Alone with the Darkness

I may have told everyone around me that I’m exhausted and I’m going to sleep. It’s a lie though.

I’m in physical and mental pain, and no matter how hard I try to be alone, the darkness and the silence is torture because often my own thoughts are worse than the present reality. I hate it, and I fear it, yet at the same time, I crave it.

Tonight however, it’s only destroying me more and making my pain worse. I wish there was someone I could turn to. If there was anyone right now who I thought I could ring, or who could ring me and talk me out of this, I’d take it without thinking.

I don’t want to stay up all night crying. I’ve been crying for hours and hours already. I should have exhausted myself to sleep, but I simply cannot.

Whilst I want to talk soon, I want that moment to be specific, and that moment will not be tonight. I wish that tonight I could just hear comforting words, and find someone to help me turn on the light, but there’s no one. People have lives and priorities, and I don’t blame them for that. I don’t want them to feel guilty, because they’re not guilty. There’s nothing to be guilty of.

But it’s scary, and with nobody to tell me that it’s going to be okay, and just under twelve hours until I need to get up, it’s going to be a long night of staring at the ceiling. If there’s no comfort at 9pm, there certainly won’t be any at 3am. I wish I wasn’t alone.

Morning will come though, and the light should bring a few moments of peace, forgetfulness, and laughter. That’s what I pray for, but I fear it may no longer be the case.

4am

Today is a big day. In fact, today is a very very big day, and I’ve been rather worried about it since I found out it was going to happen.

Last night, after a night of tears and pain, and heartache as some things happened that I know have disappointed my best friend, and more importantly, myself, a few really good and exciting things happened in the last fifteen minutes or so before I tried to sleep. I slipped into sleep easily, and for once, my sleep (until now at least) has been easy, deep, and dreamless.

Now, it’s 4am and I’m staring at the ceiling with a racing heartbeat. I’m feeling a little sick but that’s probably because I’m hungry. I don’t like to put a word or the name of an emotion to my current feeling, because I’m not sure there is one. I’m just feeling rather empty. Blank, I suppose you could say. It’s black, it’s dark, and nothing’s moving around in my brain.

I’m not trying to come to terms with today. What’s the point? It won’t make things any easier. It’ll just make me cry again, and I can’t afford that, with a 9am lecture.

Whilst I don’t like to think about what I want either, those thoughts are much harder to keep from my mind. It has always been easy to just build up my wall, and pretend it’s all okay. One of my friends once told me that life is just a big mess of pretend, and whilst at the time, I didn’t think I could lie to myself, I’ve come to realise that actually, I’ve been doing it for quite a lot of my life. Wants however, are much stronger than feelings. You must remember that feelings are colours and patterns to me, and I must try to convert that into words. Wants and desires are very different, I don’t have to concentrate, and so it’s much easier for those to invade my mind.

Right now, I want only one thing. I want someone to appear out of the darkness, and I want them to crawl under the duvet with me, wrap their arms around me, and whisper that it’ll all be okay. I want that person to be someone quite specific. And it’s not going to happen. It’s sadly, an impossibility.

So, I’ll wait out the hours till I must get up, and face the day. If I’m lucky, sleep will wash over me once more, if I’m not, I’ll simply have to lie here, staring at the ceiling, and wait until my guard breaks, and one by one, the emotions prod, poke, and stab me, until there’s nothing left.

My Problem With The Light

Whenever one of my flat mates walks past my open door and sees the lights turned off, she sighs, and switches them back on for me. You see, I don’t ever put the lights on in my room until it’s actually dark, and even then, if I’m just on my iPad or phone, I still don’t bother. It infuriates her a little, because she can’t stand to sit in the dark.

Today, she waltzed into my room, made a comment about how I’m more likely to be upset without the lights on because the light makes her happy, turned all four of the lights in my room on, and left again.

That very action stressed me out a little. I like the lights off. Firstly, my dad has been ranting and raving for years about saving electricity and lighting the world, and so I’ve just become accustomed to living in the dark. Now I’m older though, not only am I used to it, but I very much like it. With my curtains drawn I can ignore the rain, and with the lights off, I can sit on my bed in my room, with the door propped open, and people walk past without even noticing that I’m here. It means that I don’t have to communicate, I don’t have to smile and say hi, and I can sit in my own little world, whilst still observing the daily routines of my flat mates.

She’s right, I do cry more in the dark. Either way though, I’m not sure it matters. I’m sure as hell not going to cry while my door is wide open. I’m not sure what my point is, and I’m not sure why I don’t like the light on, really. But leave me to hide, perhaps sometimes, the dark can feel a little safer. The dark gives you time to be with just yourself, and to let down the guard that you spend all day propping up, even if just a very little bit.

Watching The Flames

A few nights ago, I went to a camp out at a friend’s house. My friendship group sat in the dark, wrapped up in blankets, played silly games, got a little tipsy, and sang along to music. We also had a fire, and roasted marshmallows to make s’mores. It was peaceful, beautiful even.

I love fires. Out of context, that perhaps sounds strange, but you forget that I am a Guide. I’ve grown up camping in fields and singing around the campfire. The campfire signifies peace, laughter and friendship. The campfire always comes at the end of the day, and it’s important to remember that tomorrow will be a new day.

As I sat in my friend’s field, and I watched the flames lick the wood, I found that for a little while, I drifted into my own little world. Many of my friends had gone to mix cocktails or put on their PJs. The music had stopped, and I savoured the quiet. The crackle of the wood as it burnt was the only sound that could be heard. I watched the flames dancing over the logs, and slowly, it burnt down into a pile of embers. The glowing ash is often more beautiful than the fire itself. I was truly content, just for a moment. I’ve missed fires.

It seems however, that when you are content can often be when reality hits you the hardest. It wasn’t long before an unexpected fear was slipping down my face. Why it happened, I don’t really know. Perhaps just that moment of escape allowed my emotions to be completely free. I spend so much of my life tense, stressed, and concentrating on control, to let go is very much an alien feeling. Even today, when on a first aid course and being used as a ‘casualty’ (I knew the trainer!) I was constantly being told to relax, and that I was too tense to work with.

A few seconds later, my friends returned. I wiped the tear away, and the feeing of overwhelming relief went with it.

Living, laughing. Loving.

alex122rw

Black

It’s crazy, because it shouldn’t have upset me like that. Ten months after he died, watching a funeral in a movie shouldn’t affect me. Yes, the fault in our stars was a very sad movie anyway, but when they were at the funeral of Gus, it upset me because I thought of him, ten months ago.

I’ve only ever been to one funeral in my life, my granddad. It was horrible, I hated every second, and it was heart breaking. So many random things bring up memories, but nothing was quite as terrible as that movie last night. The coffin, the people dressed in black, the flowers.

When I climbed into the car afterwards, and stared at the sky, my best friend asked if I was okay, before swiftly changing subject. I didn’t tell her why I was upset, because it’s not normal for that to make you upset.

As we drove past the crematorium on the way home, she told me quite bluntly that it was where they’d burnt her granddad, and she laughed. She really was trying to make light of what I imagine isn’t a lovely situation for her, either, but once more, it sparked up memories for me, too. I did all that I could not to pull over.

We made it home, we laughed on the way, and I was soon okay again. I don’t however want another reminder any time soon of just how raw those cuts still are.

Living. Laughing. Loving.

alex122rw