It’s been almost three months since my last post and if I were to apologise and go on about how much I’ve missed it, it wouldn’t be genuine. So I won’t. The truth is, I really haven’t wanted to update people about my life. I haven’t felt like my life has been worth reporting about and without unburdening all my emotional deficiencies onto you, my virtual friends, I’ve felt quite lost over the past few months.
This will sound melodramatic which ever way I say it but I really felt like I had stopped living, stopped being, stopped breathing. The only reason I was still alive was because my body wouldn’t give out on me. That sounds like a miserable existence, it sounds like depression, but it wasn’t. What with leaving University, not having a job and not having any close friends here in Edinburgh it’s been hard. To be living in a society that is so quick to label people, it’s not surprising to me that I have long struggled with who I am as a person. The ‘what’ I know, my likes, my dislikes… that’s all easy, but sit me down with pen and paper, ask me ‘Who are you?’ and I will falter. You only have to look at any profile I have with ‘myspace’ or the like to see that my descriptions of myself are awash with contradictions, inconsistencies and vagueness. I have long feared that the parts of me that I have closed off, the parts that hurt to think of have crippled me as a person.
As a child my father penned me a letter; a letter that I would not fully understand for many years. Something he said that has always stuck with me is this, “… I bury these feelings inside myself and refuse to look at them but I ignore them at the expense of knowing myself and finding wholeness. My lack of wholeness hurts my family. You are hurt by me out of my deficiencies as a person”. I don’t want to be that person. There are things in my past that I have buried since childhood. Despite being open about my past there are some things that are ingrained so deep in my character and in my memories that I refuse to admit that they even exist. The past few months have been a time of reflection, meditation and realisation. I can’t begin to explain how much more at peace I feel and the book I’m reading at the moment – ‘Nothing Special: Living Zen’ by Beck’ has been both an insight and an inspiration.
We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts, we make our world.
Buddha
This last week has been amazing and Victoria and I have finally got enough money together to afford our move to Belfast. We hope to be moved by mid October and to pass the time my little brother is coming over for a visit tomorrow. We plan on sight seeing around Edinburgh, something that I have never really done in all my four years of being here, visiting Edinburgh dungeons, getting new tattoos and enjoying the fringe festival.
I’ll write more soon.
