I made some pretty big changes a few years ago. But it’s the slow loss of the small items that has got me remembering today.
It’s those meaningless yet useful items that speak of a different time.
The brand new car manual kept nearly in a box, from the days when I kept items neatly in boxes. It’s sat at the bottom of a suitcase of useful important information. Reminding me of a time when brand new cars and shiny manuals were commonplace. These days anything new is dog eared after 6 months, even if it stays in the bottom drawer of the cupboard. And I haven’t bought anything much brand new that’s worth anything.
I pulled out an old hairband to be used as a pretty elastic for something else. Thereby rendering it unlikely to be used as a hairband again. It hit me that this hairband was an old one from the days when I worked at my old school. Just touching it pulled me back into a sunny work day, lost in life but, I have to admit, totally successful otherwise.
It’s times like this that I have a tinge of regret. Leaving my ex was the right decision but should I have left my job? The security I had built myself that I had so longed for. A steady income. The one thing missing from my childhood.
Would I have moved here if I had given it some time? Sure this was where the party was at, but maybe my own need to learn what normal people do when the party ends, was the biggest draw. And for that I needed to find a friend group I felt I could trust. I found that group in Scotland.
By being my outlet for two years, it offered the perfect setting for me to find myself. Scotland itself really wasn’t the draw. The people whose lives I had fallen into like the randomness of a feather…
My main contact up here was a college friend getting into contact a few years after college. Not my best friend. In her last year of uni and having come close to having her absolutely normal dabble in narcotics blow up in front of her very middle class parents. She messaged me. For solidarity maybe? Not because I was her first choice in friend. In fact we were chalk and cheese to begin with.
Except I needed her. The same way anyone who struggles to meet their own emotional needs, finds solace in others. I needed her harsh words to show me how to trust them again. She taught me not to fear words so much. I don’t know what she found in me, friendship I suppose. At a time when she absolutely needed to learn to love herself. But she didn’t want to be alone and struggled to trust people.
She never needed me in the traditional sense. But she needed me to let her be herself when her unique combination of functional psycho was difficult to come by. I should know, I would have described myself as the same at the time. The thoughts that went through my head back then make me glad I grew up.
I guess me breaking her trust, even in small way, forced her not to need me in that way anymore. It had to happen. There was a time we finished each others sentences and I could second guess her movements. I miss it. I would enjoy that closeness with someone again. But I had to learn not to NEED it. I’m still learning. I sometimes wish I was back in that flat as a third adult in their family unit. But I know I had to learn to be alone some time. For a while, she let me feel safe. She let me learn how to survive against her worst enemy: herself. And she is vicious.
It’s the small things that help you remember more clearly.
In the light of the vague Scottish sun, I know I don’t need to be here anymore. The environment was forced to an end by the pandemic and I’ve have to learn alone ever since. So where do I need to be?
Serious question from such a small item..
Damn.
FaerieFalls 