I’ve updated the colors of this site, from a bright red to a chill purple. And it’s weird, I feel so much more at home here now. The color reminds me of the walls of my old bedroom, me and BJ painted them together. I saw it a photo that my brother posted in 2008, you can still see the terrible job we did, and how much fun we had doing it. There are other people in the photo, I’ve hidden them, they’re not the focus here.
I caught a few extra details too, when editing that photo. I can guess what some of those CDs were, I’d forgotten about that pillar/woman statue, and obviously, the Pink Floyd poster is unmistakably me. I spent many hours at uni pouring over its details, wondering about the lives of the women as seen through the lens of their albums.
With the journal now purple, and no longer red, it feels less urgent, but somehow more personal, too. More reflective of this new blog I’m writing, rather than a place to write a book. Maybe I’ll have to start another side journal… 😁
Returning back to continue writing this entry, a peculiar thing has happened. I couldn’t capture it well before, but with that purple comfort feeling comes attached a very heavy feeling of dread, guilt, and even the embers of an ancient anger. I’ve been reading over the new archive of old journals too, and earlier today, I was thinking about my depressions, how they felt and their differences, as I experienced them, at different points in my life. Searching for words to describe them.
Dipping back into all these old headspaces — multitudes of them — has left me with a very strong feeling that there are thousands of words that want to come out of me. I’ve heard it said that everyone has a book in them, and that’s certainly true for a lot of people I know. Slices of life, like Mike Leigh films, or maybe tender darknesses worth describing, like Normal People. But the volume of thoughts I’ve gone through is staggering, shaped through the prisms of my many faces, sharpened by my unending need to find the truest facts of every matter.
At work today, during a Zoom call, I mentioned that I’m 36, and people were astonished. You could have just graduated, they said. And one person remarked, now we know how he comes out with such wisdom; it’s because they’ve lived a full life! I had no idea I’d imparted any such wisdom, especially as that was a client speaking.
So yes, I’m really starting to believe that there’s something to all this. And, oh my god, a powerful realisation hits me, something I’ve known forever but never fully recognised: I don’t think I can be good, because there’s something inside me that still tells me I’m not. I can feel tears coming forward. It’s actually been quite a long time since I felt something deeply, something vast like this.
The realisation that triggered this batch of thinking was when I sat down to continue this piece, and looked at that photo with fresh eyes. The people there are happy. They’re having fun. One of them is my “cherished” brother, the grand exalted one, the replacement favourite since it was always really me (and will always be, no matter what they tell themselves. I’m the best of the boys and everyone knows it 🤗).
I realised that this life, captured in the photo: This is the life that my brother remembers, and had experienced. And it makes so much more sense of why he could despise me so much; I was the bringer of everything opposed to that feeling of pure human joy.
I have words that are splitting off in too many directions now — god, what a rush it is to feel that propulsion again! — but I’ll stay focused and follow the original plan through. And that’s exactly my next point: I am different now. I am focused. I have new understandings. I have a birds-eye view of all of it.
And that’s a tremendously exciting idea.