Oh don't get me wrong, everything is still utterly, comprehensively fucked, but hear me out here. Or read me out or whatever. That's just not as good a phrase though. It doesn't roll off the tongue. Unless you're reading out loud. I mean, I'm saying this out loud to myself as I type it but....listen I do have a point, if you'll just let me finish....or begin.
Our freedom to live as before has been taken away. In its place has been compulsory quiet time. I for one feel as though I have been granted a chance to do something special. A chance to learn more about the world around me. To educate myself, to truly gain a foothold. I've been presented with a chance to delve deep into myself, and better myself through considered, introspective thought.
It's not a chance I've taken. I've mostly just watched TV.
It's not a chance I've taken. I've mostly just watched TV.
Don't you dare think you can sit there in judgement of my profound failings! You with your homemade bread. Your newfound, and oh so temporary love of biking and hiking in the absence of Tinder super-liking. You are no better than me. Maybe some of you are.
Not you. Never you.
Not you. Never you.
Sure, we have all learned a great deal more on the manipulative power of media, the fragility of government, the depth of systemic racism across major nations, and the strength of human will....to avoid doing the right things for themselves and all others. We didn't actively seek it out. It's just not been possible to ignore it anymore.
Bury those fears, baby. Bury them way down inside. Stay up until it's daylight again, then fight the intrusive thoughts of your own failings as you try to sleep. Sleep less as the thoughts grow stronger with every day you try to push them back.
Maybe it's time to watch Six Feet Under again? O.J.: Made in America's on iPlayer.
Fight the thoughts. You're worthless. Don't think about it. You don't deserve this. Not the good stuff. Don't dwell on it. Focus on the darkness at the back of your eyelids and go to sleep. Don't focus on any darkness further back. Go to sleep when the birds chirp.
Don't.
So, overall I've done a pretty good job of dealing with the all encompassing terror. How about you?
I have granted myself one bit of gazing into the auld inside memory box though. Less of a waltz down memory lane, and more of a stumble down the dimly lit corridor of my romantic past.
Today is my wedding day, after all.
Or it would have been. Virus stuff.
I thought about my first relationship. It was an abusive cluster fuck. Mutual awfulness. It was the instant after the pin is pulled on a hand grenade, just stretched out for years. An imminent explosion in the air cracked with tension.
The first time I met her parents, she'd lied to her dad to hide that I was coming over, as she knew he'd be furious if he found out she had a boyfriend. We were in college. Her mum was very welcoming though. Her daughter gifted her some body butter. The mother told me I'd have to rub it all over her naked body. She ran her hand up my inner thigh and cupped my.... She laughed. It was an experience.
For four and a half years that relationship made me wholesale miserable. I had no idea how fractured beyond reason it was on the daily. Love is a constant stream of fighting, and apologies for reasons imagined. Love is fear. Love is panic attacks that you know the cause of, but won't admit to yourself for fear of acknowledging what that must mean about your relationship. Love is so much uncertainty. Love is always verging on hatred. It's a thin line, they say.
Except it isn't, is it?
The first time I met Miriam's parents, I'd spent about 12 hours of travel from Scotland to....still Scotland making jokes about Wicker Men and immolation.
Fear disguised by humour. I'm good at that.
Miriam's parents were lovely. Her dad didn't seem to hate me on sight. Her mum didn't do anything to make me lock the door at night. They were so kind, and welcoming. Miriam's family are just really decent, all round good folk. If you're reading this, I've decided you can come to the wedding when it does happen. No need to thank me.
I remember the first time I told Miriam that I loved her. Ruvved her.
Ever panic so hard you Scooby Doo?
"I....ruv....roo?"
"What?"
As I crab walked away (I did the claws) in the silence of that Meadows night, I closed the ever-expanding distance between us with a shout telling her never to speak of this again. Nothing happened. I had said nothing.
Zoinks!
How could I not ruv her though? I'm not going to gush, but she's just the best person I've met. A friend once told me of how it felt to have people in school talk to her about how kind, sweet, and shy Miriam was. She felt the giddy little thrill of being in a secret club. That secret club that knows how funny, mischievous, and bizarre Miriam can be. I'm proud to be a member of this club. It's a club that knows how much Miriam will hate that I'm writing about her
Hey, Miriam.
When she told me she loved me too a few weeks later, I called her a liar, stormed off to work and slammed the door behind me. I really thought we were joking, doing a comedy bit. I didn't know she was actually serious until she asked me on the phone later if she'd made things weird. I'm not very smart.
I want the big moments to be perfect. I live to surprise. A man for a grand gesture.
That being said, when gesturing I can lose control of my wildly flailing limbs and accidentally slap passing children in the face. Twice that's happened. Another day. Another day.
I have known for a long time that I wanted to marry this woman. The second she suggested that she may, possibly, kind of, sort of, potentially be alright with the idea if I were to one day ask was all the encouragement I needed. That and a plan.
There's this scummy, grubby book of poorly constructed sentences held together by questionable descriptions of genitalia. Paragraphs of prosaic penile pretentions put in place by pretty passable pottery persons. It's a neolithic set, would-be sex romp based in an Orkney that needs foreign fornication to save it from inbreeding (no really, that's the plot), written by a potter who claims it's the next Game of Thrones. I doubt this man has ever had sex. I bought it for a penny.
Miriam does not like this book. She does not like this book one bit.
Ever seen The Shawshank Redemption? Of course you have. It's in your top ten, even if you're too ashamed to admit your list has something so obvious. Andy Dufresne and his rock hammer hidden in a hollowed out bible. It took him 19 years to chisel through that wall.
I assume 5 years of that were spent hollowing out the book.
A whole day in my then new job was spent carving at poorly imagined erotica with a stanley knife. I intended to cut through 200. I think I gave in to cramp at 80. Little boxed out sections of dickscriptions littering my desk. Not the intended intro, Colin sending samples to his wife.
"His engendering nib casting silken strands...."
"What is Deebs doing again?"
"He's proposing."
I had a plan alright.
We hadn't been to Orkney in a while. Probably fearful of all that prehistoric pubic pummelling I'd read so much about in a book of some kind. Anyway, now seemed the time. Miriam's sister had just moved back, so there was a legitimate reason to push a visit to the isles.
(Sorry, Hanna, for including you in a paragraph and plan involving the "literature". It's a really, really, truly unrelentingly terrible book. I think I love it.)
I burned before in the summer sun on the bird paradise island of Hoy. Now, I'd return a conquering hero in a hat, with a ring in hollowed out porn for the insane and propose atop a cliff. A plan that could not fail. Unless she threw the book into the sea without opening it. Which....yeah, that was a real concern.
I bought a ring sizing thing online. But how to subtly measure the ring size of someone who doesn't wear any? Get drunk and leave the ring sizer sitting in front of the couch? Get drunk and just straight up measure her finger with neither subtlety nor subterfuge?
Why not both in consecutive days? Perhaps I should have been drinking less.
And still she didn't know it was coming. Not yet anyway. I'd told her I would be proposing within the next year, when finances were a bit more stable. Certainly not at the point when switching from weekly paid job to new, monthly paid job. A clever ruse.
So, I got drunk again.
It was my last day at my previous theatre home. Five years. I'd ordered the ring the day before. It meant something. I drank. It was nice. Somewhat intoxicated upon returning home, I'd told Miriam of one particularly touching farewell card I'd received from a colleague (and dare I say, friend). Was it a nice night? Yeah, I think i'll miss it after all. Then promptly fell asleep clutching a packet of biscuits. Again. Every time.
The hungover shell on the couch was breathing. Barely. It was enough to be registered a success.
"Oh is this the card you got?"
*garbled gibberish*
"Can I read it?"
*garbled consent through scarcely hidden tears*
It opens as follows:
"David....
OK, Deebs.
Congratulations on escaping from the Lyceum, and on buying a ring, and making all these steps forward in your life. I'm sure you'll meet any challenges with grit and grace."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Can you see it?
She raised her eyes from the card. An imperceptible periscope above the breaks for this broken vessel of a man.
"You bought a ring?"
"Shit."
I laughed for a couple of minutes. What else could I do? I'd absolutely fucked it. The ring hadn't even arrived yet. My heart was drowning in the pool of sweat at my feet. There was no denying it, although Miriam maintains that I could have made a cursory attempt. She underestimates the hangover. What was I gonna do, become an Ultimate Fighter?
"I have to make a phone call. About work."
I called my then recently former boss. I just needed to get out. To get away from the putrid stench of my stupidity.
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Chris, I....fuck!"
He laughed at me. He was right to do it.
Miriam was sitting on the wooden floor of our flat eating an orange Mr Freeze. She claims to like them, but I know that she eats them because they're my least favourite of the available options. It wasn't how I intended. It wasn't what I planned. There was no ring. No stunning vista. No grand, sweeping romantic gesture. No terrible erotic fiction in my hand.
That last part isn't a euphemism.
There was just a sweaty man, hungover and despairing at his own failure, but lucky in love and lost in hope. And an orange Mr Freeze.
She said yes. We both agree that it was the most fitting proposal from this consistently ridiculous fool. It was perfect in its own way.
We'll get down that aisle one day soon. Every day has been the best day. And today will be too. Today we'll drink champagne and wait.
....wait, the pornography!
After all the thought that went into cutting what constituted the heart out of that lacklustre lust list, there was no way I was letting it lie. And I did as said a week or two after proposing on that wooden floor.
She hates that book. She loves me though.
Maybe it's time to watch Six Feet Under again? O.J.: Made in America's on iPlayer.
Fight the thoughts. You're worthless. Don't think about it. You don't deserve this. Not the good stuff. Don't dwell on it. Focus on the darkness at the back of your eyelids and go to sleep. Don't focus on any darkness further back. Go to sleep when the birds chirp.
Don't.
So, overall I've done a pretty good job of dealing with the all encompassing terror. How about you?
I have granted myself one bit of gazing into the auld inside memory box though. Less of a waltz down memory lane, and more of a stumble down the dimly lit corridor of my romantic past.
Today is my wedding day, after all.
Or it would have been. Virus stuff.
I thought about my first relationship. It was an abusive cluster fuck. Mutual awfulness. It was the instant after the pin is pulled on a hand grenade, just stretched out for years. An imminent explosion in the air cracked with tension.
The first time I met her parents, she'd lied to her dad to hide that I was coming over, as she knew he'd be furious if he found out she had a boyfriend. We were in college. Her mum was very welcoming though. Her daughter gifted her some body butter. The mother told me I'd have to rub it all over her naked body. She ran her hand up my inner thigh and cupped my.... She laughed. It was an experience.
For four and a half years that relationship made me wholesale miserable. I had no idea how fractured beyond reason it was on the daily. Love is a constant stream of fighting, and apologies for reasons imagined. Love is fear. Love is panic attacks that you know the cause of, but won't admit to yourself for fear of acknowledging what that must mean about your relationship. Love is so much uncertainty. Love is always verging on hatred. It's a thin line, they say.
Except it isn't, is it?
The first time I met Miriam's parents, I'd spent about 12 hours of travel from Scotland to....still Scotland making jokes about Wicker Men and immolation.
Fear disguised by humour. I'm good at that.
Miriam's parents were lovely. Her dad didn't seem to hate me on sight. Her mum didn't do anything to make me lock the door at night. They were so kind, and welcoming. Miriam's family are just really decent, all round good folk. If you're reading this, I've decided you can come to the wedding when it does happen. No need to thank me.
I remember the first time I told Miriam that I loved her. Ruvved her.
Ever panic so hard you Scooby Doo?
"I....ruv....roo?"
"What?"
As I crab walked away (I did the claws) in the silence of that Meadows night, I closed the ever-expanding distance between us with a shout telling her never to speak of this again. Nothing happened. I had said nothing.
Zoinks!
How could I not ruv her though? I'm not going to gush, but she's just the best person I've met. A friend once told me of how it felt to have people in school talk to her about how kind, sweet, and shy Miriam was. She felt the giddy little thrill of being in a secret club. That secret club that knows how funny, mischievous, and bizarre Miriam can be. I'm proud to be a member of this club. It's a club that knows how much Miriam will hate that I'm writing about her
Hey, Miriam.
When she told me she loved me too a few weeks later, I called her a liar, stormed off to work and slammed the door behind me. I really thought we were joking, doing a comedy bit. I didn't know she was actually serious until she asked me on the phone later if she'd made things weird. I'm not very smart.
I want the big moments to be perfect. I live to surprise. A man for a grand gesture.
That being said, when gesturing I can lose control of my wildly flailing limbs and accidentally slap passing children in the face. Twice that's happened. Another day. Another day.
I have known for a long time that I wanted to marry this woman. The second she suggested that she may, possibly, kind of, sort of, potentially be alright with the idea if I were to one day ask was all the encouragement I needed. That and a plan.
There's this scummy, grubby book of poorly constructed sentences held together by questionable descriptions of genitalia. Paragraphs of prosaic penile pretentions put in place by pretty passable pottery persons. It's a neolithic set, would-be sex romp based in an Orkney that needs foreign fornication to save it from inbreeding (no really, that's the plot), written by a potter who claims it's the next Game of Thrones. I doubt this man has ever had sex. I bought it for a penny.
Miriam does not like this book. She does not like this book one bit.
Ever seen The Shawshank Redemption? Of course you have. It's in your top ten, even if you're too ashamed to admit your list has something so obvious. Andy Dufresne and his rock hammer hidden in a hollowed out bible. It took him 19 years to chisel through that wall.
I assume 5 years of that were spent hollowing out the book.
A whole day in my then new job was spent carving at poorly imagined erotica with a stanley knife. I intended to cut through 200. I think I gave in to cramp at 80. Little boxed out sections of dickscriptions littering my desk. Not the intended intro, Colin sending samples to his wife.
"His engendering nib casting silken strands...."
"What is Deebs doing again?"
"He's proposing."
I had a plan alright.
We hadn't been to Orkney in a while. Probably fearful of all that prehistoric pubic pummelling I'd read so much about in a book of some kind. Anyway, now seemed the time. Miriam's sister had just moved back, so there was a legitimate reason to push a visit to the isles.
(Sorry, Hanna, for including you in a paragraph and plan involving the "literature". It's a really, really, truly unrelentingly terrible book. I think I love it.)
I burned before in the summer sun on the bird paradise island of Hoy. Now, I'd return a conquering hero in a hat, with a ring in hollowed out porn for the insane and propose atop a cliff. A plan that could not fail. Unless she threw the book into the sea without opening it. Which....yeah, that was a real concern.
I bought a ring sizing thing online. But how to subtly measure the ring size of someone who doesn't wear any? Get drunk and leave the ring sizer sitting in front of the couch? Get drunk and just straight up measure her finger with neither subtlety nor subterfuge?
Why not both in consecutive days? Perhaps I should have been drinking less.
And still she didn't know it was coming. Not yet anyway. I'd told her I would be proposing within the next year, when finances were a bit more stable. Certainly not at the point when switching from weekly paid job to new, monthly paid job. A clever ruse.
So, I got drunk again.
It was my last day at my previous theatre home. Five years. I'd ordered the ring the day before. It meant something. I drank. It was nice. Somewhat intoxicated upon returning home, I'd told Miriam of one particularly touching farewell card I'd received from a colleague (and dare I say, friend). Was it a nice night? Yeah, I think i'll miss it after all. Then promptly fell asleep clutching a packet of biscuits. Again. Every time.
The hungover shell on the couch was breathing. Barely. It was enough to be registered a success.
"Oh is this the card you got?"
*garbled gibberish*
"Can I read it?"
*garbled consent through scarcely hidden tears*
It opens as follows:
"David....
OK, Deebs.
Congratulations on escaping from the Lyceum, and on buying a ring, and making all these steps forward in your life. I'm sure you'll meet any challenges with grit and grace."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Can you see it?
She raised her eyes from the card. An imperceptible periscope above the breaks for this broken vessel of a man.
"You bought a ring?"
"Shit."
I laughed for a couple of minutes. What else could I do? I'd absolutely fucked it. The ring hadn't even arrived yet. My heart was drowning in the pool of sweat at my feet. There was no denying it, although Miriam maintains that I could have made a cursory attempt. She underestimates the hangover. What was I gonna do, become an Ultimate Fighter?
"I have to make a phone call. About work."
I called my then recently former boss. I just needed to get out. To get away from the putrid stench of my stupidity.
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Chris, I....fuck!"
He laughed at me. He was right to do it.
Miriam was sitting on the wooden floor of our flat eating an orange Mr Freeze. She claims to like them, but I know that she eats them because they're my least favourite of the available options. It wasn't how I intended. It wasn't what I planned. There was no ring. No stunning vista. No grand, sweeping romantic gesture. No terrible erotic fiction in my hand.
That last part isn't a euphemism.
There was just a sweaty man, hungover and despairing at his own failure, but lucky in love and lost in hope. And an orange Mr Freeze.
She said yes. We both agree that it was the most fitting proposal from this consistently ridiculous fool. It was perfect in its own way.
We'll get down that aisle one day soon. Every day has been the best day. And today will be too. Today we'll drink champagne and wait.
....wait, the pornography!
After all the thought that went into cutting what constituted the heart out of that lacklustre lust list, there was no way I was letting it lie. And I did as said a week or two after proposing on that wooden floor.
She hates that book. She loves me though.
