Memories of transition

Dear Diary,

I was watching a documentary earlier this week called 'In Bed with Chris Needham', it was a fascinating piece. It was about a guy who was 17 who made a documentary and the BBC commissioned it, it was about his band and their first gig, and the tribulations of his life at the time. I just finished reading an interview with him in 2008, it was pretty heartfelt for me to read. I guess because it brought up some feelings for me. This guy, Chris, spoke about his friends since the time of the documentary, how he's in contact with some of them, how awesome his younger brother is and how he's moved on emotionally since those times. There was then some discussion about a comparison between youth cultures then and now, and a bit on youth cultures then.

It led me to think of my teenaged years and I could think of very little. As I read the interview, I was listening to an audiobook, technically its of a play, The Bacchae by Euripedes. Lately I've developed a niche for Greek literature, I thought The Trojan women was particularly interesting, in how it explores the tragic situation of the women from the Trojan war, compare that to say, Lysistrata by Aristophanes which also highlights the social role of women. I find it interesting that a culture that was so patriarchal also had elements of awareness of the female situation. Consider also for instance how Plato was gender-blind in the Republic, as women had no barriers to becoming philosopher kings.

No one wants to listen to my thoughts about ancient literature, or social commentary. No one is interested in my thoughts on how increasingly relevant Aristotle is to understanding the world today. No one really is interested in me at all. When I was a teenager I was quite the same, I was obsessed with trying to master a piano piece, I was probably as ambitious as Chris in the documentary about being a concert pianist as he to be a rock star. Myself, like him, probably overestimated our respective talents at the time, at least Chris is still doing the music and from what I last heard, was pretty decent.

When I was a teenager I was reading Homer and Virgil. When I was a teenager I probably wanked a lot more than the other guys. When I was a teenager I used to go into my head and play fantasies which mixed a bit of star wars space opera with dragonball z energy manipulation. I was very unfocussed for much of that time. When I was 18-19 I was in such a horrid emotional limbo I don't really think it could count as being a teenager.

When I was asked in counselling to talk about my childhood, I thought it was a horrible cliche, some freudian bullshit where necessarily I would have some experience that explains everything about now. I did not think and I still do not think that is the case. I do think however, that there is some reason why I keep re-visiting the past. I'm not necessarily re-visiting the same areas that I used to (particular trigger spots include: the time leading up to my incarceration, my ex girlfriend, feeling on top of the world in year 13 at sixth form, the piano years).

I think if there is one thing about these seemingly unrelated instances that I keep thinking about, it is that they all reflect moments of transiation. I had an upsetting memory of 2007, around the time I started this blog actually. I went to Bristol to go flat hunting, for various reasons, perhaps the most pressing was that I didn't give much time to prepare: I was homeless for a few days when I started my masters. In the Indian summer months of August and September, I was travelling to Bristol on one-day return trips (very tiring by the way) to view houses and flats, and then come home. One time I got messaged by a girl from this postgraduate web board who was also house hunting, she was doing a PhD in policy or education or something, and was also desperately house hunting. The reasoning was that groups tend to get better chances.

On that day I went to view a couple of places, I at one point met up with a guy I knew from my first and second years of uni, I didn't see him much after that. This was a nice guy, I suppose there are many memories of him I could talk about for another day. When I was house hunting with this girl she then went off on her own to view places, I ended up in this strange emotional place, where I was in the city where I lived for 3 years, but I didn't live there. I think there's only one time I was in that situation since my MA, when I went to  Bristol with my ex (and she was at the time, my ex) for a concert. Handel's Messiah it was.

Why I remember this particular time of house hunting is because I realised that girl probably has a PhD now, she's probably a post-doc and doing well as a researcher. This girl is living the dream that I wish I had. This girl also emailed me like 6 days later after we went viewing and said she's ditching me to join a house share, all I got was a sorry followed by an exclamation mark, as in: "sorry!", how very 'of the time' to end things with exclamation marks. I felt kinda upset by that, and that feeling, that sense of betrayal I felt again today.

In ideosyncratic fashion as my counsellor said to me once: It sounds like you have trouble trusting women. I find it strangely odd how the things I often reject tout court from my counsellor end up having more depth than I realise. It's nearly 3am, and I'm writing memories.

Another memory I have is around the time my friend Greg met up with me to submit our dissertations. A related instance is when our mutual housemate, and my school friend John said goodbye to me. I really hated him, I hated him because of a comment he made about Marie. What's funny about that time is that Marie abandoned me, and John ended up being the true friend, I didn't realise that at the time, and to some extent I still refuse to accept this fact. My friend and I said a goodbye of sorts, it was more symbolic than anything. Symbolic because it was a transition. For us, university was over and the real world awaited. For myself, I refused to accept this, which was my undoing. That I suppose, is one of the lessons that came from the memory. I seem to be reminded of these memories because they all represent transition.

Right now I'm not sure how I feel, if I were to look in the mirror I would not reconise my face, that is because I have a beard. If I were to look in the mirror my eyes would be a little bit red but not quite teary. I haven't cried in a little while, I dont think there has been anything that I've felt so strongly that has made me cry. Gym tears for the record, don't count, that's a totally different thing because that's a bit about pain, physical pain.

There's no gym to sort out this unresolved up in the air feeling I have about these seemingly unrelated memories, there's no workout I can do to focus on making it better. I remember one experience. When I lost my virginity. As soon as I watched those words appear on the screen I paused and thought: I can't tell this story. The night after we had sex, we had a bit more sex. There were moments in that night where I just stayed awake as this woman, beautiful and naked, transformed me into a different person. I knew that life had permanently changed from that point. I knew that I had changed from that point, I felt to myself that I would forever look at myself as another person. Forever I had this moment, this event to distance 'then' and 'now'. I also felt a distinct openness and vulnerability in sharing myself with someone emotionally in such an imtimate way as I did with Antonia.

(for the record, now I'm teary)

I felt this distinct vulnerability, this distinct feeling of frailty, and it wasn't the post-orgasmic frailty either. It was this feeling, perhaps a realisation, that despite this change, there was still a darkness inside me. I could at least share it with her in giving her and showing her this vulnerability. I remember this moment when we cuddled just before she left the flat. We were in our clothes, and I think it was because of that, it felt so incredibly intimate. I never felt so close to a woman before, and perhaps I never have since, maybe I never will.

When I think of that memory I do realise its a moment of transition, its also a memory I don't feel too happy about revisiting. It's so personal, so intimate, in that experience I am both physically and emotionally naked, and at the time I was extremely self conscious about both. I'm kind of glad no one really reads this blog anyway, because as I type these feelings I find it a consolation to my soul, and a feeling that anyone else would read it would give me a comparitive feeling of being caught naked. This is me naked of my pretensions and my feelings laid bare.

I'm going to admit something I've refused to put up on this blog for a few days: I've thought about Antonia as she held me on that morning. The sun shone into the room like it had never before (well so it seemed), the tree outside my window was starting to grow again, and I felt transformed.

I realise that I bottle so much of myself inside me. I'm always self conscious that people just don't care. They aren't interested in Homer, or black metal, or philosophy, or academia and the future of the humanities. As I bottle myself up, I realise that I'm starving myself in a way as well. I would like to say to myself, and I do say to myself, that those times I mentioned, those moments of transition no llonger apply to me. All of those experiences reflect a flaw, or some kind of undoing that has happened since them, or happened because of it, or happened in the lead up to it. All of those experiences seem completely other to me, and yet, they seem so criterial to my experience of the world. All that feeling of uncertainty, fear, vulnerability, feels like a black hole that is going to consume me, it has, it did, and it will do so over and over again. Instances like these make sense of Nietsche's 'Eternal Return'.

Am I a different person now? Am I a stronger person? These questions seem unanswered, these questions seem not determined. These questions fill me with fear, fear that the answer is no. I feel like I should go to sleep, I have lots of tasks coming up over the coming weeks. I've no shortage of things to do. I wish that now could be a time of transition. All the factors seem rife for it: I can't recognise my face in the mirror, I feel fear, I feel vulnerable, I feel uncertain. In all of those instances, I also was alone in my thoughts and actions, even in the virginity case, I was in bed alone with my thoughts.

There's an emotional part of me that right now I really need to indulge. I wish I could talk to someone that wasn't a random off the internet or my counsellor. I wish I could have a cuddle, connect with someone, touch somebody. All I have are voices in my  head, and I'm starting not to trust them when I realise the real strength comes from me.