I find that when I write that I'm able to quickly forget that I'm still actually just silly old me. I'm somehow and perhaps rather worryingly easily able to fool myself into believing that I've inhabited the mind of someone else entirely new. Someone instantly more likeable, even if the characters that flow from the recesses of my mind are in general always similarly deeply flawed and troubled individuals.
I allow them the forgiveness that I cannot bestow upon myself. I write about their misdeeds and mistakes but readily admit that I've done far worse in my own lifetime. It's certainly easier to let them fill my time in a world where I have no desire to no longer be. I don't write about superheroes, just the average person you might walk past on any given day of the week. I somehow embody that person for an hour or two, I talk like they talk, act like they act but readers could be forgiven for thinking whoever I've embodied that it's still really just me in disguise. Sometimes they're correct, it's a poor thinly veiled act, but as I’ve already alluded to, I'm way softer on those characters and always too hard on myself. Maybe writing is a therapy or a doorway to finding forgiveness within myself? Except for now the door remains permanently locked although if that's true then I'm still the holder of the key and more than willing to let other people pass through. Maybe I've a saviour complex I've been too busy writing to admit to myself? As a side note I wonder if it is simply easier to wear the marks of the sinner than to try a day living the life of a saint?
In centuries gone by we'd have told our confessions to the priest. The supposed anonymity of a dividing screen but they'd have certainly known and recognised your voice. Now I can be the inanimate object avatar with no obvious reference to my name, yet if you look hard enough you'll find that it's me because on some level we're all a little bit vain. Do the words read easier from a stranger or would you like to get to know the real me? Unlike millions of others I'd not take offence if you said actually you know what upon reading this I'll pass. You'll not be a genius to figure out that even I can't put up with me if I'm too busy writing instead.
I carry the baggage with me from all the mistakes and the bad choices that I've made. Why can't I entrust them in the hold of a plane and find the airline has misplaced them all upon landing? Please, really, don't trouble yourselves trying to look it's no bother at all. I'll fill these new empty cases in no time I'm sure. I'd argue it's a skill, but bet your own money on it being a flaw.
An apology is only valid if you recognise what you're apologising for. I've tried to lay down my box of matches and be the man that offers more. For every step forward some days I'll take a dozen or more back. Old habits die hard and near on impossible to crack. Thirteen years of sobriety just a stones throw away. Honesty is having no qualms about admitting trying to drink myself to death and the biggest regret is that I failed. If you asked me how I stopped the answer is my stubbornness at the core. Finally you admit to yourself that you'll never be the person that can drink just one, you're fully committed until others pass out on the floor. It's easy to appear as being sociable when you're the tractor with red diesel poured down your neck. Now I can't stand to be around the type of person I was and who I'm not allowed to forget. Acceptance is how you start to build change and find growth. I should have joined my tribe and built a support network but all the talk of a God I don't believe in put me off and now I'm isolated and too far behind. It's OK though because when I'm through being honest with you now I'll find someone I'd much rather be. I'll tell you what they think, maybe one day I'll have them talk about me.
I am the dust drawn by a static charge to flawed individuals. Occasionally over the years I'll look at a man with a nice house, a wife and two kids and think that could have been me. Yet how do you lie to yourself when the lies I’d have to buy into are so easy for me to see? Bonne chance to all those who somehow managed to make it work. I'd write about you all but by ten you'd be tucked up safely in bed. One day you'll wake up and ask what was all the hard work for? The kids all grew up and left and now what's left behind the front door? The people you are now are no longer than ones you fell in love with before. Now you're two strangers, isn't it odd how you'd never noticed that before? The moral of the story for them is don't build your entire lives around those of your kids. Yet for some that's actually enough and then they'll happily carry on like ships that pass in the night. It's important to take time for each other and the person you once were before you lost your identity to become known as a mum or a dad.
I'm the pharmacist dispensing great advice yet somehow forget to take any of it on board. My ratio of written words to spoken is as extreme as 500 to every 1. Do I write to simply try empty the words from the voice in my head? It might occasionally say something poignant, if by some minor miracle it does happen should I then apologise for stopping and making you think?
If we could give ourselves credit where would we all be? Sunday I read the opening line or something I'd written, thought that's really good not remembering it was by me. It reminded me that I once saw a monochrome photo years ago that I loved and wanted to tell the photographer so. I checked to see who it was and it was from someone I know. I am the chimpanzee at the typewriter who might one day be capable of beautiful prose if they keep striking enough keys. Maybe I just need to step back long enough to forget that these things you see and read are all mine. Revisit with fresh eyes as part of my process of acceptance that sometimes I am so very capable of being wrong. Why is that so hard for any of us to readily admit?
Don't mistake me for egotistical, I'm of the firm belief it's not something that you can possess when you've no love for yourself. I liked myself far better when I was drunk. There written for all to see the lies of a writer with insomnia who'd fail to cry themselves to sleep.
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