It’s not as if there hasn’t been enough going on over the last while is it? I was hardly profligate in the 2010s but to have stopped when I did could, were you minded to give me more credence than I am due, have given the impression that I was portent to the things to come and the nature of the bile it would instil. Surely, you might counter that would mean all the more reason to be writing furiously, in both senses, in order to be one of the voices from the darkness. You would be right. I should have been that voice, I should have made my cry heard above the din and given a sense of what I felt was right. I wish I could have done but the words on the few occasions they came to mind were so fleeting and so swiftly gone as if a flock of geese in symmetrical formation merely flying overhead en route to a better mind than mine.

The fact is that it was not for lack of items of bilious nature that I did not write, nor did I ever stop caring but the ability to express it diminished in tandem with a period of time where there has been much emotional dissociation, to which I am yet to find a proper solution. Therefore if there is something so profound and so pervasive stopping one from writing and yet to not write makes it worse then perhaps one can only start by writing about the darkness itself and see if that scrabbling in time yields a chink of light. The alternative is that it all collapses on top of me and I might glibly muse that this may not be such a bad thing if the alternative is being in a metaphorical mineshaft.

I am not specifically sure when it all took place, there are things that suggest it was gradual and others that give rise to speculate as to there being a point perhaps somewhere, I can find no rational reason nor particular time. Without question the darkness that I was accustomed to changed exponentially and became something that did not seem to be preceded by a period of good and dissipate within some days as it had before but rather an all-encompassing malaise, the very antithesis of peaks and troughs such as to render all sense of creativity moot whether to express dark or light. This has in no small part robbed me of a sense of being, it has changed how I come across I am sure and made me probably

There will be many tales of 2020, I am sure of that, so many stories to tell, a great many of them will come from the overcoming of adversity, or the spirit of togetherness getting through and I very much envy those who have lived through this experience. I hope it has given them succour for what has been for so many a year like none that has been experienced before or hopefully to be experienced again. There will be no panacea for me this year that is fairly certain, indeed I have long since given up the sense that such panaceas even exist which may be no bad thing because the dashing of hope grows no easier with age. My tale of 2020 has not been all dark, there have been times where the coasting through things has been in comparison to the anguish felt by some to have given me a comparatively easy run of it. However to be devoid of feeling does not insulate you from pain, you still see it and feel it vicariously, you still bewail not having the drive to escape hurt or to right wrongs nor the gut instincts of avoiding future calamity.

It does feel self-indulgent to be looking introspectively during such a year when so many have lost their lives or been subjected to life-changing situations that will define many years to come. I remain housed and clothed, I am still broadly-speaking free from serious disease including Covid-19 as are my family and indeed there is much that I could draw up a list with in order to show my melancholic self just how irrational and ungrateful it is being. Rationality for so long a staple method of transitioning crisis and one by which I have always sought to help others by providing that detached without being dispassionate view of things has abandoned me in my own hour of need and the logical things from which to draw comfort in fact sit merely to taunt as I examine my thoughts.

Which came first the introspection or the dissatisfaction? This is one of those musing questions that I could explore for days, and frequently do, but there is in reality no answer. Is the fact that I am unhappy with my life purely down to me being unhappy with myself or is there more to it? It doesn’t matter in truth, there will be no finding of happiness externally until there is some comfort internally and that remains as elusive a spirit as it ever was. There have been times when I have begun to see in the mirror something I could reconcile myself to easier but that is not in the here and now.

Whilst there is in no small part a degree of self-absorption in my writing such a post there is also partially a sense that if I am not alone and there is someone who can see from this that they are not alone either perhaps a quiet movement, a small ripple on a very deep pond is at least enough to justify being alive now where more outlandish emotional movement is a distant memory or a faintest hope. I believe I am not alone, indeed I have seen evidence of this in part amongst those who have striven to share their experiences and I feel that for us to deny ourselves this acknowledgement that we are not ok would be the equivalent of denying anyone the right to cry. I have myself enough within that denies me that ability that I would not see anyone else given that treatment from without.

There needs to be more, much much more. I need to find the method to exorcise what should have been penned in some ways and to hope that perhaps a bottle jam effect may then clear the pathways to new lines of expression and thought. It isn’t so much the writing that’s a problem, nor is it the thoughts, it is somewhere in between and the linking thereof. If I can find the method to reestablish that process it may make things more fluid but as yet there is no sense of what might have been lost. Answers on a postcard please.

Song Of The Day ~ Charlotte Gainsbourg – Such A Remarkable Day