I went for a drink with a friend of mine the other day and ended up crying quite openly in the middle of a bar. I revealed quite a deep part of me. The part I like to lock away. I felt slightly liberated by some more positive events and had a lovely day up until that point. Then in the excitement my friend had his phone stolen. This did at least give me a chance to regain a little composure and focus on something else - although I then just felt bad about the fact that I'd been responsible for this happening.
There were some grounds for hope last week. I had a long conversation with an agency who seemed both genuinely interested in what I had done with my life, charmed by the person they were talking to (one of my better attributes), and committed to helping find me something to do. It was, without question, the best interview I'd given since I got my last job which started exactly a year ago from the time of writing. On top of that someone managed to find me a possilbe place to move to which would accept housing benefit. It's in Depford and the person I was talking to lives next door and is a very interesting person. Little things should pick you up and give you hope. I'd had a bit of a run in with the person I was out with on Thursday in the previous week and so had been glad that we'd managed to find a way to communicate again.
Of course all of this has proved to be quite a big emotional false dawn. The flat is dark and small and I'm sure I could make something of it but I'm not entirely sure I want to be somewhere where there is no washing machine. In this day and age I do really consider having a washing machine in my house as something close to a basic human right. I don't know if I really can give that up - whether they accept housing benefit claimants or not. I can always stay at my friend's house but it does mean I need to find some kind of work of some description and then even then I know that the chances of finding somewhere decent to live will be severely limited by the fact that I'm unlikely to earn even two thirds of what I do now. That also limits the kind of places I can live comfortably.
I've been honest with my friend about a lot of things and he seems to be not talking to me and I'm beginning to wonder if that's to do with one key thing I said to him. He is a person, like probably many of my friends, who believe in honesty. I'm not the most emotionally honest person I know. I've probably been at least mildly depressed for most of the past three and a half years since my mother died. I have dealt with an awful lot of difficulties in my life and I struggle with them by putting on my face - the smile. After a while it's easy. You walk up to the door, take a deep breath, tell yourself you can do this, smile, and open the door. The rest is automatic. It's how you survive when you don't feel good about life, about yourself, about what you are doing with your life sometimes and it is the thing I am finding I am becoming increasingly unable to do.
The truth is that I don't know what my life is anymore. I've done all these things. I've achieved little, but there are things I can say, I did that. I want enough money to buy the things I like, and have a little left over for a rainy day. That's gone, so have all the things I've done. I feel like they've been taken from me. I don't have huge debts, in fact I am one of the rare breed of people who have none. Yet I also don't own a house or a car, or have a love in my life, so in the eyes of many I don't have anything much either. What have I done with my life? I've lived it, I've drifted and, in the eyes of many, I would guess I would be seen as someone who has failed. Suddenly I'm 45 and I have to deal with this awful place I have here.
Then Saturday night I went out and end up inviting someone to come and have some wine I have back at my house as there is nowhere else to go. I fall asleep at about 8am and when I wake 4 hours later the person is gone. So is my phone, my camera, the money in my pocket, and a spare phone I had. Most of this isn't insured and the person who stole these things even knew I didn't have a job. I've sat numb for 2 days trying to work out why this is happening to me again. My life has been one long series of abuses by other people and it just keeps happening. I've used all my strength trying to deal with all of these it's hardly surprising that I'm running on empty.
People keep saying to me that things will change, something will happen to make it better. Something will turn up, and I am asking myself more and more, what if it doesn't? What if this really is all my life will have ever been? I'm worried with each passing day that this is the truth. I'm some large sea creature slowly burning in the sun stranded on the beach and never likely to return to the water before I die. I look inside myself and find nothing. I'm staring into a void, forcing myself to go out and shop, come home and eat food because right now I really don't care anymore. After the weekend I know there are places further down the spiral, each seemingly worse than the last. I don't even know where I am anymore and I also don't know how to get out.
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