Damn. I seem to have fallen behind. It’s pretty brilliant the way that time just ticks on, though, thrillingly aloof to its frozen inhabitants. You may fondly believe that you’ve come to a standstill - but you’ve not, because you can’t. Result.
You know how sometimes you just sort of slip into a trance and find yourself talking to the colour green, say, in a fantastically complex language that sounds a lot like music, but isn’t? And you know how this language is lost to you just the minute you start to hear the distressed voices of others asking you if you are okay? Well, time doesn't care about this at all.
Or if you’ve been doing happy stuff with the outdoors and the wind and dogs and then suddenly things just start to change? Weird, isn’t it? Such a short step from frisbee to a nameless distress and a dreamlike retreat up the stairs. Two hours later and it sort of feels like a good idea to start asking yourself what the fuck you are doing curled in a ball saying the same thing over and over again.
That sort of thing, you know? Anyway, time doesn't give two hoots about any of that - and nor should it. All attempts to temporarily opt out of time are completely ignored by time itself. What a ruthless bastard. Time is maybe a wee bit like some poorly drawn cad from a Jilly Cooper novel who treats women badly and yet somehow leaves them wanting more. We’re all women now.
No, time is nothing like a lusty cad from a Jilly Cooper novel and I'm not entirely sure why I just said that it was. Plus, not only is the analogy rubbish – it doesn’t hold anywhere near true for the diseased. Time is our friend, not our tormentor, because it relentlessly takes us towards the place we so bitterly long to be. Far, far and still further away from the teeming hordes of potential disasters, with their careless lies, genocides, dodgy shoes and limitless capacity to wound. Plus some other stuff, of course. But yes, you.
There is no sense to this. None at all. So very far from being edifying that it perfectly takes the breath away, there is no honour here. How pathetically obscene to watch one's own mind racing in on itself, frantically scrambling for options, lurching to every outpost and finding dead ends. And then, with a relentless lack of originality, heading towards the opening at the end. It just feels so warm and soothing, though, to reach out to something tangible, terminal, terrible and real. It makes it feel okay to know that this option exists. It just does. Only it doesn't.
Each time feels a little bit closer - no point in pretending otherwise. Such a searing and filthily seductive temptation, whispering incessantly of how things could be. Goading, beseeching, demanding, insisting that this is the way. I’m trying not to feel embarrassed, but it’s a bit difficult.
Look, don’t be searching for reasons to hurt yourself, because they’ll find you soon enough, anyway. Trust me, it’s true.
