Echoes of our past

All of us at one time or another are visited by echoes of our past. I don't want you to confuse that for nostalgia, like when a song comes onto the radio that reminds you of a certain point in time or maybe of a person you'd long since forgotten ever existed. Life as Shirley Bassey once sang is always just a little bit of history repeating. OK maybe I'm paraphrasing there a little but the point stands nevertheless. 

I saw a family of four walking down the middle of a road, the mother flanked by two lads who've long since outgrown their her height wise and who was now walking dwarfed in the centre. The husband, or father depending on the person's point of view, walking on behind. The woman was once a primary school teacher. Maybe she still is, although most likely a Head teacher or a Deputy Head at the very least. I first encountered her when I was doing a project at the school when I was in sixth form. That would be a few months shy of 30 years ago now. She was beautiful. I'd guess 24 or 25 years of age at the time, maybe a little less. I don't know how long it takes to qualify as a primary school teacher. Back then she was this miniature fire cracker that had she got her hands on me it would have gone off like a rocket. I remember seeing her in this tiny pair of skin tight lycra shorts. Thirty years later the thought still sits with me as much as it did then. Same as seeing her with a baby bump years later. That bump is now six feet tall. I remember feeling slightly gutted at the time, I've no idea why. I'd never have stood a chance. Yet she'd made that stamp on my impressionable young mind. Now we're both victims of time. She wouldn't have the foggiest clue who I was or the impression she'd left on me three decades ago. If there was a what if it was only in my own mind. 

The kids she taught loved her. I don't think you go into teaching primary school kids unless you're blessed with a kindly disposition. I imagine she's been a great mum to boot. The fact her boys flank her either side would suggest that and despite their height she clearly still rules the throne. Two ready made minders, just add water and time. I hope she's been happy in the interim years. Her house is nice enough from the outside. I've not stalked her by the way, I've seen her again since but today seeing her made me think. The echo knocked on the door of my conscious and politely asked to be let in. As you asked so nicely, yes you may. 

Maybe these echoes are brought on by trauma? A poor night's sleep followed by Instagram suggesting I might like to follow the account of my children's mother, a woman I despise with a passion and who I've not had any contact with for a decade. The person whose sole mission became to ruin my life and use our children in a game I didn't have the strength left to play. I was beaten. Had I played the game to the end it would have ended with one player left. So maybe that's why today brought back those additional memories. Manifesting happiness onto someone else's life in the interim period where my own had spectacularly gone to shit because she struck me as someone who had on the law of averages deserved a happy life. I won't ever be able to tell her that though. I imagine it would be a pretty weird conversation to have. It wouldn't end up in a restraining order but some things are better left unsaid. I don't even know her name. I suspect I knew it back when I was 17 and yet then it would have only been Miss Something or Other. Not first name terms.

Maybe it was tonight's football that was the straw which broke the camel's back. The last minute goal which was the kick in the teeth on top of waking up with the body of a man twice my age, aching like I'd been run over. A game that was like the changing of the months in a Sinatra song, you're riding high in April, shot down in May. And so I thought to myself, is this it? Is this what life is all about? When even the fleeting moments of joy are stolen away like the child snatcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has branched out into other areas just to keep a roof over their heads. Was it the final whistle that brought the echoes which shout well we've been here before. I think I'm too old for disappointments now. You'd think I'd have learned. Instead I'm walking in a daze. That blur when you're thinking bollocks one second, unfuckingbelievable the next and finally questioning your own sanity. Did that really happen? Maybe I dreamt it? So we do what we always do which is to go walking even though that hurts to do now but a little less than sitting or lying down does. Then we write, try to make sense of it all as we go. Maybe if we write it down it won't manifest itself into our dreams in-between the moments sleep is actually achieved before the pain kicks in again and wakes us up. Then the word we comes jumping out as us. We've gone into self preservation mode, trying to distance ourselves. The characters invented for self protection over the years or should that be self preservation or maybe the two are interwoven into the same thing. There's that question again is this it? Better a question than should I give up now or moreover am I allowed to give up now? Instead of stimming with my fingers like I'm playing a concerto on a piano or maybe I'm playing a piccolo but that would need some puff and I've been smoking more years than when I first saw the primary school teacher where we came in on. The stimming is manifesting in words which don't make sense. Just a brain dump really. They make as much sense as wishing a stranger all the happiness you never had, more tangents than a maths class back when the world still excited me. It troubled me equally as it ever did excited me, but it still seemed like an adventure or a series of adventures I wanted in on. Now I'm the man looking up for the signs pointing to the exit. Another day closer to death. If that ever scared me as a child then it scares me no longer. I've made peace with it. 

I'm back by the side of a main road no longer typing as I walk. My subconscious acts as a Priest. Do you believe in God my son? Do I bollocks. How about we give you a sign? There on the path sits a toad. I bend down for a closer look and it hops one, two, three. Magic stuff and the world is talking to me, not the construct of a God. I leave it be. It knows not that I mean it no harm or that it talks to my inner child and soothes his pain as well as the adult me though maybe with the adult it temporarily quelled the inner turmoil. We'll have a smoke and some caffeine from a can. We'll last another day tomorrow. Somehow we always do in spite of it all. Apologies to my inner four year old that can't see the toad for the passive smoke. Maybe I'll indulge the 17 year old me later and lie back with the memory of those tiny shorts thirty odd years ago. Yet you didn't need to know that part, too much information unless that's your thing. It might be you never know. 

The mood finally changes. The fresh air and the dancing of fingers over a keyboard self soothing. This lunchtime we were our own teacher because every day is a school day if you're willing to still learn. We watched the heron fly across the farmers field and then saw that it was flying towards another one. That brought warmth to the heart. So we looked to see what a pair of herons were called - a siege of herons. What did you do this weekend? Edited highlights - I came upon a siege of herons. You what now? Exactly. Then mid afternoon in between small bursts of rain showers we watched the golden brown leaves get whipped up by the wind from one side of a path to another and off they danced excitedly like a group of primary school children let out of class for breaktime. Then we've come full circle. Everything can link together if you're looking for it. Primary schools and maybe a wish I could just be four years old again. Some days it might be a tedious link admittedly, yet does that matter? Probably not. Does it make us help make sense of it all? Not really. We're all just killing time and some days we'll be visited by echoes of our past.