really need to be doing. Sometimes it stresses me out.
I can hear the wheels on the road, smell the haze that finds its way through the windows of the cab.
The city is a screen of grey, and I'm moving through it.
I don't want my cab ride to end. I don't want it to take longer or make me late, but I don't want it to end. I want this twenty minutes to stretch on for ages, so that I can think.
It gets difficult to these days.
I'm falling,
I'm falling apart.
It's not to do with people, or the amount of work, or the deadlines I'm given.
I'm at this school now.
The last time I was here was a year and a half ago. I distinctly remember having recently come back from Bangkok with Vic, Eme and Bird.
I miss myself. The person that I was then, the routine I carved for myself, the freedom within my structures.
"I prefer you now to how you were back then- Nonchalant, about life and the world and everything in general." He'd said to me, a friend I haven't been in touch with in a long while.
Expanded, he had meant laid back, careless.
Nonchalant, I don't know, but careless- yes. And I miss that about myself.
I miss how everything's within what I can handle and cope with. How plugging into music doesn't mean I'm wasting time.
I miss how it feels for it to be okay to have time for me-
To blade, to run, to swim, to do Muay Thai.
Because now when I do it, it seems like it's just a form of escapism. Like I'm running away.
Like I'm taking time off from my life and I know I'll have to get back to it.
These days, it feels like I'm stealing.
An extra half hour here for lunch, fifteen minutes to lie in. Maybe twenty minutes to stare at kois in a koi pond.
I'd blade or do something, something, anything.
Except that'd just be running away. And I'm not going to do that.
Oh it feels like everything I touch might crumble.
But I've got a four-hour class to teach now,
Six classes of forms to sort out this evening,
And two programs to clean up sort out and email.
I might want to hold on and stay in place a while,
But I can't.
Not now.
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld
Powered by Gee! from StarHub
No comments:
Post a Comment